viii. 9-14) define its situation with much exactitude, as being east of

and _close to_ Bethel (Josh. xii. 9), with a valley north of the town, and low ground to the west, where an ambush might be set unseen from the city, while on the opposite side was a plain (verse 14). This description applies, in a very complete manner, to the neighbourhood of the modern village of Deir Diwân, and there are here remains of a large ancient town, bearing the name Haiyân, which approaches closely to Aina, the form under which Ai appears in the writings of Josephus. The special meaning of the Hebrew word rendered “beside,” but meaning “close to,” forbids us to accept any of the alternative sites at greater distances from Bethel, which some writers have advocated. Rock-cut tombs and ancient cisterns, with three great reservoirs cut in the hard limestone, are sufficient to show this to have been a position of importance. To the west is an open valley called “Valley of the City,” which, gradually curving round eastward, runs close to the old road from Jericho by which Joshua’s army would probably have advanced. To the north of the site there is also a great valley, and the plain or plateau on which the modern village stands close to the old site, expands from a narrow and rugged pass leading up towards Bethel, which is two miles distant on the watershed.

Beside this pass and north of the ruins, is a large terraced knoll, very stony, and crowned by a few olives--a conspicuous object in the landscape. It is called simply Et Tell, “the mound,” and a connection has been supposed between this name and the fact that Joshua made Ai “a heap (Tell in the Hebrew) for ever.” The place does not, however, show traces of having at any time been covered by buildings, and the rock-cut tombs and cisterns above noticed seem too far from it to indicate Et Tell as the exact site of Ai; being close to the pass, it has, moreover, no valley such as would seem fitted for the ambush immediately west of it.

From this Tell a fine view is obtained towards the plains of Jericho. The village of Deir Diwân is seen on its little plateau in the foreground, while the desolate hills of Benjamin rise beyond, with the chain of the Quarantania Mountain, hiding the western half of the Dead Sea and of the plain of Jericho, though the mouth of Jordan and the eastern ranges of Moab with Mount Nebo are visible, forming the extreme distance.

Advancing a few miles farther south, we come on the scene of one of the most romantic of Old Testament stories--the attack made by Jonathan and his armour-bearer, on the Philistine camp, near Michmash.

A great valley, as we have seen above, has its head west of Ai, and curving round eastwards it runs to Jericho: about two miles south-east of Ai it becomes a narrow gorge with vertical precipices some 800 feet high--a great crack or fissure in the country which is peculiar in this respect, that you only become aware of its existence when close to the brink, for on the north the narrow spur of hills hides it, and on the south a flat plateau extends to the top of the crags.

On the south side of this great chasm (the true head of the Kelt valley) stands Geba of Benjamin, on a rocky knoll, with caverns beneath the houses and arable land to the east. Looking across the valley, the stony hills and white chalky slopes present a desolate appearance; and on the opposite side, considerably lower than Geba, is the little village of Michmash, on a sort of saddle, backed by an open and fertile corn-valley. The existence of this valley no doubt accounts for the place having been famous for its barley, so that the Talmudic proverb, “to bring barley to Michmash,” represents exactly our “carrying coals to Newcastle.”

The pass between these two towns appears to have been more than once the place of meeting between the Jews and their enemies, though to a military man it seems curious that the main road along the watershed should not always, as it did in Maccabean times, have formed the line of Jewish defence north of Jerusalem.

The town of Geba, south of the valley, is generally understood to be that notorious in the history of the extermination of the tribe of Benjamin, and to have been the place where Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines (1 Sam. xiii. 3). If this be so, then it must apparently be the “hill of God” (Geba-ha-Elohim) where was the garrison of the Philistines (1 Sam. x. 5), and where some of Saul’s family seem to have lived (verse 14). Thus Geba of Benjamin seems to be connected with Gibeah of Saul, but the latter name appears to have applied to a district as well as to a town, for the neighbouring city of Ramah is said in one passage to have been “in Gibeah” (1 Sam. xxii. 6).

Josephus tells us of a village called Gabaoth Saule which was by the Valley of Thorns, and about thirty stadia from Jerusalem. This reminds us at once of the name Seneh, “thorn” or “acacia,” which was applied to one of the crags at the place where Jonathan crossed to the Philistine camp at Michmash. The modern name of the great valley between Geba and Michmash is Suweinît, or the “valley of the little thorn-tree” (acacia), and if this identification of the Valley of Thorns with Wâdy Suweinît be correct, the town of Gibeah of Saul is apparently to be placed at the present Jeb’a, though the distance given by Josephus is not exact.

