Page:04.BCOT.KD.PoeticalBooks.vol.4.Writings.djvu/2301

(probably, as the sound of the word denotes, Belmen, or, more accurately, Belmaïn, as it is also called in Judith 4:4, with which Kleuker in Schenkel's Bibl. Lex., de Bruyn in his Karte, and others, interchange it; and חמּון, Jos 19:28, lying in the tribe of Asher). This Balamoon lay not far from Dothan, and thus not far from Esdräelon; for Dothan lay (cf. Judith 3:10) south of the plain of Jezreel, where it has been discovered, under the name of Tell Dotan, in the midst of a smaller plain which lies embosomed in the hills of the south.^[1]
The ancients, since Aquila, Symm., Targ., Syr., and Jerome, make the name of the place Baal-hamon subservient to their allegorizing interpretation, but only by the aid of soap-bubble-like fancies; e.g., Hengst. makes Baal-hamon designate the world; nothrim [keepers], the nations; the 1000 pieces in silver, the duties comprehended in the ten commandments. Hamon is there understood of a large, noisy crowd. The place may, indeed, have its name from the multitude of its inhabitants, or from an annual market held there, or otherwise from revelry and riot; for, according to Hitzig,^[2] there is no ground for co-ordinating it with names such as Baal-gad and Baal-zephon, in which Baal is the general, and what follows the special name of God. Amon, the Sun-God, specially worshipped in Egyptian Thebes, has the bibl. name אמון, with which, after the sound of the word, accords the name of a place lying, according to Jer. Demaï ii. 1, in the region of Tyrus, but no אמון. The reference to the Egypt. Amon Ra, which would direct rather to Baalbec, the Coele-Syrian Heliupolis, is improbable; because the poet would certainly not have introduced into his poem the name of the place where the vineyard lay, if this name did not call forth an idea corresponding to the connection. The Shulamitess, now become Solomon's, in order to support the request she makes to the king, relates an incident of no historical value in itself of the near-lying Sunem (Sulem), situated not far from Baal-hamon to the north, on the farther side of the plain of Jezreel. She belongs to a family whose inheritance consisted in vineyards, and she herself had acted in the capacity of the keeper of a vineyard, Sol 1:6, - so much the less therefore is it to be wondered at that she takes an interest in the vineyard of Baal-hamon, which Solomon had let out to keepers on the condition that they should pay to him for its fruit-harvest the sum of 1000 shekels of silver (shekel is, according to Ges. §120. 4, Anm. 2, to be supplied). יבא, since we have interpreted היה retrospectively,

1. Vid., Robinson's Physical Geogr. of the Holy Land, p. 113; Morrison's Recovery of Jerusalem (1871), p. 463, etc.
2. Cf. also Schwarz' Das heilige Land, p. 37.