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BAAL-GAD

length capitulated. Its importance at that eriod is attested by the ransom exacted by the onquerors, cousisting of 2000 ounces of gold, 4000 ounces of silver, 2000 silk vests, and 1000 words, together with the arms of the garrison. t afterwards became the mart for the rich pilage of Syria: but its prosperity soon received a atal blow from the khalif of Damascus, by whom it was sacked and dismantled, and the principal inhabitants put to the sword (A.D. 748). During the Crusades, being incapable of making iny resistance, it seems to have quietly subnitted to the strongest. In the year 1400 it was illaged by Timour Beg, in his progress to Danascus, after he had taken Aleppo. Afterwards t fell into the hands of the Metaweli-a bararous predatory tribe, who were nearly externinated when Djezzar Pasha permanently subected the whole district to Turkish supremacy. The ruins of Heliopolis lie on an eastern branch of the mountain, and are called, by way of eminence, the Castle. The most prominent objects visible from the plain are a lofty portico of six columns, part of the great temple, and the walls and columns of another smaller temple a ittle below, surrounded by green trees. There s also a singular and unique circular temple, if t may be so called, of which we give a figure. These, with a curious column on the highest point within the walls, form the only erect portions of the ruins. The ruins at Baalbek in the mass are apparently of three successive eras: first, the gigantic hewn stones, in the face of the platform or basement on which the temple tands, and which appear to be remains of older buildings, perhaps of the more ancient temple which occupied the site. These celebrated blocks, which in fact form the great wonder of he place, vary from 30 to 40 feet in length; but there are three, forming an upper course 20 feet from the ground, which together measure 190 eet, being severally of the enormous dimensions of 63 and 64 feet in length, by 12 in breadth and thickness. They are,' says Richter, the argest stones I have ever seen, and might of themselves have easily given rise to the popular opinion that Baalbek was built by angels at the command of Solomon. The whole wall, indeed, is composed of immense stones, and its resemblance to the remains of the Temple of Solomon, which are still shown in the foundations of the mosque Es-Sakkara on Mount Moriah, cannot fail to be observed.' In the neighbouring quarries, from which they were cut, one stone, hewn out but not carried away, is of much larger dimensions than any of those which have been mentioned. To the second and third eras belong the Roman temples, which, being of and about the time of Antoninus Pius, present some of the finest specimens of Corinthian architecture n existence, and possess a wonderful grandeur and majesty from their lofty and imposing situation (Addison, ii. 57).

The present Baalbek is a small village to the ast of the ruins, in a sad state of wretchedness and decay. It is little more than a heap of rubbish, the houses being built of mud and suntried bricks. The population of 5000, which the place is said to have contained in 1751, is now reduced to barely 2000 persons; the two handsome mosques and fine serai of the Emir,

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mentioned by Burckhardt, are no longer distinguishable; and travellers may now inquire in vain for the grapes, the pomegranates, and the fruits which were formerly so abundant.

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BA'AL-GUR, or GUR-BAAL. We read in 2 Chron. xxvi. 7, that the Lord assisted Uzziah against the Philistines, and against the Arabians that dwelt in Gur-Baal.' It was doubtless some town of Arabia-Petræa.

BA'AL-HAM'ON, a place where Solomon is said to have had a vineyard (Cant. viii. 11). There was a place called Hamon, in the tribe of Asher (Josh. xix. 28), which Ewald thinks was the same as Baal-Hamon. The book of Judith (viii. 3) places a Balamon or Belamon in central Palestine, which suggests another alternative,

BA'AL-HA'ZOR, the place where Absalom kept his flocks, and held his sheep-shearing feast (2 Sam. xiii. 23). It is said to have been beside Ephraim,' not in the tribe of that name, but near the city called Ephraim which was in the tribe of Judah, and is mentioned in 2 Chron. xiii. 19, John xi. 54. This Ephraim is placed by Eusebius eight miles from Jerusalem on the road to Jericho; and is supposed by Reland to have been between Bethel and Jericho.

BA'AL-HER'MON (1 Chron. v. 23; Judg. iii. 3). It seems to have been a place in or near Mount Hermon, and not far from Baal-gad, if it was not, as some suppose, the same place.

