my cattle drink of thy water, then I will pay for it I will only, without doing any thing else, go through on my feet. And he said, Thou shalt not go through. And Edom came out against him with much people, and with a strong hand. Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his border: wherefore Israel turned away from him," Num. xx. 14-21. The ancient rivalry and jealousy which separated the brothers, Esau and Jacob, survived in their descendants, and extended itself down throughout all their posterity.

Refused a passage through the land of Edom, Israel wended their weary way southward through the Valley of the Arabah, and encamped for a season on the western flank of Mount Hor, in the borders of Edom. There their high-priest was taken from them, and they saw his face no more. In order to compass the land of Edom through which they were forbidden to pass, they prosecuted their onward journey as far as the Elanitic Gulf of the Red Sea, and then turned eastward by the southern extremity of the interdicted territory. "And the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way :" and no wonder; it was a weary way, a land of drought, of "fiery serpents," and of the shadow of death. Here befell them those events of judgment and of mercy which our Lord Jesus Christ employed in illustration of the dread ruin produced by sin, and the gracious restorative provisions of the gospel: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in

the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved."

The next historical notice of the Edomites is in 1 Sam. xiv. 47, where Saul is said to have carried on a successful war against them. This was three centuries and a half after the time of Moses. In the succeeding reign, Edom was included among the wide-spread conquests of the now triumphant nation of Israel. David's

general, Abishai, "slew of the Edomites in the Valley of Salt (the southern coast of the Dead Sea) eighteen thousand. And he put garrisons in Edom; and all the Edomites became David's servants," 1 Chron. xviii. 13. Thus was fulfilled the first part of Isaac's prophesy, "Thou shalt serve thy brother," Gen. xxvii. 40.

The Augustan age of Jewish history followed. The Valley of the Arabah was now in the hands of the monarchs of Israel. No hostile power intervened between the Jewish capital and the Red Sea. "And king Solomon made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom. And Hiram (king of Tyre, the great naval and merchant city of that age, and the ally of Solomon) sent in the navy his servants,

shipmen that had knowledge of the sea, with the servants of Solomon. And they came to Ophir, and fetched from thence gold, four hundred and twenty talents, and brought it to king Solomon," 1 Kings ix. 26-28.

Of Ezion-geber, no trace seems now to remain, except it be in the name of a small wady, with brackish water, El-Ghudyan, opening into El-Arabah from the western mountain, some distance north of Akabah. "However different the names El-Ghudyan and Ezion may be in appearance, yet the letters in Arabic and Hebrew all correspond."

Elath, termed in the Septuagint Ailon, in Josephus Ailene, by the Greeks and Romans Elana, in Jerome Ailath, and now called Ailah, gave its name to the eastern arm of the Red Sea, which was called Sinus Elaniticus, the Elanitic Gulf. Abulfed writes of it in the fourteenth century: "In our day it is a fortress, to which a governor is sent from Egypt. It had a small castle in the sea; but this is now abandoned, and the governor removed to the fortress on the shore." "Such as Ailah was then," says Dr. Robinson, "is Akabah now. Mounds of rubbish, which present nothing of interest, except as indicating that a very ancient city has here utterly perished, alone mark the site of the town; while a fortress, occupied by a governor and a small garrison under the pasha of Egypt, serves to keep the neighbouring tribes of the desert in awe, and to minister to the wants and protection of the annual Egyptian Haj,

the great caravan of pilgrims which every year leaves Cairo for Mecca."

Elath seems to have been the proper entrepot and seat of commercial relations, while Ezion-geber was the seaport. The reference

to them in the days of Solomon is interesting, as the earliest historical indication of the ancient trade between the east and the west, of which the Red Sea and the Arabah was the great highway.

The Edomites did not submit to Israel without endeavouring to regain their power. An Idumæan prince had sought refuge in Egypt from the power of David while yet a little child," and had been cherished with great kindness by the reigning monarch of that land, and married an Egyptian princess. When he heard that "David slept with his fathers, and that Joab the captain of the host was dead, Hadad said to Pharaoh, Let me depart, that I may go to mine own country. Then Pharaoh said unto him, But what hast thou lacked with me, that behold, thou seekest to go to thine own country? and he answered, Nothing: howbeit let me go in any wise," 1 Kings xi. 21, 22. Hadad went, and succeeded in "doing mischief" and giving trouble to Solomon, but his country remained in subjection.

In the days of Jehoshaphat, the fourth in succession after Solomon, there was still " no king in Edom: a deputy was king," 1 Kings xxii. 47. This could well be no other than a Jewish governor, to whom the title Melek, or

king, was given, in that broad and unimportant sense in which the word was also used of the petty chiefs of the Canaanites. And when afterwards Jehoshaphat is said to have fought against Moab, in alliance with the kings of Israel and Edom, (2 Kings iii. 9, 12, 26,) nothing more is probably to be understood than this governor of Edom, or possibly some tributary chief or sheikh of renown, like the modern sheikh of Kerek. Jehoshaphat was still master of the country, and built a fleet to be sent to Ophir, which was destroyed by a storm at Ezion-geber. (1 Kings xxii. 48.)

Late in his reign the Edomites rebelled and invaded Judæa, in company with the Moabites and Ammonites, but were unsuccessful, in consequence of their mutual dissensions. The account of the melancholy end of this rebellion is very affecting. The invaders had reached Engedi, on the Dead Sea, and were prepared to penetrate by that famous pass, which modern travellers have described so fully and graphically,* into the heart of the mountains of Judah, when "Jehoshaphat set himself to seek the Lord," and "Judah gathered themselves together to ask help of the Lord." The assembled and humbled nation joined their pious king in supplication to the God of heaven. In the

midst of the congregation, and while the people were yet praying, the Spirit of the Lord came upon a Levite of the sons of Asaph, and commissioned him to say, "Be not afraid nor dismayed

*See "The Jordan and the Dead Sea," pp. 175-177.