Emmaus. Kiriath-Jearim.
"From Beth-horon to Emmaus it was hilly." -- It was sixty furlongs distant from Jerusalem. -- "To eight hundred only, dismissed the army, (Vespasian) gave a place, called Ammaus, for them to inhabit: it is sixty furlongs distant from Jerusalem."

I inquire, whether this word hath the same etymology with Emmaus near Tiberias, which, from the 'warm baths,' was called Chammath. The Jews certainly do write this otherwise...

"The family (say they) of Beth-Pegarim, and Beth Zipperia was out of Emmaus." -- The Gloss is this; "Emmaus was the name of a place, whose inhabitants were Israelite gentlemen, and the priests married their daughters."

Josephus, mentioning some noblemen, slain by Simeon the tyrant, numbers one Aristeus, who was "a scribe of the council, and by extraction from Ammaus." By the same author is mentioned also, "Ananus of Ammaus," one of the seditious of Jerusalem; who nevertheless at last fled over to Caesar.

Kiriath-jearim was before-time called Baale, 2 Samuel 6:2; or Baalath, 1 Chronicles 13:6. Concerning it, the Jerusalem writers speak thus; "We find, that they intercalated the year in Baalath. But Baalath was sometimes assigned to Judah, and sometimes to Dan. Eltekah, and Gibbethon, and Baaleth; behold, these are Judah." (Here is a mistake of the transcribers, for it should be written, of Dan, Joshua 19:44.) "Baalah, and Jiim, and Azem, -- behold, these are of Dan" (it should be written, of Judah, Joshua 15:29); "namely, the houses were of Judah, -- the fields of Dan."

In Psalm 132:6; "We heard of it" (the ark) "in Ephratah" (that is, Shiloh, a city of Ephraim); "we found it in the fields of the wood" (that is, in Kiriath-jearim, 1 Samuel 7:1, &c.).

chapter 44 nob bahurim
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