384 
is very shallow, a few feet, and sometimes only a few inches, 
of water covering a bed of soft, slimy mud. Of this latter 
section Tristram says, “ Sulphur-springs stud the shores, 
sulphur is strewn, whether in layers or in fragments, over the 
desolate plains ; and bitumen is ejected in great floating masses 
from the bottom of the sea, oozes through the fissures of the 
rocks, is deposited with gravel on the beach, or, as in Wady 
Mohawat, appears with sulphur to have been precipitated 
during some convulsion Everything leads to the con- 
clusion that the agency of fire was at work, though not the 
overflowing of an ordinary volcano.” 
29. I now turn for a moment to the Scripture narrative. 
The references to the Dead Sea in the Bible are few, and 
mostly incidental. Three of them call for special attention 
here. In Gen. xiii. 10, where the sacred writer relates the 
story of the separation of Abraham and Lot, he represents the 
two as standing on the mountain-top east of Bethel : — “ Lot 
lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the circuit of the Jordan, 
that it was well watered, before the Lord destroyed Sodom 
and Gomorrah.” It has been inferred from this that the cities 
of Sodom and Gomorrah were in sight from where Lot stood, 
and must, therefore, have been situated at the northern end 
of the lake. But this does not follow. Lot “beheld the cir- 
cuit of the Jordan ” ; it is not said, or implied, that the cities 
were in sight. One thing is evident from the passage — that 
the valley of the Jordan was very fertile before the destruction 
of the cities, but not so afterwards; and this is corroborated 
by the narrative in Gen. xix. 24, 25. I have stood upon the 
same spot, and the view over the Jordan valley is now as 
dreary and desolate as could be well imagined. 
30. The second passage is Gen. xiv. 2-10, containing the 
story of LoEs capture by the Eastern kings. At ver. 3 we 
read — “All these were joined together in the vale of Siddim, 
which is” (oi', it is) “ the salt sea.” There cannot be a doubt as 
to the meaning of the Hebrew; the region called the “vale of 
Siddim ” in the time of Lot, had become, in the time of the 
writer, “ the Salt Sea.” * Some, however, attempt to get over 
the plain signification by saying that the clause, “which is 
the Salt Sea,” is an explanatory note interpolated by some 
subsequent reviser; but this is untenable, for the clause is 
found in all the ancient MSS. and versions, and in the Targum 
of Onkelos. Its genuineness rests on the same basis as tho 
* The same Hebrew phrase is used in the preceding verse : — “ Bela which 
is Zoar.” No one will venture to question what the writer here meant to 
affirm — that Bela and Zoar were tho same. 
