one of the young men, and one of the asses, that I may run to the man of God and come back."1

In the East they always say, not simply "I go," "I am going," as we should; but "I go and return,' or "I go and come back." Thus Abraham said to his servants, when he went on with Isaac to Mount Moriah and left them behind, "I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.' Very solemn in this connection is Job's striking figure of Periphrasis, or Circumlocution, for death

"When a few years are come,

Then I go the way I shall not return.” 3

In what a truly Eastern form are those comforting words of Jesus' second advent to take His people to be with Him: "Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you.' "If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto Myself; that where I am, [there] ye may be also." 5 It is just as though He said, "This is only like an ordinary journey; I am not bidding you a final farewell; you will soon see Me again.'

When her good-natured husband complied with her request, and sent her a servant with an ass-for all the animals are on the land during harvest, carrying the sheaves to the threshing-floor on their backs in place of our waggons-she said to this man who came to

12 Kings iv. 22.

2 Gen. xxii. 5; compare 1 Kings xxii. 27; Acts xviii. 21 (observe the added Gospel formula here, "If the Lord will"); Gen. xliii. to; Prov. iii. 28.

Job xvi. 22; X. 21.

4 John xiv. 28.

5 John xiv. 3.

act as groom, "Drive, and go forward; slack not thy driving for me, except I bid thee," that is, "thy constant spurring on and urging forward the animal," in the way I have described.1

Few of my Palestine experiences were more strange and startling than those connected with Eastern "keepers." There is nothing answering to the office of these men in North-Western lands. They and their work are peculiar to the East, and the striking and powerful allusions to "keepers" have very naturally been overlooked by Western commentators. Tent-life, the curious conditions of travel, the robber-haunted state of the country districts, the highly decentralised and communal system of government, and the utterly defective and dishonest police regulations, which leave every man to go on a journey armed to the teeth, and to be in the main his own protector, must always have rendered necessary this very special class of nightwatchmen. When in the hot weather townspeople pitch their tents for coolness on the neighbouring heights outside the city walls, or miles away in the country, they apply to the nearest settled community to send a man to act as "keeper," or night-guard. When travellers use tents, which the rich always do on long journeys, as they pitch them at sundown after each day's ride, application is immediately made to the governor or elders of the village nearest to the 1 2 Kings iv. 24.