nding
around the city and over the Mount of Olives to Jericho.
[End illustration]

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NOTES

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NOTES

TALES OF THE FAR-OFF DAYS.

_Shinar_. A part of the great plain of Babylon (the Babel of the
story). On this plain great towers of bricks, once temples of the
gods, are found. This story seems to be told about one of these great
towers.

RUTH.

_Moab_ lies across the Dead Sea from Judah. One can see its hills from
the heights about Bethlehem, and to this day grain is brought across
from its fields and sold in Jerusalem.

_Kinsman_. In the East the duty of caring for the family was very
sacredly held. If a person was injured, he must be avenged by his
kinsman. If he became poor, his kinsman must aid him. If he was
obliged to sell land, his kinsman should buy it if he could, so that
it need not go out of the family. According to one set of Hebrew laws,
should a married man die without children, it was the duty of a
kinsman to marry his widow, as Boaz did Ruth.

DEBORAH.

All the story of Deborah falls in the northern part of Israel. Zebulon
and Naphtali were in the Northern hills, which in the New Testament
time were called Galilee, where Jesus lived. The river Kishon flowed
through a plain just to the south of the hills, in the {488} territory
of Asher. Dan and Asher also lay in the Northern hills, and Issachar
south of Naphtali and Zebulon. Gilead and Machir were across the
Jordan from Issachar. The people in the south of Palestine were not
concerned in this war. It brought out the heroism of a few of the
people of Israel, but the rest were either too cowardly or too far
away to take part in it.

_Shamgar_. One of the judges preceding Deborah.

ESTHER.

_Ahasuerus_, the king who is called Xerxes in Greek, and who invaded
Greece. The heroic little nation of the Greeks conquered his great
army, and he went back to his huge empire of Persia with no gain or
glory. He was luxurious and selfish. The picture of him in this story
is like that given everywhere else. He was only great because he ruled
a great kingdom, and he was not noble in any way.

_Shushan_, the capital of ancient Persia, then the center of the power
and commerce of the world, as the capital of the greatest nation
always was. During the Bible times the great empires were Babylon,
Assyria, then Babylon again, Persia, Greece, Rome. During much of the
time the second great power of the world was Egypt.

_Tebe