The Giant Cities of Bashan.
By J. L. Porter
BASHAN is the land of sacred romance. From the remotest antiquity down to the present time, a strange wild interest has clung to it. The aboriginal inhabitants of this old kingdom were a race of giants. It has hitherto been an almost unknown region to us. It lies to the north of the Dead Sea, and the east of the Jordan. Both land and people here remain thoroughly Oriental. Nowhere else in Palestine is patriarchal life so fully and so strikingly exemplified. The social state of the country and the habits of the people are just what they were in the days of Abraham and Job. Isolated from the rest of Palestine, away from the route of the Grand Tour, and roving Arabs rendering life and property insecure over every part of it, scarcely a half-dozen travelers have explored it. Curiosity has generally been baffled at the very border of this land of the Rephaim, or "the giants," as the Scripture word should be rendered. Yet here it was that "Og, king of Bashan," ruled over a powerful and populous country extending from Hermon to the Jabbok and from the Jordan to the desert; here it was that the last remaining monarch of a giant race extended his sway over a domain which included within its limits three-score walled cities, and unwalled towns without number. It was a splendid inheritance. The rich plains, and wooded hills, and noble pasture lands of Bashan offered a tempting prospect to the shepherd tribes of Israel. Collecting all his forces, the giant king marshalled them on the broad plain before Edrei. But his army was defeated, and he himself slain. The iron bedstead of Og, carried away as a trophy by the children of Ammon who followed in the wake of the Israelitish army for the purpose of plunder, was "nine cubits in length," and "four cubits in breadth, after the cubit of a man." Deut. iii, 3. Nothing related of this giant race is more wonderful than the number of their strong cities. What, to a modern Colenso, gazing down from the heights of Anti-Libanus upon the broad desert region before him would appear more incredible than the record that in Argob, one of the little provinces of Bashan—about thirty miles by twenty—Jair, a chief of the tribe of Manasseh who completed the conquest of Bashan begun by Moses, took no less than sixty great cities, "fenced with high walls, gates, and bars; besides unwalled towns a great many!" Deut. iii, 4, 5, 14. Why, he might ask, accept any story of giants at all? But to locate in such a rocky region, far from the sea or any stream navigable for commerce, such an empire, with its numerous fortified cities and teeming population, might well seem a taxation on human credulity. And yet the explorations of this English missionary and traveler, fully confirm and establish Scripture narrative. With his own eyes he has seen that it is literally true. The cities are there to this day. Some of them retain the very names given them in the Bible. After the lapse of three thousand years, the boundaries of Argob are still clearly defined, and these great cities which he visited and inspected are many of them almost as perfect as when first deserted by their inhabitants. "Bashan is literally crowded with towns and large villages; and, though the vast majority of them are deserted, they are not ruined. I have more than once entered a deserted city in the evening, taken possession of a comfortable house and spend the night in peace. Many of the houses in the ancient cities of Bashan are as perfect as if finished only yesterday. The walls are sound, roofs unbroken, the doors and even the window-shutters in their places." And yet the foundations of these walled cities and stone castles were ancient when the cornerstone of the Grecian Parthenon, or the Roman Pantheon, or the Jewish Temple, was laid. And the reason of this wonderful preservation is found in the character of the structures. "The houses of Bashan are not ordinary houses. Their walls are from five to eight feet thick, built of large and quarried blocks of basalt; the roofs are formed of slabs of the same material, hewn like planks, and reaching from wall to wall; the very doors and window-shutters are of stone. Some of these ancient cities have from two to five hundred houses still perfect, but not a man to dwell in them." Fit abodes of a giant race! Here we probably have the very oldest specimens of domestic architecture in the world. Silent and untenanted, many of them perhaps since the days of Og himself, these massive structures remain to add their silent testimony to the truth of the Scripture record, and confound the subtle but superficial reasonings of modern skeptics. The question how a population such as must once have crowded those cities, could be supported, is answered by the extraordinary fertility and capability of the soil. Without commerce, the people must have depended chiefly on agriculture. And the country of Bashan seems to have been an earthly paradise. "The strength and grandeur of its oaks, (Ezek. xxvii, 6,) the beauty of its mountain scenery, (Psa. lxviii, 15,) the unrivaled luxuriance of its pastures, (Jer. xxv, 36,) the fertility of its wide-spreading plains, and the excellence of its cattle, (Psa. xcii, 12, Micah vii, 4,) all supplied the sacred penmen with lofty imagery." Such a people, trained to war, and dwelling in fortified cities, located in the glen and on the heights of Hermon, and amid the rocky defiles of Argob, could never have been conquered by the Israelites except under the special guidance and by the assistance of Heaven. Against all attack they might seem to be sufficiently protected within their fortress-like houses; and it seems probable that while their nationality was destroyed and this power utterly broken, yet that they were never entirely subdued, even by the Israelites—at least some of the native tribes were not exterminated. But that their walled cities failed to offer effectual resistance to the inroads of a nation unused to war; that the giant strength of Heshbon and Bashan fell before a nomad people whose only reliance, under God, was for a long time at least, upon their flocks and herds, reveal quite distinctly the supernatural element that is commingled with the real history of the conquest of Bashan, and contributes to disarm the critic of his objections.—J. L. Porter.