water still gushes out of the rock, fresh and clear, and nourishes the
oasis that surrounds it. It has been marked out by nature to be a
meeting-place and "sanctuary" of the desert tribes. Its central
position, its security from sudden attack, and its abundant supply of
water all combined to make it the En-Mishpat or "Spring of Judgment,"
where cases were tried and laws enacted. It was here that the Israelites
lingered year after year during their wanderings in the wilderness, and
it was from hence that the spies were sent out to explore the Promised
Land. In those days the mountains which encircled it were known as "the
mountains of the Amorites" (Deut. i. 19, 20). In the age of the
Babylonian invasion, however, the Amorites had not advanced so far to
the south. They were as yet only at Hazezon-tamar, the "palm-grove" on
the western shore of the Dead Sea, which a later generation called
En-gedi (2 Chron. xx. 2). En-Mishpat was still in the hands of the
Amalekites, the lords of "all the country" round about.

The Amalekites had not as yet intermingled with the Ishmaelites, and
their Beduin blood was still pure. They were the Shasu or "Plunderers"
of the Egyptian inscriptions, sometimes also termed the Sitti, the Sute
of the cuneiform texts. Like their modern descendants, they lived by the
plunder of their more peaceful neighbours. As was prophesied of Ishmael,
so could it have been prophesied of the Amalekites, that their "hand
should be against every man, and every man's hand against" them. They
were the wild offspring of the wilderness, and accounted the first-born
of mankind (Numb. xxiv. 20).

From En-Mishpat the Babylonian forces marched northward along the
western edge of the Dead Sea. Leaving Jerusalem on their left, they
descended into the vale of Siddim, where they found themselves in the
valley of the Jordan, and consequently in the land of the Canaanites. As
we are told in the Book of Numbers (xiii. 29), while "the Amalekites
dwell in the land of the south, and the Hittites and the Jebusites and
Amorites dwell in the mountains, the Canaanites dwell by the sea and by
the coast of Jordan."

The word Canaan, as we have seen, meant "the lowlands," and appears
sometimes in a longer, sometimes in a shorter form. The shorter form is
written Khna by the Greeks: in the Tel el-Amarna tablets it is
Kinakhkhi, while Canaan, the longer form, is Kinakhna. It is this longer
form which alone appears in the hieroglyphic te