The site of the Philistine camp at Michmash, which Jonathan and his armour-bearer attacked, is very minutely described by Josephus. It was, he says, a precipice with three tops, ending in a long sharp tongue and protected by surrounding cliffs. Exactly such a natural fortress exists immediately east of the village of Michmash, and it is still called “the fort” by the peasantry. It is a ridge rising in three rounded knolls above a perpendicular crag, ending in a narrow tongue to the east with cliffs below, and having an open valley behind it, and a saddle towards the west on which Michmash itself is situate.

Opposite this fortress, on the south, there is a crag of equal height and seemingly impassable; thus the description of the Old Testament is fully borne out--“a sharp rock on one side, and a sharp rock on the other” (1 Sam. xiv. 4).

The southern cliff, as we have noticed above, was called Seneh, or “the acacia,” and the same name still applies to the modern valley, due to the acacia-trees which dot its course. The northern cliff was named Bozez, or “shining,” and the true explanation of this name only presents itself on the spot.

The great valley runs nearly due east, and thus the southern cliff is almost entirely in shade during the day. The contrast is surprising and picturesque between the dark cool colour of the south side and the ruddy or tawny tints of the northern cliff, crowned with, the gleaming white of the upper chalky strata. The picture is unchanged since the days when Jonathan looked over to the white camping-ground of the Philistines, and Bozez must then have shone as brightly as it does now, in the full light of an Eastern sun.

The watchmen of Saul in Gibeah of Benjamin must have seen clearly, across the chasm, the extraordinary conflict of two men against a host, as the “multitude melted away and they went on beating down one another.” The noise in the host was also, no doubt, clearly heard at the distance of only two miles, and the army would have crossed the passage with comparatively little difficulty by the narrow path which leads down direct from Geba to Michmash, west of the Philistine camp. Thence the pursuit was towards Bethel, across the watershed, and headlong down the steep descent of Aijalon--that same pass where the first great victory of Joshua had been gained, and where the valiant Judas was once more in later times to drive back the enemies of Israel to the plains.

The town of Ramah was, as above noticed, in the district of Gibeah, which surrounded Geba and reached to Migron (1 Sam. xiv. 2), or to “the precipice” of the Michmash Valley. Ramah was a well-known town of Benjamin, but it is not generally regarded as that Ramah, or Ramathaim Zophim, which was Samuel’s home and burial-place.

As regards this famous subject of controversy, it is safest to say that we do not know where Ramathaim Zophim was; like all controversies; it arises from the fact that there is very little absolute information to be obtained on the subject. The main points to be observed seem to me to be: first, that the city was in Mount Ephraim; secondly, that a place called Sechu lay on the road from it to Gibeah; thirdly, that Samuel belonged to the family of the Kohathites who possessed Beth-Horon (1 Chron. vi. 67), from which it might be argued that his native town was probably near Beth-Horon; lastly, that the name Ramathaim Zophim means “the heights of the views,” so that it is natural to expect a position commanding an expensive prospect. These considerations seem to point to Râm Allah, east of Beth-Horon on the west slopes of Mount Ephraim, overlooking the maritime plain, and in confirmation of this proposition we find a ruined village called Sûeikeh, perhaps the Sechu of the Bible (1 Sam. xix. 22), on the high-road from Geba to Râm Allah.

There are yet two sites to be noticed which are equally indeterminate--the sacred cities of Nob and Mizpeh; but the Survey has done little to throw light on this question. There is however a remarkable connection between the two places which leads to the supposition that they were either close to one another or, perhaps, identical. The names Nob, “a high place,” Mizpeh, “a watch-tower,” suggests a similarly commanding position. Nob was for many years the place where the Tabernacle stood, as we may infer from the Bible, and as we are expressly told in the Mishna: Mizpeh in like manner was the gathering-place of Israel, “where they prayed” (1 Macc. iii. 46). Nob was on the high road to the capital, seemingly in sight of Jerusalem (Isaiah x. 32), and Mizpeh was “over against Jerusalem.” Mizpeh is not mentioned in episodes where the name of Nob occurs, nor does Nob occur in passages where Mizpeh is noticed.

