. The land and the Book; or, Biblical illustrations drawn from the manners and customs, the scenes and scenery of the Holy Land . displays of daringenacted about these old trees by Protestant Arabs just eman-cipated from this degrading superstition, and I can point youto many respectable people who have been all their livesl(jng and are still held in bondage through fear of these mvaginary sjiirits. Scarcely any tree figures more largely in Biblical narra-tive and poetry than the oak, but I observe that certainmodem critics contend that it is, after all, not the oak, butthe terebinth. The crit
. The land and the Book; or, Biblical illustrations drawn from the manners and customs, the scenes and scenery of the Holy Land . displays of daringenacted about these old trees by Protestant Arabs just eman-cipated from this degrading superstition, and I can point youto many respectable people who have been all their livesl(jng and are still held in bondage through fear of these mvaginary sjiirits. Scarcely any tree figures more largely in Biblical narra-tive and poetry than the oak, but I observe that certainmodem critics contend that it is, after all, not the oak, butthe terebinth. The criticLsm is not quite so sweeping as that. It is mere-ly attemi>tcd to prove, I believe, that the Hebrew word akih,which, in our version, is generally rendered ot/A-, should betranslated terebinth. Allon, they say, is the true name ofthe oak. It is not for us to settle such controversies, but Ihave not nuieh contidence in the results. In fact, the He-brew writers seem to use these names indiscriminately forthe same tree, or for dillerent varieties of it, and that was Isn. i. 29. » Vs. cxix. 1 SO. 374 THE LAND AND THE BYBIAN OAK. the oak. For example, tlie tree in which Absalom wascaught by the hair was the alah^ not the aJlon^ and yet Iam persuaded it was an oak. That battle-field was on themountains east of the Jordan, always celebrated for greatoaks — not for terebinths — and this is true to this : that wood of Ephraim, in which the battle wasfought, and which devoured more people than the sword, ^is called yaar in Hebrew, ^vaar in Arabic—evidently thesame word, and it signifies a wild, rocky region, overgrownwith trees—mostly oak, never the terebinth. There is nosuch thing as a terebinth icaar—no such thing in this coun-try as a terebinth wood. And yet this alah which caughtAbsalom formed part of the wood of Ephraim. It ivas anoali, I firmly believe. There are thoiisands of such trees stillin the same country, admirably suited to catch long-hairedr
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870, booksubjectbible, bookyear1874