BA'AL-ME'ON (Num. xxxii. 38; 1 Chron. v. 8; otherwise BETH-MEON, Jer. xlviii. 23, and BETH-BAAL-MEON, Josh. xiii. 17), a town in the tribe of Reuben beyond the Jordan, but which was in the possession of the Moabites in the time of Ezekiel (xxv. 9). At the distance of two miles south-east of Heshbon, Burckhardt found the ruins of a place called Myoun, or (as Dr. Robinson corrects it) Main, which is doubtless the same.

BA'AL-PER'AZIM. This name, meaning place of breaches,' was imposed by David upon a place in or near the valley of Rephaim, where he defeated the Philistines (2 Sam. v. 20; comp. 1 Chron. xiv. 11; Isa. xxviii. 21).

BA'AL-SHALISHA (2 Kings iv. 42), a place in the district of Shalisha (1 Sam. ix. 4). Eusebius and Jerome describe it as a city fifteen Roman miles north from Diospolis, near Mount Ephraim.

BA'AL-TA'MAR, a place near Gibeah, in the tribe of Benjamin, where the other tribes fought with the Benjamites (Judg. xx. 33).

BA'AL-ZE/PHON, a town belonging to Egypt, on the border of the Red Sea (Exod. xiv. 2; Num. xxxiii. 7). Nothing is known of its situation.

BA'BEL, TOWER OF. From the account given in Genesis xi. 1-9, it appears that the primitive fathers of mankind having, from the time of the Deluge, wandered without fixed abode, settled at length in the land of Shinar, where they took up a permanent residence. As yet they had remained together without experiencing those vicissitudes and changes in their outward lot which encourage the formation of different modes of speech, and were, therefore, of one language. Arrived however in the land of Shinar, and finding materials suitable for the construction of edifices, they proceeded to make and burn bricks, and using the bitumen, in which

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parts of the country abound, for cement, they built a city and a tower of great elevation. A divine interference, however, is related to have taken place. In consequence, the language of the builders was confounded, so that they were no longer able to understand each other. They therefore left off to build the city, and were scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth.' The narrative adds that the place took its name of Babel (confusion) from this confusion of tongues. That the work was subsequently resumed, and in process of time completed, is known on the best historical vouchers.

The sacred narrative (Gen. xi. 4) assigns as the reason which prompted men to the undertaking, a desire to possess a building so large and high as might be a mark and rallying point in the vast plains where they had settled, in order to prevent their being scattered abroad, and thus the ties of kindred be rudely sundered, individuals be involved in peril, and their numbers be prematurely thinned at a time when population was weak and insufficient. Such an attempt agrees with the circumstances in which the sons of Noah were placed, and is in itself of a commendable nature. But that some ambitious and unworthy motives were blended with these feelings is clearly implied in the sacred record.

After the lapse of so many centuries, and the occurrence in the land of Shinar' of so many revolutions, it is not to be expected that the identification of the Tower of Babel with any actual ruin should be easy, or lead to any very certain result. The majority of opinions, however, among the learned, make it the same as the temple of Belus described by Herodotus, which is found in the dilapidated remains of the Birs Nimrud

18.

From the Holy Scriptures it appears that when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem and levelled most of the city with the ground, 'he brought away the treasures of the temple, and the treasures of the king's house, and put them all into the temple of Bel at Babylon.' The brazen and other vessels which Solomon had caused to be made for the service of Jehovah are said to have been broken up by order of the Assyrian monarch, and formed into the famous

BABYLON

gates of brass which so long adorned the superb entrances into the great area of the temple of Belus. The purposes to which this splendid edifice was appropriated varied in some degree with the changes in opinions and manners which successive ages brought. Consecrated at the first, as it probably was, to the immoderate ambition of the monotheistic children of the Deluge, it passed to the Sabian religion, and thus falling one degree from purity of worship, became a temple of the sun and the rest of the host of heaven, till, in the natural progress of corruption, it sank into gross idolatry; and was polluted by the vices which generally accompanied the observances of heathen superstition. In one purpose it undoubtedly proved of service to mankind. The Babylonians were given to the study of astronomy. This ennobling pursuit was one of the peculiar functions of the learned men, denominated by Herodotus, Chaldæans, the priests of Belus; and the temple was crowned by an astronomical observatory, from the elevation of which the starry heavens could be most advantageously studied over plains so open aud wide, and in an atmosphere so clear and bright, as those of Babylonia.

