If Galilee could boast of the beauty of its scenery and the fruitfulness of its soil; of

being the mart of a busy life, and the highway of intercourse with the great world

outside Palestine, Judaea would neither covet nor envy such advantages. Hers was

quite another and a peculiar claim. Galilee might be the outer court, but Judaea was like

the inner sanctuary of Israel. True, its landscapes were comparatively barren, its hills

bare and rocky, its wilderness lonely; but around those grey limestone mountains

gathered the sacred history --one might almost say, the romance and religion of Israel.

Turning his back on the luxurious richness of Galilee, the pilgrim, even in the literal

sense, constantly went up towards Jerusalem. Higher and higher rose the everlasting

hills, till on the uppermost he beheld the sanctuary of his God, standing out from all

around, majestic in the snowy pureness of its marble and glittering gold. As the hum of

busy life gradually faded from his hearing, and he advanced into the solemn stillness

and loneliness, the well-known sites which he successively passed must have seemed

to wake the echoes of the history of his people. First, he approached Shiloh, Israel's

earliest sanctuary, where, according to tradition, the Ark had rested for 370 years less

one. Next came Bethel, with its sacred memorial of patriarchal history. There, as the

Rabbis had it, even the angel of death was shorn of his power. Then he stood on the

plateau of Ramah, with the neighbouring heights of Gibeon and Gibeah, round which so

many events in Jewish history had clustered. In Ramah Rachel died, and was buried.16

We know that Jacob set up a pillar on her grave. Such is the reverence of Orientals for

the resting-places of celebrated historical personages, that we may well believe it to

have been the same pillar which, according to an eye-witness, still marked the site at the

time of our Lord (Book of Jubil. cxxxii Apud Hausrath, Neutest. Zeitg. p. 26). Opposite to

it were the graves of Bilhah and of Dinah (c. p. 34). Only five miles from Jerusalem, this

pillar was, no doubt, a well-known landmark. by this memorial of Jacob's sorrow and

shame had been the sad meeting-place of the captives when about to be carried into

Babylon (Jer 40:1). There was bitter wailing at parting from those left behind, and in

weary prospect of hopeless bondage, and still bitterer lamentation, as in the sight of

friends, relations and countrymen, the old and the sick, the weakly, and women and

children were pitilessly slaughtered, not to encumber the conqueror's homeward march.

Yet a third time was Rachel's pillar, twice before the memorial of Israel's sorrow and

shame, to re -echo her lamentation over yet sorer captivity and slaughter, when the

Idumaean Herod massacred her innocent children, in the hope of destroying with them

Israel's King and Israel's kingdom. Thus was her cup of former bondage and slaughter

filled, and the words of Jeremy the prophet fulfilled, in which he had depicted Rachel's

sorrow over her children (Matt 2:17,18).

But westward from those scenes, where the mountains shelved down, or more abruptly

descended towards the Shephelah, or wolds by the sea, were the scenes of former

triumphs. Here Joshua had pursued the kings of the south; there Samson had come

down upon the Philistines, and here for long years had war been waged against the

arch-enemy of Israel, Philistia. Turning thence to the south, beyond the capital was

royal Bethlehem, and still farther the priest-city Hebron, with its caves holding Israel's

most precious dust. That highland plateau was the wilderness of Judaea, variously

named from the villages which at long distances dotted it;17 desolate, lonely, tenanted

only by the solitary shepherd, or the great proprietor, like Nabal, whose sheep pastured

along it heights and in its glens.

This had long been the home of outlaws, or of those who, in disgust with the world, had

retired from its fellowship. These limestone caves had been the hiding-place of David

and his followers; and many a band had since found shelter in these wilds. Here also