Memories of Gennesaret

“What went ye out to see

O’er the rude sandy lea,
Where stately Jordan flows by many a palm,

Or where Gennesaret’s wave

Delights the flowers to lave,
That o’er her western slope breathe airs of balml

All through the summer night,

Those blossoms red and white, Spread their soft breasts unheeding to the breeze,

Like hermits watching still

Around the sacred hill
Where erst our Saviour watch ‘d upon his knees.”

“The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: The people which sat in darkness saw great ILht; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up.” — MATT, iv, 15, 16. ISAIAH ix. 1, 2.

THE researches of modern tra« ilers have made the Shores of GENNESAKET well-nigh as familiar to us as those of our own English or Scottish la.k..s. As we follow in thought the footsteps of our Blessed Lord in a region crowded, above all others in Sacred Story, with imperishable memories, we are enabled to picture the very sky on which He gazed, the hills with their gray and red limestone sides shelving into the water, the sterile mountains losing themselves in the eastern desert where He prayed; the pearly beach, with its creeks and bays, on which the clear limpid waves murmured of old — as they murmur still. We can think of the lilies to which He pointed, as excelling the glories of Solomon — the fowls of heaven, many arrayed in gorgeous plumage, from which, as fed by His Father, He drew a lesson of unswerving trust. We can picture the future Teachers of the world mending their nets, or mooring their boats on its shingle — the Jordan hastening, as to this hour, down to its rocky gorges — the Lebanon range, and the nearer serrated peaks of Safed bounding the northern view — the snowy summit of Hermon, like a hoary giant overlooking all, — perhaps the feature in the varied panorama least changed since the eye of Incarnate Glory fell on its everlasting snows.*

* No attentive reader can have failed to note, that while one of the Evangelists (and that the latest) narrates the incidents connected with the Saviour’s history occurring mainly in Jerusalem and Judea, the chief portion of the narrative

The geographical position of the Lake of Tiberias, and the relation of the surrounding district to the rest of Palestine, claim a few introductory words, ere we people these with the living characters who invest them with an undying interest. Not more striking was the difference, a hundred years ago, between the Lowlands and Highlands of Scotland or Wales, than was that, in the time of our Lord, between Judea and Galilee. The outward conformation of the two provinces was different, and there was a corresponding contrast also in character and manners. Parts of one nation — Hebrews of the Hebrews — gathering annually at the same Great Feasts in Jerusalem, they had, in point of fact, resolved themselves into two distinct and diverse races. The intervening country of Samaria, colonised by an alien tribe, helped to perpetuate this separation, and prevent the intercourse which otherwise they might have enjoyed. As we associate the heights which bound the shores of Gennesaret with sterner nature — mountains cleft by ravines and water- torrents, leaving in their torn and dislocated sides the mementos of volcanic action — so, in keeping with all this primitive nature, we can think of the Galileans (at all events for many years preceding the Christian era) as a bold and turbulent race, far removed from the civilising influences of the capital. “Galilee of the Gentiles,” the name given it by Isaiah 700 years before the Christian era, sufficiently indicates the position it held in his time, as a frontier land on which heathen shadows rested; and when

of the other three is occupied with the transactions not of Judea but of Galilee, and more especially the gracious words and deeds connected with its Lake. It is only at the close of all that they leave the shores of Gennesaret and conduct us to the capital. As Jerusalem formed the focus of Julia’s inspired pictures, so the ancient “Chinueroth” was the centre and fucus of theirs.

he still further speaks of its inhabitants in the passage which heads this chapter, as “a people that sat in darkness,” and that dwell “in the land of the shadow of death,” we are left to picture half- educated boorish peasantry and fishermen, who participated in few of those longings which the southern Hebrews had, for the advent of the “Desire of all nations.” Their very dialect or patois (if we may use a modern word) was peculiar. Peter had lisped it from his infancy, and it convicted him in the palace of Caiaphas of being a Galilean accomplice of his Lord — “Thy speech bewrayeth thee.”*

But though the Lake of Cliinneroih — save its casual mention in Num. xxxiv. 1 1; Josh. xii. 3; 1 Kings xv. 20 — is unconnected with any Old Testament incidents, and isolated from the rest of the Jewish world, its aspect as well as its name and associations change with the dawn of the New Dispensation. When the Saviour of the world came to reside on its banks, it was no longer the secluded spot which once it was, fenced out by these mountain barriers from a busy world. It had become the scene of wondrous life. If we can again venture the comparison — whatever Gennesaret mayhave been in the times of the early monarchy, it had, like our own wild uplands and inland Lochs, emerged from seclusion. Royalty had not only, as with us, redeemed it from obscurity, but studded its banks with Roman palaces, and its waters with Roman pleasure-boats. The second Herod had built a new capital on its shores (Tiberias) in honour of his imperial Lord; and the reckless extravagance which that abandoned prince had learned at Rome, he had transferred to

* Matt. xxvi. 73.

the shores of this Judean Lake. Effeminate loungers and wasted valetudinarians crowded to its famous baths — Gentile slaves thronged the villas of their masters — heathen tax-gatherers were found seated at the custom-houses at the several ports — while a constant traffic with Damascus (the oldest emporium of trade in the world) kept an ever busy commerce on this inland sea, and ministered to the grasping avarice of its rulers. The Apostle fishermen were among the hundreds in humbler life who gained their livelihood by the boats and nets which studded its beach — the plentiful supply of fish which swarmed in the Lake giving its name to one of the towns on its shore — Bethsaida — “House of fish.” Many similar hamlets cast their shadows in its waters, or nestled under the slopes of the adjoining hills; while one portion with which we may afterwards be more familiar — the Plain of Gennesaret — was considered the garden of Palestine, and with its hot spring and irrigating streams gave a return to the husbandman unknown elsewhere in that nation of the nations. Well might the old Jewish writers speak enthusiastically of this beauteous expanse as “beloved of God above all the waters of Canaan;” and extract from the word “Gennesaret,” as its most likely derivation, the meaning “Paradise of Perfection.”

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