The present appearance of the tower as preserved in the Birs Nimrud is deeply impressive, rising suddenly as it does out of a wide desert plain, with its rent, fragmentary, and fire-blasted pile, masses of vitrified matter lying around, and the whole hill itself on which it stands caked and hardened out of the materials with which the temple had been built. A very considerable space round the tower, forming a vast court or area, is covered with ruins, affording abundant vestiges of former buildings; exhibiting uneven heaps of various sizes, covered with masses of broken brick, tiles, and vitrified fragments-all bespeaking some signal overthrow in former days. The towerlike ruin on the summit is a solid mass 28 feet broad, constructed of the most beautiful brick masonry. It is rent from the top nearly halfway to the bottom. It is perforated in ranges of square openings. At its base lie several immense unshapen masses of fine brickwork-some changed to a state of the hardest vitrification, affording evidence of the action of fire which seems to have been the lightning of heaven. The base of the tower, at present, measures 2082 feet in circumference. Hardly half of its former altitude remains. From its summit, the view in the distance presents to the south an arid desert plain; to the west the same trackless waste; towards the north-east marks of buried ruins are visible to a vast distance.

BABYLON; the name in Hebrew is Babel, from the confusion of tongues (Gen. xi. 1-9). In Daniel iv. 27 the place is appropriately termed 'Babylon the Great.' This famous city was the metropolis of the province of Babylon and of the Babylonio-Chaldæan empire. It was situated in a wide plain on the Euphrates, which divided it into two nearly equal parts. According to the book of Genesis, its foundations were laid at the same time with those of the tower of Babel. In the revolutions of centuries it underwent many changes, and received successive reparations and additions. Semiramis and Nebuchadnezzar are those to whom the city was indebted for its greatest augmentations and its chief splendour.

BABYLON

Its site has been ascertained to be near Hillah, about forty miles from Bagdad.

According to Herodotus, the walls of Babylon were sixty miles in circumference, built of large bricks cemented together with bitumen, and raised round the city in the form of an exact square; hence they measured fifteen miles along each face. They were 87 feet thick and 350 feet high protected on the outside by a vast ditch lined with the same material, and proportioned in depth and width to the elevation of the walls. The city was entered by twenty-five gates on each side, made of solid brass, and additionally strengthened by 250 towers, so placed that between every two gates were four towers, and four additional ones at the four corners. The whole city contained 676 squares, each two miles and a quarter in circumference. The river ran through the city from north to south; and on each side was a quay of the same thickness as the walls of the city, and 100 stadia in length. In these quays were gates of brass, and from each of them steps descending into the river. A bridge was thrown across the river, of great beauty and admirable contrivance, a furlong in length and 30 feet in breadth. The greatest circumference ascribed by the ancients to the city walls is 480 stadia, the most moderate 360. The smallest computation supposes an area for the city of which we can now scarcely form an idea. Its population however may not have been in proportion to its extent. The place was probably what in these days would be considered an enclosed district rather than a compact city.

One or two additional facts may aid in conveying a full idea of this great and magnificent city. When Cyrus took Babylon by turning the Euphrates into a neighbouring lake, the dwellers in the middle of the place were not for some time aware that their fellow-townsmen who were near the walls had been captured. From the fallen towers of Babylon have arisen not only all the present cities in its vicinity, but others which, like itself, have long since gone down into the dust. Since the days of Alexander four capitals, at least, have been built out of its remains-Seleucia by the Greeks, Ctesiphon by the Parthians, Al Maidan by the Persians, and Kufa by the Caliphs; with towns, villages, and caravansaries without number. The necessary fragments and materials were transported along the rivers and the canals. The new palace built by Nebuchadnezzar was prodigious in size and superb in embellishments. Its outer wall embraced six miles; within that circumference were two other embattled walls, besides a great tower. Three brazen gates led into the grand area, and every gate of consequence throughout the city was of brass.

