Category Archives: Orientalia

Sharon is like a wilderness; and Bashan and Carmel shake off their fruits [Isaiah 33.9] No precise illustration of these predictions was given in several previous editions of this treatise; but an extract from the work of a more recent traveller may show how the celebrated plain of Sharon not only partakes of the generalContinue reading “1872: Sharon is like a wilderness”

Jerusalem was the city which the Lord did choose to place his name there. He loved the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. But while the land has been defiled, and the people have been scattered abroad, these gates have long fallen, and Zion has often been filled with judgment. TheContinue reading “Jerusalem, 1872”

The spoilers are come upon all high places through the wilderness. The robbers shall enter into it, &c. [Jeremiah 12.12; 7.22] The land of Israel has not only been given into the hands of strangers for a prey, and unto the wicked of the earth for a spoil, as foreign nations have successively subjugated andContinue reading “Like the sands of their own deserts”

I’ve just been enjoying a beautifully illustrated site about the abandoned Armenian royal city of Ani, unfortunately located in Turkey. It’s a somber thing to read about the destruction of such beautiful monuments, some still completely intact and in use until 1920, due to pogroms, earthquakes, official policies of neglect or “restoration,” and, of course,Continue reading “Armenian Ani”

“The dreariness of its (Ammon’s) present aspect,” says Lord Lindsay, “is quite indescribable,—it looks like the abode of death,—the valley stinks with dead camels, one of which was rolling in the stream; and though we saw none among the ruins, they were absolutely covered in every direction with their dung. That morning’s ride would haveContinue reading “Rabbat-Ammon in 1847”