near the sources of the Kishon. The topography of the Scriptural episode of the defeat and death of Sisera has been hitherto very little understood. The scene of the battle has often been placed in the south-west of the great Esdraelon plain, and the defeated general has been supposed to have fled a distance of 35 miles over the high mountains of Upper Galilee. But this is contrary to what we know of the general character of the Biblical stories, the scenes of which are always laid in a very confined area. The kings of Canaan assembled in Taanach and by the waters of Megiddo, but it was not at either of these places that the battle was fought. Sisera was drawn to the river Kishon (Judges iv. 7), and the conflict took place in the plain south-west of Mount Tabor.
The forces of the Israelites were posted on the side of Mount Tabor. At a signal from Deborah they rushed down the slope and attacked the foe. At that moment a terrible storm from the east sent sleet and hail full into the face of the enemy. They turned and fled along a line at the base of the northern hills, where a chain of pools and springs, fringed with reeds and rushes, marks, even in the dry season, the course of the Kishon. The rain converted the volcanic dust of the plain into mud, and clogged the wheels of the chariots. The water pouring down from the hills swelled the stream, and "the river of Kishon swept them away, that ancient river the river Kishon." The remainder fled to Harosheth, now only a miserable village (El Harathiyeh), named from the beautiful woods above the Kishon at the point where, through a narrow gorge the stream, hidden among oleander bushes, enters the Plain of Acre.
The flight of Sisera himself was in an opposite direction—to the Plain of Zaanaim, or rather Bitzaanaim, "the marshes," i.e., the marshy springs east of Tabor—the