The palace was splendidly decorated with statues of men and animals, with vessels of gold and silver, and furnished with luxuries of all kinds brought thither from conquests in Egypt, Palestine, and Tyre. Its greatest boast were the hanging gardens. They are attributed to the gallantry of Nebuchadnezzar, who constructed them in compliance with a wish of his queen Amytis to possess elevated groves such as she had enjoyed on the hills around her native Ecbatana. Babylon was all flat; and to accomplish so extravagant a desire au artificial mountain

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I was reared, 400 feet on each side, while terraces one above another rose to a height that overtopped the walls of the city, that is, above 300 feet in elevation. The ascent from terrace to terrace was made by corresponding flights of steps. The level of each terrace or garden was then formed in the following manner: the top of the piers was first laid over with flat stones, 16 feet in length and 4 feet in width; on these stones were spread beds of matting, then a thick layer of bitumen; after which came two courses of bricks, which were covered with sheets of solid lead. The earth was heaped on this platform; and in order to admit the roots of large trees, prodigious hollow piers were built and filled with mould. From the Euphrates, which flowed close to the foundation, water was drawn up by machinery. The whole had, to those who saw it from a distance, the appearance of woods overhanging mountains. Such was the completion of Nebuchadnezzar's work, when he found himself at rest in his house, and flourished in his palace. The king spoke and said, 'Is not this great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power, and the honour of my majesty' (Dan. iv.). Nowhere could the king have taken so comprehensive a view of the city he had so magnificently constructed and adorned as when walking on the highest terrace of the gardens of his palace.

The remains of this palace are supposed to be found in the vast mound or hill called by the natives Kasr. It is of irregular form, 800 yards in length and 600 yards in breadth. Its appear

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ance is constantly undergoing change from the continual digging which takes place in its inexhaustible quarries for brick of the strongest and finest material. Hence the mass is furrowed into deep ravines, crossing and recrossing each other in every direction. On the north side of the Kasr, amongst the mouldering fragments, and elevated on a sort of ridge, stands the famous solitary tree, called by the Arabs Atheleh; it bears every mark of antiquity in appearance, situation, and tradition. Its trunk was originally enormous; but, worn away by the lapse of ages, it is now but a ruin amid ruins: nevertheless it

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bears spreading and ever-green branches. This | the Persian Gulf, and on the west by the Arabian tree is revered by the Arabs as holy, from a tradition current among them, that the Almighty himself preserved it here from the earliest time, to form a refuge for the Caliph Ali, who, fainting with fatigue from the battle of Hillah, found secure repose under its shade.

In digging in the extensive mounds which constitute the ruins of Babylon, an endless succession of curious objects is found from time to

time.

Babylon, as the centre of a great kingdom, was the seat of boundless luxury, and its inhabitants were notorious for their addiction to self-indul'gence and effeminacy. On the ground of their awful wickedness the Babylonians were threatened with condign punishment, through the mouths of the prophets; and the tyranny with which the rulers of the city exercised their sway was not without a decided effect in bringing on them the terrific consequences of the Divine vengeance. Nor in the whole range of literature is there anything to be found approaching to the sublimity, force, and terror with which Isaiah and others speak on this painful subject (Isa. xiv. 11; xlvii. 1; Jer. li. 39; Dan. v. 1).

Under Nabonnidus, the last king, B.C. 538 or 539, Babylon was taken by Cyrus, after a siege of two years. An insurrection, under Darius Hystaspis (B.C. 500), the object of which was to gain emancipation from Persian bondage, led that prince to punish the Babylonians by throwing down the walls and gates which had been left by Cyrus, and by expelling them from their homes. Xerxes plundered and destroyed the temple of Belus, which Alexander the Great would probably, but for his death, have restored. Under Seleucus Nicator the city began to sink speedily, after that monarch built Seleucia on the Tigris, and made it his place of abode. In the time of Strabo and Diodorus Siculus the place lay in ruins. Jerome, in the fourth century of the Christian era, learnt that the site of Babylon had been converted into a park or hunting-ground for the recreation of the Persian monarchs, and that, in order to preserve the game, the walls had been from time to time repaired.

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More thorough destruction than that which has overtaken Babylon cannot well be conceived. Rich was unable to discover any traces of its vast walls, and even its site has been a subject of dispute. On its ruins,' says he, there is not a single tree growing, except the old one,' which only serves to make the desolation more apparent. Ruins like those of Babylon, composed of rubbish impregnated with nitre, cannot be cultivated. The ruins of Babylon and its vicinity consist in general of mounds of earth formed by the decomposition of buildings, channelled and furrowed by the weather, and having the surface strewed with pieces of brick, bitumen, and pottery.

Neither the ancient nor the modern authorities are in exact agreement respecting particular places and localities, and any attempt to fix them now can be nothing more than an approach to the reality.

