ON LAND TENURE IN ANCIENT TIMES. 183 
removed from their peaceful homesteads in their Village- 
Communities, from all their kith and kin, and from the 
_cherished, almost sacred right of tilling im mushaa’ their 
ancestral lands.” | 
Very grand and terrible is the same allusion as employed 
by the prophet Isaiah in foretelling the devastation of 
Idumea, or Edom, which would come in 
“ The year of great recompense [literally, ‘‘ recompences”] for the 
controversy of Zion.” 
He describes its palaces as ruins overgrown with thorn- 
bushes, and its fortresses as covered with nettles and thistles 
and crumbling to dust. Jackals and other beasts of prey are 
to have it as their place of rest, and to share it with the 
screech-owl and the yulture. Of these denizens of the 
desert he cries, 
“ He has cast a lot for them, 
And his hand has divided [it] to them by a line [13],”* 
that is to say, the once fertile sadehs of Idumea shall have, as 
it were, for their only landlords and occupiers the wild beasts 
and birds of the wilderness! All who have traversed this 
district for many years past have borne witness to the utter 
desolation so truly drawn in the words of this powerful 
figure. 
The Right Hon. Lorp Hatspury—the Lorp CHANcELLOR—(Vice- 
President), in the Chair: I suppose there is no one present who 
would not cordially agree that our best thanks should be accorded 
to Mr. Neil, who has been so kindly engaged in instructing us upon 
these somewhat dry subjects, as they would have been in any other 
hands than his. I imagine if one were at first sight to select a very 
uninteresting and dry subject (to the popular mind, at all events), 
it would be that of the tenure of land in our own time—much more 
in ancient times; but |] think the author of this paper has managed 
to give it an interest which carries us back to a period certainly 
before history began, and anterior to the time of Abraham, in which 
he has given us that which I think we can all learn a great deal 
 [satahexxxiv. le——1 
