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Zep_2:4
One prophet declares that “Baldness is come upon Gaza;” Note: Jer_47:5. another foretells that “A fire should come upon the wall of Gaza which should devour the palaces thereof;” Note: Amo_1:7. Zephaniah, whose text is before us, predicts that “Gaza shall be forsaken;” and Zechariah Note: Zec_9:5. declares that “The king shall perish from Gaza.” About this prophecy, and that of Amos, there can be no question. The city has been without a native prince from the time of Alexander the Great, and that it has been destroyed at least once by fire, kindled by hostile conquerors, is known.
But what is meant by the baldness that was to come upon Gaza? and what of its being forsaken, when it remains at this day one of the most important towns of Palestine?—not only subsisting, but not declining, and, indeed, increasing in prosperity and population. Fifteen years ago, or leas, the inhabitants were not reckoned to exceed 2,000, they now number 15,000, owing to constant accessions from Egypt—there being a great and steady movement of population from that country to Palestine, of whole families and villages at a time, to exchange the austere rule of the Pasha for the milder or looser sway of the Sultan. Gaza, being about four miles from the frontier, and the first important place the fugitives reach, many of them remain there as inhabitants. Gaza, as it stands now, is a large but straggling town, covering about twenty times as much space as its population requires. Its house are strongly constructed, consisting of a confused mixture of ancient and of the rudest modern architecture; ruins of magnificent palaces, rudely patched up with mud and brambles to shelter their present uncouth tenants; in the intervals appear the Bedouin’s hut, plastered with cow-dung, and the well-smoked tents of the Zingari, or gipsy tribes.
Where, then, is the “baldness” of Gaza? How has it become forsaken?
A recent traveller, animadverting on the craving for the minute fulfillment of local prophecies, and on the absurdities and exaggerations into which many thus fall, adds: “Such conduct admits of the less excuse, because the proofs of accomplished prophecy are too numerous to leave any just cause for anxiety respecting those that remain unfulfilled or unexplained. It may even be that many a fulfillment has left no traces behind; the prediction and the fulfillment having been designed for a generation that has passed away. I have read some interpretations of prophecy which are calculated only to excite a smile. A recent traveller has discovered the fulfillment of the prediction that baldness should come upon Gaza (an Orientalism simply expressive of lamentation and woe), in the fact that the modern town is built round the head of the hill, leaving the upper part unoccupied, in the form of a tonsure.” Note: Beldam, Italy and the East.
Now we agree with this writer as to the puerility of looking for baldness in this, and, we may add, in any other of the merely physical circumstances of the site. It is very clear to us that the term can have no such reference; to make bald, being merely to create cause for sorrowing, and of this we historically know that Gaza had enough. It seems to us that the sorrows of men afford a much more magnificent and forcible illustration of such a prophecy—and certainly a more direct one than the bareness of the tops of one or of many hills, or of the site or any part of it—seeing that this is a circumstance which equally belongs to ancient sites everywhere, and to numerous hills along this coast. There is nothing specific or distinctive in baldness thus interpreted.
But a greater apparent difficulty remains. The prophet, in the text before us, says that Gaza should be forsaken—and, behold, it is now a populous town. For our own parts, we should be quite ready to conclude that this prophecy had been adequately fulfilled by the desolation in which it lay for many years, after its destruction by King Alexander Jannaeus—who may, indeed, be deemed by that act to have accomplished the prophecies against Gaza. There is still, however, another, and some will think, a better answer in the fact, that the modern Gaza does not occupy the site of the ancient city. We must, however, confess to some doubts whether a city, rising in the immediate vicinity of an old one, and assuming identity by taking the same name—is not in fact as identically the same city, as a modern city can be of an ancient one; and on that ground we feel more certainty in resting upon the historical fact that Gaza has been forsaken.
However, that the modern Gaza does not stand on the site of the old one, had long been known, from the circumstance that the situation does not correspond with the intimations which have reached us, and which show that old Gaza must have stood much nearer to the sea. But the fact has only of late been established by the actual discovery of the ancient site. We owe this really interesting discovery to Dr. Keith, who has twice visited Palestine with views directed to the illustration of local prophecies. On his first visit, he sought in vain for any traces of the ancient Gaza, but in the second he was more favored. He surveyed the site more leisurely, and was confirmed in the opinion he had previously inclined to, that the ancient city was entombed in the sand. “In less than a mile from the present town in a direct line towards the sea, the sand commences, and all vegetation ceases. For more than a mile and a half in the same direction, the whole space is covered with sand, and in every hollow innumerable diminutive pieces of broken pottery and marble are spread over the surface. Passing along the shore to the south, we came to the ruins of an old wall that reached to the sea. Ten large massy fragments of wall were imbedded in the sand, or resting on it. A large square building close to the shore seems to be the remains of some public edifice. At the farther distance of about two miles, are fragments of another wall. Four intermediate fountains still exist, nearly entire, in a line along the coast, which, doubtless, pertained to the ancient port of Gaza. For a short distance, indeed, the debris is less frequent, as if marking the space between it and the ancient city, but it again becomes plentiful in every hollow. About half a mile from the sea we saw three pedestals of beautiful marble…. Holes are still to be seen from which hewn stones had been taken; and the former secretary of Ibrahim Pasha at Gaza, and another native, stated that all the way between the present town and the sea, hewn stones of various sizes have been taken out of the sand, and carried to Gaza for building.”
This is a very interesting statement, and, doubtless, the remains thus buried in the sand indicate the site of old Gaza. Still, the last circumstance does but help to strengthen the essential identity of the ancient and the modern Gaza; and in the doubt which we entertain whether a city rising close beside an old one taking its name, and being in a great measure, built with its materials, is not historically identical with it, we remain disposed to take the New Testament as in this instance a sufficient interpreter of the Old, and to find in the Spirit’s direction to Philip, ample corroboration of the prophecy: “Arise, and go towards the south, unto the way that goeth down from Jerusalem to Gaza, which is desert.” It was “desert,” or forsaken then, and had been so for many years, as the prophet had foretold. What more need we require?