p. 55 | The Dead Sea

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 1, 1858

The Dead Sea.

This remarkable sea, on the south-east border of the Holy Land, is not named in the New Testament, and is seldom named in the Old Testament. It is there called the Salt sea, the sea of Sodom, and the East sea; and by Josephus and classic writers, Lake Asphalites, from the asphaltum or bitumen it produces. Its ordinary modern name, The Dead Sea, is highly appropriate for these dreary and acrid waters, in which no fish can live, and which having no outlet, swallow up rivers and living springs on every side.

The Jordan on the north, pours in about 6,000,000 tons of water daily. Midway on the eastern side is the mouth of the ancient Arnon; and north and south of this the Zurka, the outlet of the warm springs of Callirrhoe, and the brook Zered. The brook Kidron and several copious springs and winter torrents enter it on the west; streams from the south also empty in this sea. Of this vast supply of water a part may be absorbed in the earth, but most of it is evaporated by the intense heat that here prevails.

There are many wonderful facts respecting this sea; and these, half-known and superstitiously exaggerated, have made it an object of terror, as if still under the curse of God. It has been little visited in modern times, until our own day. Costigan, an Irish traveller, in 1835, spent eight days upon the sea and died there of a fever. In 1847, Lieut. Molyneux spent a day on the sea, caught the fever, and died soon after at Jaffa. But in the same year Lieut. Lynch of the U. S. Navy, with two metallic boats, descended the Jordan and spent three weeks on the sea, thoroughly exploring it. The "fire and smoke" of ancient annalists were traced to natural causes: the great evaporation covering the sea with a vapor like the smoke of burning sulphur; while the surface was at times "one wide sheet of phosphorescent foam, and the waves as they broke on the shore threw a sepulchral light upon the dead bushes and fragments of rock." Josephus and others speak of "fruits which have a color as if they were fit to be eaten; but if you pluck them they dissolve into smoke and ashes." These famous "apples of Sodom" are found to be osher of the Arabs, resembling a large smooth orange; it is fair to the eye, but being pressed, it explodes with a puff, and is found to have contained nothing but air, and a few shreds and seeds.

The Dead sea lies in a deep caldron more than 1,000 feet below the level of the Mediterranean—the limestone cliffs which enclose it form the verge of a table-land 1,000 or 1,500 feet above the sea, rising still higher towards Jerusalem and Hebron on the west, and towards the mountains of Moab on the east. The shores of the sea are desolate, except where a stream or spring forms an oasis of green canes, low trees, and shrubbery. "The water looks remarkably clear and pure," says one traveller, "but on taking it into my mouth I found it bitter, I think beyond any thing I ever tasted. My clothes were wet by the waves, and as they dried, I found them covered with salt." It produces an evaporation one-fourth its weight of solid salts. It is far more dense and heavy than seawater. Dr. Robinson, though not able to swim elsewhere, could stand, lie, sit, or swim in it. Another traveller could not swim, his feet being thrown high and dry out of the lake at every stroke; while horses driven in, floated upon the surface on their sides, snorting with fear. Lieut. Lynch entered the sea when rough with a high wind, and says, "It seemed as if the bows, so dense was the water, were encountering the sledge-hammers of the Titans rather than the opposing waves of an angry sea."

The sea is divided into two unequal parts by a peninsular reaching two-thirds across from the eastern shore. The part thus shut off at the south is perhaps one-fourth of the whole lake, which is about forty miles long and eight or nine wide. The main sea is 1,000 to 1,200 feet deep, the bottom being sprinkled with rectangular crystals of salt. Carefully sounding across this sea in every direction, Lieut. Lynch reports a deeper ravine in its bed, continuous with the bed of the Jordan. The whole chasm, extending from the sea of Galilee to the Red sea 100 miles south of the Dead sea, bears marks of volcanic action, and would seem to have been sunk to the present level by convulsions of the earth, which were most violent at the southern end of the Dead sea.

This portion of the sea is but about thirteen feet deep; its bottom and shores are covered with a deep slime, reminding one of the "slime-pits" of this region in Abraham's day. An occasional earthquake dislodges bitumen from the bottom, and it floats in lumps to the shores, which are also incrusted with salt and sulphur. This part of the sea is supposed to cover the "vale of Siddim," Gen. xiv: 3, the site of the old "cities of the plain" destroyed by fire and brimstone in the time of Lot. Zoar, in which Lot first found refuge, is traced in ruins on the eastern shore. This is the "sea of the plain," in Deut. iii: 17. On its western coast is a lofty and barren summit, on the base of which rises a pillar of salt forty feet high, with an oval pedestal fifty feet above the sea level. The waters of this mountain are strongly saturated with salt; and those of the sea itself, being subjected to a powerful microscope, disclosed no animalcule nor any vestige of animal matter. Says Lieut. Lynch, "It was a scene of unmitigated desolation. On one side, rugged and worn, was the barren mountain of Usdum, with its conspicuous pillar which reminded us at least of Lot and the catastrophe of the plain. On the other side were the lofty and barren cliffs of Moab, in one of the caves of which the fugitive Lot found a shelter. On the south was an extensive flat, intersected by sluggish drains; with the high hills of Edom semi-girdling the salt plain where the Israelites repeatedly overthrew their enemies. On the south was the calm and motionless sea curtained by a purple mist; while deep in the slimy mud beneath lay embodied the ruins of the ill-fated cities of Sodom and Gomorrah." The judgments which made this scene memorable are often referred to in Scripture as terrible memorials of the wrath of God against sin. Deut. xxvi, 23; 32, 32; Matt. x, 15; Jude 7; Rev. xi, 8.—Am. Messenger.