BABYLO'NIA (so called from the name of its chief city, termed also Chaldæa, from those who at a later period inhabited it), a province of Middle Asia, bordered on the north by Mesopotamia, on the east by the Tigris, on the south by

Desert. On the north it begins at the point where the Euphrates and Tigris approach each other, and extends to their common outlet in the Persian Gulf, pretty nearly comprising the country now designated Irak Arabi. The climate is temperate and salubrious. The country in ancient times was very prolific, especially in corn and palms. Timber-trees it did not produce. Many parts had springs of naphtha. As rain is infre quent, even in the winter months, the country owes its fruitfulness to the annual overflow of the Euphrates and the Tigris, whose waters are conveyed over the land by means of canals.

The alluvial plains of Babylonia, Chaldæa. and Susiana, including all the river, lake, and newer marine deposits at the head of the Persian Gulf, occupy an extent of about 32,400 square geographic miles. The rivers are the Euphrates and its tributaries, the Tigris and its tributaries, the Kerah, the Karun and its tributaries, the Je rahi, and the Idiyan; constituting, altogether, a vast hydrographical basin of 189,200 geographic square miles; containing, within itself, a central deposit of 32,400 miles of alluvium, almost entirely brought down by the waters of the various rivers, and which have been accumulating from periods long antecedent to all historical records. The modern accumulation of soil in Babylonic from annual inundations is still very great. Several canals convey water at certain seasons of the year from one river and part of the country to another. In general, the alluvium that i brought down by canals and rivulets, and deposited at their mouths, is a fine clay. The great extent of the plain of Babylonia is everywhere altered by artificial works. There is still some cultivation and some irrigation. Flocks pasture in meadows of coarse grasses; the Arabs' dusky encampments are met with here and there; but, except on the banks of the Euphrates, there are few remains of the date-groves, the vineyards, and the gardens which adorned the same land ir. the days of Artaxerxes; and still less of the po pulation and labour which must have made garden of such soil in the time of Nebuchadnezzar. The vegetation of these tracts is characterized by the usual saline plants, the river banks being fringed by shrubberies of tamarisk and acacia, and occasional groves of a poplar which has been mistaken for a willow.

The Euphrates is still a majestic stream, but wanders through a dreary solitude. Its banks are hoary with reeds, and the grey osier-willows are yet there on which the captives of Israel hung up their harps, and, while Jerusalem was not, refused to be comforted. According to Rennel its breadth at Babylon is about 491 English feet. Rich ascertained its depth to be 2 fathoms, and that the current runs gently at the medium rate of about two knots an hour. The Euphrates is far less rapid than the Tigris, and rises at an earlier period. When at its height-from the latter end of April to the latter end of June-it overflows the surrounding country. The ruins of Babylon are then so inundated as to render many parts of them inaccessible. The course of the river through the site of Babylon is north and south. During the three great empires of the East, no tract of the whole appears to have been so reputed for fertility and riches as the dis

BABYLONIA

trict of Babylonia, which arose in the main from the proper management of the mighty river which flowed through it. But the abundance of the country has vanished as clean away as if the besom of desolation' had swept it from north to south; the whole land, from the outskirts of Bagdad to the farthest reach of sight, lying a melancholy waste.

In order to defend the country against hostile attacks from its neighbours, northward from Babylon, between the two rivers, a wall was built, which is known under the name of the Median Wall. The Babylonians were famous for the manufacture of cloth and carpets: they also excelled in making perfumes, in carving in wood, and in working in precious stones. They were a commercial as well as a manufacturing people, and carried on a very extensive trade alike by land and by sea. Babylon was indeed a commercial depot between the Eastern and the Western worlds (Ezek. xvii. 4; Isa. xliii. 14). Thus favoured by nature and aided by art, Babylonia became the first abode of social order and the cradle of civilization.

The original inhabitants were without doubt of the Shemitic family; and their language belonged to the class of tongues spoken by that race, particularly to the Aramaic branch, and was indeed a dialect similar to that which is now called Chaldee.

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period, was 'the land of the Chaldæans,' the same as that into which the children of Judah were carried away captive (Jer. xxiv. 5); which contained Babylon (Jer. 1. 1; Ezek. xii. 13); was the seat of the king of Babylon (Jer. xxv. 12), and contained the house of the god of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. i. 1, 2).

