John Lightfoot · 133 of 172

Chapters 6-10 · 3. The Talmudists' measuring the breadth of the land within Jordan.

There was a tradition and national custom famous among them, concerning which we have mention somewhere, "That a vineyard of four years old, should go up to Jerusalem in a days' journey on every side." The sense of the tradition is this; the second tithes were either to be eaten at Jerusalem, or, being sold at home, the money was to be brought to Jerusalem, whence some things were bought to be eaten there. Now provision is made by this canon, that the tithes of vineyards which were within a diet of the city, should not be sold, but that they should be brought to Jerusalem and eaten there.

But "What are the bounds, say they, of that day's journey? 'Elath on the south. Acrabat on the north. Lydda on the west. Jordan on the east.'"

So both Misnas. But the Babylonian Gemara, in the places noted in the margin, reads "Elath on the north, Acrabat on the south." By what reason, and in what sense, these words agree, commentators endeavour to resolve obscurely enough; but it is not of so much moment to detain us.

Elath recalls to my mind some things which are spoken by the Notitia of the eastern empire. Where, "under the disposition of the honourable man, the duke of Palestine," is substituted, among others, "The lieutenant of the tenth Fretensian legion at Aila." Where Pancirolus writes, that "Aila was seated on the shore of the Red sea." St. Jerome, upon Ezekiel 47 writes thus; "the tongue of the Red sea, on the shore of which Aila is seated, where a Roman legion and garrison is now quartered." And the same father elsewhere; "Aila (saith he) is in the utmost borders of Palestine, joined to the south desert, and the Red sea, whence men sail out of Egypt into India, and thence into Egypt. And there also is a Roman legion called Decima," the tenth.

We dare not contradict so great an oracle; otherwise my thoughts would run back to this our Elath: and that upon this reason especially, because it seems somewhat hard to substitute a garrison at the Red sea "under the duke of Palestine," when that was so far distant from Palestine, and since there was a 'duke of Arabia' (in which Elath at the Red sea was) as well as of Palestine.

You see the Fathers of the traditions measuring from Lydda by Jerusalem to Jordan in a double diary: but here also they leave us again at uncertainties of the breadth of the land; because Lydda was not upon the utmost coast of the land on that side. Unless, perhaps, you might say, that whatsoever space went between Lydda and the sea was "the region of the sea," esteemed as heathen land; when Caphar Lodim, which was seated in that interval, and not far from Lydda, was of no better account. Let us get therefore, if we can, more certain accounts, and more faithful direction.