It was not in any way a well-wooded land.  On the slopes of the Lebanon and of Carmel, it is true, there were forests of cedar-trees, a few of which still survive, and the Assyrian kings more than once speak of cutting them down or using them in their buildings at Nineveh.  But south of the Lebanon forest trees were scarce; the terebinth was so unfamiliar a sight in the landscape as to become an object of worship or a road-side mark.  Even the palm grew only on the sea-coast or in the valley of the Jordan, and the tamarisk and sycamore were hardly more than shrubs.

Nevertheless when the Israelites first entered Canaan, it was in truth a land “flowing with milk and honey.”  Goats abounded on the hills, and the bee of Palestine, though fierce, is still famous for its honey-producing powers.  The Perizzites or “fellahin” industriously tilled the fields, and high-walled cities stood on the mountain as well as on the plain.

The highlands, however, were deficient in water.  A few streams fall into the sea south of Carmel, but except in the spring, when they have been swollen by the rains, there is but little water in them.  The Kishon, which irrigates the plain of Megiddo, is a more important river, but it too is little more than a mountain stream.  In fact, the Jordan is the only river in the true sense of the word which Palestine possesses.  Rising to the north of the waters of Merom, now called Lake Huleh, it flows first into the Lake of Tiberias, and then through a long deep valley into the Dead Sea.  Here at a depth of 1293 feet below the level of the sea it is swallowed up and lost; the sea has no outlet, and parts with its stagnant waters through evaporation alone.  The evaporation has made it intensely salt, and its shores are consequently for the most part the picture of death.

In the valley of the Jordan, on the other hand, vegetation is as luxuriant and tropical as in the forests of Brazil.  Through a dense undergrowth of canes and shrubs the river forces its way, rushing forward towards its final gulf of extinction with a fall of 670 feet since it left the Lake of Tiberias.  But the distance thus travelled by it is long in comparison with its earlier fall of 625 feet between Lake Huleh and the Sea of Galilee.  Here it has cut its way through a deep gorge, the cliffs of which rise up almost sheer on either side.

The Jordan has taken its name from its rapid fall.  The word comes from a root which signifies “to descend,” and the name itself means “the down-flowing.”  We can trace it back to the Egyptian monuments of the nineteenth and twentieth dynasties.  Ramses ii., the Pharaoh of the Oppression, has inscribed it on the walls of Karnak, and Ramses iii., who must have reigned while the Israelites were still in the wilderness, enumerates the “Yordan” at Medinet Habu among his conquests in Palestine.  In both cases it is associated with “the Lake of Rethpana,” which must accordingly be the Egyptian name of the Dead Sea.  Rethpana might correspond with a Hebrew Reshphon, a derivative from Resheph, the god of fire.  Canaanite mythology makes the sparks his “children” (Job v. 7) and it may be, therefore, that in this old name of the Dead Sea we have a reference to the overthrow of the cities of the plain.