Jerusalem to Tuleil el-Fûl, GIPEAH .. .. 1 0
- Er-Râm, Ramah of Benjamin.. 0 50
- Bîreh, Beeroth .. - 1 10
- ‘Ain Yebrûd .... 1 20
- ‘Ain el-Haramîyeh .. 1 15
- Sinjil .. .. 0... 0 50
- Seilûn, SHILOH .. 0 35
- Lubbân, Lebonah .. 1 0
- Nâbulus, SHECHEM .. 4 0
Total .. 12 0
This is the usual route taken by travellers on leaving the Holy City, and it is the best, as it leads to some of the most interesting places in Palestine. For a good general outline of a single tour from Jerusalem to Damascus and Beyrout, I refer the reader to the Skeleton Tours in the Introduction. Time and taste may cause many to modify it; but for those who wish to see the cream of the country, and yet cannot afford separate excursions, the plan there prescribed can scarcely be improved. It is always practicable, and generally as safe as other Syrian roads. A sharp look-out may be kept on the plain of Sharon for stray Arab horsemen, who are addicted to raids in that region.
On leaving Jerusalem we follow the great northern road—once, doubtless, a good specimen of Roman engineering; but now in places scarcely practicable even as a bridle-path. We leave the Tomb of Helena on the rt., cross the upper end of the Kidron, and then ascend the side of Scopus. We may here take our farewell glance at the Holy City—its domes, and minarets, and gray walls, and the mountains that stand around it, with Olivet at.their head. Many a pilgrim in former days (and even yet), in “going up” for the first time to Jerusalem, pressed forward with throbbing heart and eager eye to this commanding height; many a pilgrim, and traveller too, on leaving it, takes a long, lingering look backward at the sacred spot, and only turns away when the picture grows dim and indistinct through the quivering tear-drop. Jerusalem is enshrined in our affections even before we see it. We were taught in infancy to lisp its name; and it is thus linked with the tenderest remembrances of home, as well as with every feeling of faith and hope. We could almost adopt the plaintive, passionate language of the captive Israelite by the streams of Babel: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”
On passing the crest we enter a naked, desolate tract. A broad undulating plateau extends northwards for about 4 m., and then declines gently between a bare conical peak on the rt., and a bare rounded hill on the L, into a wide stony valley. The trees are few and stunted; the patches of cultivated ground have a gray parched look, and are almost hidden by bald crowns of limestone rock, and rugged heaps of stones; and the ruined and half-ruined villages that dot the landscape, on hill-side and summit, can scarcely be distinguished from the rocks that surround them. The first impression left on the mind by this view is that of hopeless sterility—heightened if we chance to turn a few yards to the rt. and look down into the wilderness of Judea; but a closer examination corrects it. The soil between the rocks, though scanty and dry, is rich; the hill-sides and wady-sides all exhibit traces of old terraces, which a little industry could again make available—the fig and the olive would flourish luxuriantly in the former, while the latter seem intended by nature, as they are arranged by art, for the growth of the vine. The ‘Land of Promise” was to ‘be a land of “vines and fig-trees, and pomegranates; a land of oil olive and honey.” (Deut. viii. 8.) How graphic! How true! will be the exclamation of every man who travels with his eyes open. The old Rhine tourist will remember the vine-clad slopes of Rüdesheim, and Ehrenfels, and Johannisberg; and if Bacchus has been kind to him, will smack his lips at the memory of Metternich’s unrivalled cellar. Well! round us here on these bleak-looking slopes is a soil, and over us a bright sky, that might produce as sparkling a goblet as ever was quaffed by the monks of St. John, or issued from beneath the signet of Metternich.
To the l. of the road is Shâfât, [Wikipedia] a small village with a few fig-orchards ; and on the rt., nearly opposite, a low peaked tell. Riding up to the latter among loose stones and sharp rocks, we find the traces of a small but apparently very ancient town on the summit and round the sides. Here are several cisterns hewn in the rock; some very large stones roughly hewn; portions of the rock levelled and cut away; and on the S.E. the ruins of a small tower of a later date. From the top there is an extensive view; Mount Zion is distinctly seen, though Moriah and Olivet are hid by an intervening ridge. On visiting this tell—whose name I did not learn—last spring, the thought immediately occurred to me that this might probably be the site of the iong-lost NOB. Nob appears to have been a small village, for, though inhabited by priests, its name is not found among the towns given to them by lot. We know from 1 Sam. xxi. that it lay S. of Gibeah ; from xxii. 9-19, that it was close to that city; from Neh. xi. 32, that it was near Anathoth; and from Isa, x. 32, that it was within sight of Mount Zion: with all these circumstances this site accords. The site of Gibeah is 1/2m. to the N.; Anathoth is 13 1/2m..E. ; and Mount Zion, as we have seen, is full in view. Between this little rocky hill, which we may safely assume to be the site of .Nob, and Tuleil el-Fûl, the site of Gibeah, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibeah] is a shallow valley breaking down on the E. in rocky declivities into Wady Suleim. Here doubtless took place the interview between David and Jonathan. Behind some of the rocks in it David could easily lie hid, and yet see Jonathan descending from the city above. Immediately after they separated David came to Nob, to Abimelech the priest, and got from bim bread and the sword of Goliath. Poor Abimelech feared there was something wrong when he saw the king's favourite alone, and apparently in trouble; but David deceived him with a plausible story. The king had sent him on a secret message; none were to know of it; he had therefore Ieft the city privately, and had sent his servants by another road to meet him at an appointed spot. But there was one there who suspected the truth—Doeg the Edomite, Saul’s chief shepherd. The news of David's flight soon reached Saul, and he charged his followers with treachery. Doeg told what he had seen at Nob, and Saul summoned Abimelech before him, with all his father’s house. The priest's defence would have justified him in the eyes of any rational man; but Saul was mad. “Thou shalt surely die, Abimelech, thou, and all thy father’s house.” Such was the sentence. Not an Israelite, however, would raise a hand against the priests of the Lord; and Doeg, the stranger and the spy, now became the tyrant's executioner. He did his bloody work thoroughly, for he “slew on that day fourscore and five persons that did wear a linen ephod. And Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen, and asses, and sheep.” The very thought of such inhuman barbarity makes one shudder still as he stands on the spot once drenched with the blood of the victims. But Saul, madly and wickedly as he acted, was in all this the instrument in God's hand for executing the curse long before pronounced on the wicked house of the High Priest Eli (1 Sam. ii. 27-36; iii. 11-14). One man alone, Abiather the son of Abimelech, escaped, and became David's priest and counsellor, (I recommend a perusal on this spot of 1 Sam. xx,, xxi, and XXil.)