Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/177

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
PALESTINE.
165

of water-parting we have no means of ascertaining, and it does not affect the question.

Of the places mentioned by Isaiah, we know, with a considerable degree of certainty, the positions of Michmash, Geba, Ramah, Gibeah, and Anathoth; of the others nothing is known. From Geba to Nob was evidently a day's march in the progress of the army; and the order in which the villages are mentioned leads us in the direction of Jerusalem. If, as I believe, the passage means that the Assyrian warrior was leading an army from Geba against Jerusalem, and that his progress was suddenly arrested at Nob, we must seek a site for Nob on the road between these two places, and I cannot imagine a more natural one than some place in the vicinity of that Scopus whence, in later years, Titus and his legions looked down upon the Holy City."

Doeg, the Edomite, who happened to be present when Ahimelech gave David the sword, informed Saul, and Saul, who was mad with suspicion, slew all the priests and utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Nob. But even after the destruction of the sanctuary by his violence the sanctity of the summit of Olivet was still respected. It was necessary, however, to remove the tabernacle from the scene of so much bloodshed, and perhaps it was immediately removed to the high-place of Gibeon, where we find it in the early part of Solomon's reign.

The state of things at the beginning of the reign of Solomon is described in 1 Kings iii.—"The people sacrificed in the high places, because there was no house built for the name of the Lord until those days. And the king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the great high place." We learn from 2 Chron. i. that at Gibeon was the Tent of Meeting (the tabernacle) which Moses had made in the wilderness. Moreover, the brazen altar made by the inspired artist in the wilderness was