from that which is most splendid in the kingdom over which, along with him, she rules; and in this they have the justification of their grandeur. 4ba Thine eyes pools in Heshbon, At the gate of the populous (city).Hesbhon, formerly belonging to the Amorites, but at this time to the kingdom of Solomon, lay about 5 1/2 hours to the east of the northern point of the Dead Sea, on an extensive, undulating, fruitful, high table-land, with a far-reaching prospect. Below the town, now existing only in heaps of ruins, a brook, which here takes it rise, flows westward, and streams toward the Ghôr as the Nahr Hesbán. It joins the Jordan not far above its entrance into the Dead Sea. The situation of the town was richly watered. There still exists a huge reservoir of excellent masonry in the valley, about half a mile from the foot of the hill on which the town stood. The comparison here supposes two such pools, but which are not necessarily together, though both are before the gate, i.e., near by, outside the town. Since שׁער, except at Isa 14:31, is fem., רבּים־בּים, in the sense of עם רבּתי, Lam 1:1 (cf. for the non-determin. of the adj., Eze 21:25), is to be referred to the town, not to the gate (Hitz.); Blau's[1] conjectural reading, bath-'akrabbim, does not recommend itself, because the craggy heights of the “ascent of Akrabbim” (Num 34:4; Jos 15:3), which obliquely cross[2] the Ghôr to the south of the Dead Sea, and from remote times formed the southern boundary of the kingdom of the Amorites (Jdg 1:36), were too far off, and too seldom visited, to give its name to a gate of Heshbon. But generally the crowds of men at the gate and the topography of the gate are here nothing to the purpose; the splendour of the town, however, is for the figure of the famed cisterns like a golden border. בּרכה (from בּרך, to spread out, vid., Genesis, p. 98; Fleischer in Levy, I 420b) denotes a skilfully built round or square pool. The comparison of the eyes to a pool means, as Wetstein[3] remarks, “either thus glistening like a water-mirror, or thus lovely in appearance, for the Arabian knows no greater pleasure than to look upon clear, gently rippling water.” Both are perhaps to be taken together; the mirroring glance of the moist eyes (cf. Ovid, De Arte Am. ii. 722):“Adspicies obulos tremulo fulgore micantes, Ut sol a liquida saepe refulget aqua” and the spell of the charm holding fast the gaze of the beholder. 4bb
