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What features
did this Lake present near four thousand years ago, before “Lot pitched
his tent towards Sodom”? From the heights of Bethel he looked down
upon this beautiful tempting region, “and beheld the plain of Jordan,
that it was well watered everywhere, before the Lord destroyed Sodom and
Gomorrah, over us the garden of the Lord, take the land of Egypt, as thou
comest unto Zoar.” This water of the lake was probably once fresh,
and it must have been much smaller than it is now, allowing a broad margin
for the fertile fields, especially on the southern side, where it is supposed
the Cities of the Plain stood.
Here according to Gentile and Jewish records, was the earliest set of Phoenecian
civilization. The Assyrian kings coveted the rich spoils of these cities
and here in the “vale of Siddim,” the first battle in Palestine
was fought. Lot was taken and his goods, but he and they were recovered
by Abram. The peculiar nature of this region is indicated in the scripture
account of the battle of the five kings, where mention is made of the stone
pits of bitumen in the vale of Siddim. These became elements in the destruction
of there guilty cities, when the measure of their exceeding wickedness was
full. One day the patriarch from one of the hills toward Hebron, looked
down upon the Eden like beauty of this plain, and the splendor of its cities
teeming with the busy and tumultuous life of a gay population; but on the
next morning, what an appalling sight was before him, as from the same spot,
“he looked toward Sodom & Gomorrah, and toward all the Land of
the plain, and behold, and to, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke
of a furnace!” Strange contrast! Beauty has returned to ashes, &
life to death.
I lingered there an hour or two, gathered a few characteristic pebbles,
bathed in the buoyant water in which it was impossible to sink, tasted its
saline bitterness, filled a bottle with it to bring home, and then turned
away toward the northeast, on a visit to the river Jordan, where our blessed
Saviour was baptized. But I seem to see it now— that Sacred Death,
the little dark island near the shore where we stopped, the sluggish waves
slightly move under a strong breeze, the desolate heights of En-gedi on
the west, the bold promontory jutting out onto the sea, from the gloomy
mountains of Moab on the east, the conical salt hill far to the South, where
Lot’s wife lingering perished.
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