is no reason why all the four cities should be close to the Dead Sea. A convulsion overthrowing cities near the Sea would probably be felt a long way up the Jordan Valley, owing to the line of fault. Conder has pointed out, too, that the term Kikkar is applied in the Bible to the Jordan Valley as far north as Succoth. A "city Adam" is noticed in the Book of Joshua as being beside Zaretan; the name Ed Damieh applies to the neighbourhood of the Jordan ford east of Kurn Surtabeh, about 23 miles up the valley; and it has always seemed possible to Conder that Adam and Admah were one and the same. I would add a suggestion of my own in support of the view that Admah was some distance up the Jordan Valley. The passage Gen. x. 19 describes the boundary of Canaan, beginning at Sidon, following the coast line to Gaza, striking thence eastward to the Plain of the Jordan, and then proceeding up the Jordan Valley to Dan or Lasha—and the passage may be freely rendered thus,—"And the border of the Canaanite was from Sidon; thence you go towards Gerar, as far as Gaza; thence you go toward Sodom; then by Gomorrah and Admah and Zeboim, unto Dan."[1] As Gerar was beyond Gaza southward, the boundary only went toward it; and as Sodom was beyond Jordan eastward, the boundary only went toward Sodom; there was no need to say it stopped at the river, for that was obvious. It then follows the course of the river from the Dead Sea to the source of the stream.
- ↑ In this paraphrase I render one of the vavs by "then" instead of "and."
This will be allowed me. What will be objected to is the assumption that
Lasha is Laish, especially as Lasha contains a different radical, the ayin((
Hebrew characters)). But the passage in Genesis may give an archaic spelling; and as Lasha signifies "the breaking through of waters," it is eminently descriptive of the source of the Jordan at Dan. To place Lasha in the south-east of Palestine, as is done in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," is to charge the description in Genesis with being defective, for how are the limits of a people defined by tracing two sides of an irregular quadrangle?