Most writers, including Mr. Grove and Dean Stanley, place Mizpeh in the neighbourhood of the modern Sh’afât, or between it and the hill Scopus. From either place Jerusalem is visible, and either would suit the order in which Nob occurs in the lists (Neh. xi. 32), between Anathoth (’Anâta) and Ananiah (B. Hannîna); but this is a good instance of the uncertainty which must always remain as to ancient sites, unless the old names can be recovered. There are plenty of Nobs and of Mizpehs in Palestine, but in positions quite inapplicable, whereas, in the right direction there is no name of the kind (so far as has yet been discovered) for Sh’afât is not apparently derived from Mizpeh, but is a name very like that of Jehosaphat, and the natives of the place say that it was called after a Jewish king. In Crusading times the town seems to be also mentioned under the title Jehosaphat.

The early Christians placed Mizpeh in quite another direction, and Nob at Beit Nûba, which is famous in the history of Richard Lion-Heart. Their site for Mizpeh was near Sôba, west of Jerusalem, and here we found a ruin with the title Shûfa, which in meaning is equivalent to the Hebrew Mizpeh, but this place cannot be described as “over against Jerusalem,” and its recovery is thus a matter of minor interest.

There is one other site which has been proposed for Mizpeh, though it is merely a conjecture and not a name which might lead to the identification; this site is the remarkable hill called Neby Samwîl, north of Jerusalem. The place is conspicuous from the tall minaret which crowns the old Crusading church on the summit, and within the church is the cenotaph now revered by the Moslems as the tomb of Samuel,--a modern monument covered with a green cloth.

The Crusaders, with their usual contempt for facts, fixed on this hill as the ancient Shiloh; they also called it Ramah, and added besides a title of their own. “Two miles from Jerusalem,” says Sir John Maundeville, “is Mount Joy, a very fair and delicious place. There Samuel the prophet lies in a fair tomb, and it is called Mount Joy because it gives joy to pilgrims’ hearts, for from that place men first see Jerusalem.”

The tradition which places Samuel’s tomb here seems, however, to be only recent. Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, who is a tolerably safe guide as regards Jewish sacred sites, discredits the story and speaks of a change of site. “When the Christians took Ramleh, which is Ramah, from the Mohammedans,” says the Rabbi, “they discovered the sepulchre of Samuel the Ramathi, near the Jewish Synagogue, and removed his remains to Shiloh, where they erected a large place of worship over them called St. Samuel of Shiloh to the present day.”

This statement, though exhibiting an amount of ignorance quite equal to that of the Christian twelfth-century writers, still serves to show that the tomb at Neby Samwîl does not come into the category of sites recognised by the Jews; and the ancient name of the hill of St. Samuel remains unknown. There is nothing at the site necessarily older than Crusading times, though the fine water-supply to the east would point to the suitability of the neighbourhood for an ancient city. At the foot of the mountain, hidden among olives, we discovered Hazzûr, evidently the ancient Hazor of Benjamin (Neh. xi. 33). On the top of the mountain we planned the old church, the rock-cut scarps and stables, with other Crusading remains; but we found no Jewish tombs near the modern village. Perhaps this commanding situation was first chosen for a fortress by the Latin Kings of Jerusalem, and afterwards came to be regarded as an old site; the very difficult approach, the magnificent panoramic view, and the numerous springs, including “the King’s spring,” “the Emir’s spring,” etc., would have indicated the place as a fitting position for a fortress, flanking the two main north roads to Jerusalem.

Looking down from the roof of the church, one sees the old site of Gibeon (El Jib) on a rounded hillock to the north, with its famous fountain under a cliff south-east of the village. Dean Stanley has proposed to recognise in Neby Samwîl the high-place of Gibeon, so famous for the dream of Solomon when visiting the Tabernacle then erected at the spot; but it must not be forgotten that the distance between the two places is a mile and a quarter, and that a broad valley separates them. We can now only conjecture the name by which Neby Samwîl was known in Bible times, because the ancient name--if ever there was one--has been for ever lost, while the mediæval tradition of the tomb of Samuel has furnished an appellation familiar to the Moslem peasantry, who now reverence the place just as they do Christian traditional sites, in Jerusalem, in Samaria, and at St. Matthew, south of the capital.