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not bring into account, there is by no means to be found that husbandman's Eldorado, where a single husbandman might find tillage for five hundred (Job 1:3), yea, for a thousand (Job 42:12) yoke of oxen. Such numbers as these are not to be depreciated; for in connection with the primitive agriculture in Syria and Palestine, - which renders a four years' alternation of crops necessary, so that the fields must be divided into so many portions (called in Hauran wâgihât, and around Damascus auguh, Arab. ‘wjh), from which only one portion is used annually, and the rest left fallow (bûr), - Job required several square miles of tillage for the employment of his oxen. It is all the same in this respect whether the book of Job is a history or poem: in no case could the Ausitis be a country, the notorious sterility of which would make the statement of the poet ridiculous.
Our limited space does not admit of our proving the worth which we must acknowledge to the tradition, by illustrating those passages of the Old Testament scriptures which have reference to עוץ and ארץ עוץ. But to any one, who, following the hints they give, wishes again to pursue the investigations, elsewhere useless, concerning the position of the land of the Usites, we might indicate: (1) that עוץ the first-born of Aram (Gen 10:23) is the tribe sought, while two others of this name - a Nahorite, Job 22:21, and a Horite, Job 36:28 - may be left out of consideration; the former because the twelve sons of Nahor need not be progenitors of tribes, and the latter because he belongs to a tribe exterminated by the Edomites in accordance with Deu 2:12, Deu 2:22 : (2) that ארץ העוץ, Jer 25:20, is expressly distinguished from אדום in the Jer 25:21, and - if one compares the round of the cup of punishment, Jer. 25, with the detailed prophecies which follow in Jer 46:1, to which it is a prooemium that has been removed from its place - corresponds to דמשׂק (with Hamât and Arpad), Jer 49:23 : (3) that therefore Lam 4:21,