Job 1:17

THIRD MESSENGER.

17. The Chaldaeans Or, Chasdim. They appear to have been one of the many Cushite tribes inhabiting the great alluvial plain lying far to the north-east of Idumea, known as Babylonia or Chaldaea the latter, according to Ptolemy, forming the south-western portion of the former. From the earliest times the people occupying this land, though of the Hamite race, have been distinguished for their cultivation of science and their discoveries in the arts. Their principal tribe was the Accad.

Genesis 10:10. “With this race originated the art of writing, the building of cities, and the institution of a religious system.” RAWLINSON, Herodotus, 1:256. When the Semitic tribes established themselves in Assyria, in the thirteenth century before Christ, they adopted the alphabet of the Accad. The tablets found at Nineveh are exclusively in the Accadian language. (See Rawlinson, ibid., and “Five Great Monarchies,” vol. i, ch. 3 . ) Yet these are the people who are moved to a merciless foray against the unoffending man of God. In later times they are described as “terrible” “a bitter and hasty nation” whose “horses are swifter than the leopards,” and “more fierce than the evening wolves.” Habakkuk 1:6-11. The distance from Chaldaea to Idumaea is not far from five hundred miles. Yet “scarcely a year passes during which the border of Syria is not ravaged by plundering parties from Mesopotamia, and sometimes even from the shores of the Persian Gulf.… Raids are now, also, as they were in Job’s days, sudden, rapid, and unexpected.” J.L. Porter. “Once at least in every year the Teyaheh [a tribe of the Bedawin] collect in force, often mustering as many as one thousand guns, and set off on camels for the country of the ‘Anazeh, a distance of more than twenty days’ journey. Having chosen for their expedition the season of the year when the camels are sent out to graze, they seldom fail to come across some large herd feeding at a distance from the camp and watched by a few attendants only. These they drive off, the men who possess guns forming a guard on either side and in the rear, and the rest leading the beasts. It sometimes, though rarely, happens that they get off clear with their booty before the owners are aware of the invasions; but in many cases they are hotly pursued, and compelled to relinquish their prey and take to their heels. In the last of these excursions the Teyaheh carried off more than six hundred head of cattle.” PALMER, Desert of Exodus, 295.

Three bands They formed themselves into three columns, (Judges 7:16: 1 Samuel 11:11,) according to the ancient tactics of war; literally, “set three heads ( bands) and spread out,” ( פשׁשׂ ,) that they might encompass the three thousand camels, which are easily affrighted and then exceedingly difficult to take. These three bands, according to Jahn, were probably the center, left, and right wing. In illustration of the availableness of the camel, Wellsted ( Arabia, 1:300) states that the usual pace of the Oman camels, when the Bedawin mount them for a desert journey, is a quick, hard trot from six to eight miles an hour. They will continue this for twenty to twenty-four consecutive hours, but increase their speed, on occasions which require it, to thirteen or fifteen miles an hour. Laborde tells us ( Arabia, 264) that his camel carried him from Suez to Cairo (thirty-two leagues) in seventeen hours. Burckhardt ( Notes, 2:79) describes a wager which the camel lost, but he had traveled one hundred and fifteen miles in eleven hours, though twice crossing the Nile in a ferry-boat.

FOURTH MESSENGER.