BA'CA and BECAIM occur, the first in Ps. lxxxiv. 6, Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; the rain also filleth the pools;' the second in 2 Sam. v. 23, 24, and in 1 Chron. xiv. 14, 15, And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that thou shalt bestir thyself. Neither the mulberry nor the pear-tree, considered by some to be the baca of the Scriptures, satisfies translators and commentators, because they do not possess any characters particularly suitable to the above passages.

It is evident that the tree alluded to, whatever it is, must be common in Palestine, must grow in the neighbourhood of water, have its leaves easily moved, and have a name in some of the cognate languages similar to the Hebrew Baca. The only one with which we are acquainted answering to these conditions is that called bak by the Arabs, or rather shajrat-al-bak—that is, the fly or gnat tree.

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As it appears to us sufficiently clear that the bak-tree is a kind of poplar, and as the Arabic From the account which is found in Gen. x. 8, bak' is very similar to the Hebrew 'Baca,' so Nimrod, the son of Cush, appears to have founded it is probable that one of the kinds of poplar may the kingdom of Babylon, and to have been its first be intended in the above passages of Scripture. sovereign. In the 14th chap. of the same book, And it must be noted that the poplar is as approAmraphel is cursorily mentioned as king of priate as any tree can be for the elucidation of Shinar. In the reign of Hezekiah (A.C. 713)—the passages in which baca occurs. For the 2 Kings xx. 12-Berodach-baladan, the son of Baladan,' was 'king of Babylon,' and 'sent letters and a present unto Hezekiah, for he had heard that Hezekiah had been sick.' About a hundred years later, Jeremiah and Habakkuk speak of the invasion of the Babylonians under the name of the Chaldæans; and now Nebuchadnezzar appears in the historical books (2 Kings xxiv. 1, sq.; Jer. xxxvi. 9, 27) as head of the all-subduing empire of Babylon. Evilmerodach (2 Kings xxv. 27; Jer. lii. 31), son of the preceding, is also mentioned as 'king of Babylon;' and with Belshazzar (Dan. v. 1, 30) the line of the Chaldæan kings was closed: he perished in the conquest of Babylon by the Medo-Persians (Dan. v. 31), and Darius, the Median, took the kingdom.'

The domination of the Chaldæans in Babylon has given historians some trouble to explain. The Chaldæans appear to have originally been a nomadic tribe in the mountains of Armenia, numbers of whom are thought to have settled in Babylon as subjects, where, having been civilized and grown powerful, they seized the supreme power and founded a Chaldæo-Babylonian empire.

There can be little doubt that the Chaldæans were a distinct nation. In connection with Babylonia they are to be regarded as a conquering nation as well as a learned people: they introduced a correct method of reckoning time, and began their reign with Nabonassar, B.C. 747. The brilliant period of the Chaldæo-Babylonian empire extended to B.C. 538, when the great city, in accordance with the prophecy of Daniel, was sacked and destroyed. Babylonia, during this

poplar is well known to delight in moist situa-
tions, and Bishop Horne, in his Comm. on Psalm
lxxxiv., has inferred that in the valley of Baca
the Israelites, on their way to Jerusalem, were
refreshed by plenty of water.
It is not less ap-
propriate in the passages in 2 Samuel and 1
Chronicles, as no tree is more remarkable than
the poplar for the ease with which its leaves are
rustled by the slightest movement of the air; an
effect which might be caused in a still night even
by the movement of a body of men on the
ground, when attacked in flank or when unpre-
pared. That poplars are common in Palestine
may be proved from Kitto's Palestine, i. 114:

Of poplars we only know, with certainty, that the black poplar, the aspen, and the Lombardy poplar grow in Palestine. The aspen, whose long leaf-stalks cause the leaves to tremble with every breath of wind, unites with the willow and the oak to overshadow the watercourses of the Lower Lebanon, and, with the oleander and the acacia, to adorn the ravines of southern Palestine: we do not know that the Lombardy poplar has been noticed but by Lord Lindsay, who describes it as growing with the walnut-tree and weeping-willow under the deep torrents of the Upper Lebanon.'

BADGER. This is unquestionably a wrong interpretation of the word tachash, since the badger is not found in Southern Asia, and has not as yet been noticed out of Europe. The word occurs in the plural form in Exod. xxv. 5; xxvi. 14; xxxv. 7, 23; xxxvi. 19; xxxix. 34; Num. iv. 6, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 25; and Ezek. xvi. 10; and in connection with oroth, skins, is used to

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