is hand,
and thrust them through the heart of Absalom while he was yet alive in
the midst of the oak." And when the news came to David, sitting in the
gate of the city of Mahanaim, he went up into the chamber over the gate
and wept bitterly, crying, "Would I had died for thee, O Absalom, my
son!" (II Samuel xviii.)

To remember a story like that is to feel the pathos with which man has
touched the face of nature. But there is another story, more mystical,
more beautiful, which belongs to the scene upon which we are looking.
Down in the purple valley, where the smooth meadows spread so fair, and
the little river curves and gleams through the thickets of oleander,
somewhere along that flashing stream is the place where Jacob sent his
wives and his children, his servants and his cattle, across the water in
the darkness, and there remained all night long alone, for "there
wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day."

Who was this "man" with whom the patriarch contended at midnight, and
to whom he cried, "I will not let thee go except thou bless me"? On the
morrow Jacob was to meet his fierce and powerful brother Esau, whom he
had wronged and outwitted, from whom he had stolen the birthright
blessing twenty years before. Was it the prospect of this dreaded
meeting that brought upon Jacob the night of lonely struggle by the
Brook Jabbok? Was it the promise of reconciliation with his brother that
made him say at dawn, "I have seen God face to face, and my life is
saved"? Was it the unexpected friendliness and gentleness of that
brother in the encounter of the morning that inspired Jacob's cry, "I
have seen _thy face as one seeth the face of God_, and thou wast pleased
with me"?

Yes, that _is_ what the old story means, in its Oriental imagery. The
midnight wrestling is the pressure of human enmity and strife. The
morning peace is the assurance of human forgiveness and love. The face
of God seen in the face of human kindness--that is the sunrise vision of
the Brook Jabbok.

Such are the thoughts with which we fall asleep in our tents beside the
murmuring brook of Er Rumman. Early the next morning we go down, and
down, and down, by ledge and terrace and grassy slope, into the Vale of
Jabbok. It is sixty miles long, beginning on the edge of the mountain of
Moab, and curving eastward, northward, westward, south-westward, between
Gilead and Ajlun, until it opens into the Jordan Valley.

Here is the famous little ri