File:Rambles in Bible lands (1909) (14597386877).jpg

Identifier: ramblesinbiblela00neil (find matches)
Title: Rambles in Bible lands
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Neil, C. Lang
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : D. Appleton and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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shall be like a watered garden.2 The burning, rainless, continuous heat and droughtfor six months running, from the end of April to theend of October, make it impossible to have a gardenof any value in Palestine unless it is thoroughly irrigated,at least once a week ; and possible, when thus suppliedwith the water of life, to have one that is green andfruitful almost all the year round, yielding no less thanfour crops, and the varied products of almost alltemperate and subtropical climates ! In these watered gardens —and it is the same inthe bayara/is, or orange groves, for the orange needsirrigating in like manner at least once a week through- 1 Num. xxiv. 7. 2 Jer. xxxi. 12. See also Isa. lviii. 11. JOPPA AND THE SHEPHAILAH out the hot season—the labourers, all of whose limbsare naked, work almost as much with their feet astheir hands. The ground is always divided into littleplots about 12 feet square, surrounded by tiny trenchesabout a spit deep, and when turning the rills from
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VIEW OF THE JOPPA TO JERUSALEM RAILWAY the main stream into each of these, the gardener kicksa hole with his naked foot into the trench through thelightly turned-up soil, and after sufficient water hasrun past, he stops up the breach in the same simplefashion. Hence when Moses, speaking of Egypt, saysto Israel, Thou wateredst it with thy foot, like a 50 RAMBLES IN BIBLE LANDS garden of green vegetables,1 he simply alludes to theimportant fact that, in the rainless land of the Pharaohs,farm-culture needs irrigation, natural or artificial, in thesame way as garden-culture requires it in the morefavoured climate of Palestine, where sufficient rain fallsto raise the main crops. These garden and orchardirrigation-trenches are called in the Hebrew Biblepeleg, which is quite wrongly rendered river in ourAuthorized Version and in most places in the RevisedVersion, The Psalmist says of the man who delights in theWord of God : He is like a tree planted by the irrigation-trenches of water—2 th

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