THE DEAD SEA | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 11, 1862

THE DEAD SEA.

ENTRANCE OF THE JORDAN INTO THE DEAD SEA.

Lieut. Lynch, who explored the Jordan with care, from its source to the Dead Sea, has said: “Everything said in the Bible about the Sea and the Jordan, we believe to be fully verified by our observations.” Now, we have glanced at the truth regarding the stream, and all that remains is to exemplify it concerning the Sea.

In the river between the Lake of Galilee and the Dead Sea, the voyager on the Jordan plunges down no fewer than twenty-seven threatening rapids, besides a great many smaller ones. As the former sea is above three hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, and the latter more than thirteen hundred, the difference between the two is the measure of the descent; but as the distance, though in reality only sixty miles, is about two hundred by water, in consequence of the windings of the river, there are some portions of the Jordan sufficiently sluggish. Approaching the Sea, the river is from a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty feet wide, and twelve feet deep. Cane-brakes, tamarisk-trees, and various others, line the shore. The river gradually widens to two hundred and forty feet and upwards. Several islands are near its embauchure; and where the stream actually joins the sea it is a hundred and eighty yards, or five hundred and forty feet wide, and three feet deep.

We are now, then, on the nauseous waters of the Sea of Lot, for so the Arabs call this sheet of water. Portions of it at least were once “even as the garden of the Lord;” but now the scene is one of unmixed desolation. The air is tainted with noxious exhalations; and even the foliage of the cane, (generally a light green,) is tawny near this sea. Except the cane-brakes, which appear near some of the streams, there are spots where no vestige of vegetation can be traced. Barren mountains, precipices which overhang the sea sometimes to the hight of twelve hundred or fifteen hundred feet; fragments of rocks precipitated to the beach, and blackened by the deposits of the place; trees washed down by the Jordan, but now lying blasted and dead along the margin of this region of death; the sullen, lead-colored waters, in which no microscope can detect a trace of life; the bare, bluff mountains on the east side; the hills of Moab, and other scenes far more than classical; above all, the associations of the sea with Sodom and Gomorrah; all render this basin so sad and so sombre in appearance, as to depress even the most jubilant mind. At the sight of “such calcined barrenness,” we can well justify the application so often made of the lines— > But here, above, around, below, > In mountain or in glen, > Nor tree, nor plant nor shrub, nor flower, > Nor aught of vegetative power > The wearied eye may ken: > But all is rocks at random thrown— > Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone.

What a contrast between the present aspect of the Sea of Lot, and the appearance of the neighborhood when he chose it as his pasture-ground and heritage, though it proved one of woe!

And yet there are spots of unusual beauty at no great distance—fragments spared, as if to show how exquisite once was the whole. The nabk, or thorn-tree called by the Arabs dhom, the osher or apple of Sodom, the tamarisk, the oleander, as well as some other trees, are found at some spots; and the osher seems to deserve description, as we are now amid the scenes which are deemed its home. The blossom is of a delicate purple, small, bell-shaped, and grows in large clusters. The leaf is oblong, thick, smooth, and of a dark green hue. The branches are tortuous, and the fruit which is about the size of a small lemon, with the color of an apple, is dry, and easily broken, like a puff-ball. Hence its peculiar character, as if all ashes within.

We do not tarry to describe the masses of bitumen sometimes thrown up from the bottom, remains of the slime pits of old; or the absence of an outlet for the waters of the Jordan; nor do we dwell on the two plains now ascertained to form the bottom of the sea, the one thirteen hundred feet deep, where the bed of the river once lay, the other about thirteen, where as some argue, the cities of the plain formerly stood; neither do we describe the salt pillar of Sodom—that is, Sodom; we only say, that of all dreary scenes, this is one of the most awful and depressing. Taken in connection with its history, and viewed in the light of the Bible, it is more desolate than the great Zahara—the land as well as the sea seems dead. Fetid exhalations, leafless wastes, the earth seared, the waters salt, the sky brass; behold a picture of this sublime desolation—this most solemn of witnesses for God.

The conclusion of the whole matter is this: If a man’s mind be open to conviction, the aspect of this Sea must fasten conviction on his mind. One who explored all its coasts, and fathomed its depths, and cleared up some of its mysteries, has said: “We entered upon this sea with conflicting opinions. One of the party was skeptical, and another, I think, a professed unbeliever in the Mosaic account. After twenty-two days’ close investigation, if I am not mistaken, we are unanimous in the conviction of the truth of the Scriptural account of the cities of the plain.” The facts observed tally so completely with the truths recorded, the whole condition of the wondrous region is so unique, the very structure or form of the rocks is at some places so peculiar, that the mind is forced to accept of some great catastrophe, perhaps more than one, to explain what it beholds.