The Scene
“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.”
The luxuriance of vegetation on its banks, and mildness of climate, may partly be accounted for from the deep depression of its basin. Though not to the same extent, the Galilean sheet of water partakes of the strange peculiarity of the Dead Sea, in being far below the level of the country. No transition can be more marked than from the uplands which border the Lake on every side, down to the sultry hollow where it lies. In summer the heat is intolerable. But, for this very reason, we may be prepared for early and profuse vegetation where the soil favours. Olive gardens and vineyards, we have reason to believe, in the time of our Lord, crested the heights which are now bare and treeless. But in the lower regions, tropical plants still spread in untrained luxuriance. Palms mark the old site of Tiberias. The first flowers blooming in Galilee, with their pink and red blossoms flushing the Lake margin, may still be seen from the very spot where Jesus spake of the lilies of the field as weaving a richer mantle than any Tyrian loom; while the same twisting thorn which was taken to wreath, in after-times, His bleeding brow, may be seen hiding itself amid the rocks which cross the traveller’s path. Perhaps nowhere in Palestine does the “Sower go forth to sow” earlier than in the spot where Jesus spake His Sower Parable — nowhere does the reaper gather in an earlier harvest. Its mildness may, in the age to which we refer, have made it more a winter resort, the intense heat sending many of its families in summer to the cooling breezes of the uplands. This we know, that our blessed Lord Himself generally spent the summer months in Judca, lingering there after the celebration of the Passover, and revisiting Capernaum and its neighbourhood as winter approached, when the return of the inhabitants gave him a fresh opportunity of preaching the kingdom of God.*
* It may be interesting here to give the oldest and not least trustworthy picture of the Scenes which are now describing.” This Lake of Geunesareth is so called from the country adjoining to it. Its breadth is forty furlongs, and its length one hundred and forty; its waters are sweet, and very agreeable for drinking, for they are finer than the thick waters of other fens; the lake is also pure, and on every side ends directly at the shores
8 MEMORIES OF GEiTNESAEET.
Shall we pause, before proceeding, to ask, what of Gennesaret now? Very different is its present aspect. It has become a wreck of vanished loveliness, lapsed into its old “shadow of death.” “The light” that gleamed on its waters is quenched. Turkish misrule and delusion are supplanting holier recollections. Its glittering palaces and teeming villages — the white- winged messengers of commerce or pleasure that studded once its sparkling waves — all gone! Unchanging nature, it is true, in her indestructible outlines, is still there to identify it as the hallowed haunt of the Lord of Glory, but travellers saunter along the sandy beach amid ghastly silence and loneliness. Save the one ruin of Migdol, nothing is left to recall departed greatness. The very site of Capernaum is disputed. Its doom is written on the silent
and at the sand; it is also of a temperate nature when you draw it up, and of a more gentle nature than river or fountain water, and yet always cooler than one could expect in so diffuse a place as this is. Now when this water is kept in the open air, it is as cold as that of snow;, which the country people are accustomed to make by night in summer. There are several kinds of fish in it, different both to the taste and the sight from those elsewhere.” — Josephus Bell. J. iii. 10,7.
“The country, also, that lies over against this lake, hath the same name of Gennesareth; its nature is wonderful as well as its beauty; its soil is so fruitful that all sorts of trees can grow upon it, and the inhabitants accordingly plant all sorts of trees there; for the temper of the air is so well mixed, that it agrees very well with those several sorts. Particularly walnuts, which require the coldest air, flourish there in vast plenty; there are palm-trees also, which grow best in hot air, fig-trees also and olives grow near them, which yet require an air that is more temperate. One may call this place the ambition of nature, where it forces those plants that are naturally enemies to one another to agree together; it is a happy contention of the seasons, as if every one of them laid claim to this country; for it not only nourishes different sorts of autumnal fruit beyond men’s expectation, but preserves them a great while; it supplies men with the principal fruits, with grapes and figs continually, during ten months of the year. Lnd the rest of the fruits as they become ripe together, through the whole year, for, besides the good temperature of the air, it is also watered from a most fertil fountain.” — Josephus Bell, J. iii. 10, 8.
rocks, and murmured by the restless waves, and echoed by the Divine Word. Tangled thickets creep in wild profusion over bank and shore — and the three or four tiny boats that ripple the waters, seem to mock the old picture of its busy life!
The one epoch of its glory seems to have been during the first Advent of the Son of God. What may it not yet be, when that same “Sun of Righteousness” shall again visit it with “the brightness of His rising?” — when its vine-dressers shall cleave to Him who is the true Vine: — when its fishermen shall sing hymns to His glory on the midnight wave — and when, from the Christian temples which throng its shores, the Gospel welcome and Hosannah shall be heard from ten thousand tongues, “Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord?”*
* Of its present aspect and general appearance, Dr Clarice says: — “It is by comparison alone that any due conception of its appearance can be communicated to the minds of those who have not seen it. Speaking of it comparatively, it may be described as longer arid finer than any of our Cumberland or Westmoreland lakes, although it be perhaps inferior to Loch Lomond, in Scotland. It does not possess the vastness of the Lake of Geneva, although it much resembles it in some points of view. In picturesque beauty it comes nearest to the Lake of Locarno, in Italy, although it be destitute of anything similar to the islands by which that majestic piece of water is adorned. It ia inferior in magnitude, and perhaps in the height of its surrounding mountains, to the Lake Asphaltites; but its broad and extended surface, covering the bottom of a profound valley, surrounded by lofty and precipitous eminences, when added to the impression under which every Christian pilgrim approaches it, gives to it a character of unparalleled dignity.” — Clarke’* Travels, vol. iv., p. 210.