Jab´bok, one of the streams which traverse the country east of the Jordan, and which, after a course nearly from east to west, falls into that river about thirty miles below the lake of Tiberias. It seems to rise in the Hauran mountains, and its whole course may be computed at sixty-five miles. It is mentioned in Scripture as the boundary which separated the kingdom of Sihon, king of the Amorites, from that of Og, king of Bashan (); and it appears afterwards to have been the boundary between the tribe of Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh. The earliest notice of it occurs in . The Jabbok now bears the name of Zerka. In its passage westward across the plains it more than once passes underground; and in summer the upper portion of its channel becomes dry. But on entering the more hilly country immediately east of the Jordan, it receives tribute from several springs, which maintain it as a perennial stream, although very low in summer. On approaching the Jordan it flows through a deep ravine, the steep banks being overgrown with the Solanum furiosum, which attains a considerable size. But the ravine is not so well wooded as the immediate neighborhood. The water is pleasant, and the bed being rocky the stream runs clear.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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