Page:03.BCOT.KD.HistoricalBooks.B.vol.3.LaterProphets.djvu/1883

 where יושׁבת בארץ עוץ would be devoid of purpose if it described the proper habitable land of Edom, must describe a district extending over that, in which the Edomites had established themselves in consequence of Assyria having led away captive the Israelitish and Aramaean population of the East Jordanic country and Coele-Syria. In connection with Jer 25:20 one must not avoid the question whether עוץ is the name of the ארם דמשׂק that has been missed. Here the migration of the Damascene Aramaeans from Kîr (Amo 9:7) ought to be considered, the value of the Armenian accounts concerning the original abode of the Usites tested, what is erroneous in the combination of קיר with the river Kur shown and well considered, and in what relations both as to time and events that migration might have stood to the overrunning of Middle Syria by the Aramaean Sôbaean tribes (from Mesopotamia) under Hadad-ezer, and to the seizure and possession of the city of Damascus by Rezon the Sôbaean? Finally, one more tradition might be compared, to which some value may perhaps be attached, because it is favoured by the stone monuments, whose testimony we are not accustomed otherwise to despise in Palestine and Syria. The eastern portal of the mosque of Benî Umêja in Damascus, probably of the very temple, the altar of which king Ahaz caused to be copied (2Ki 16:10), is called Gêrûn or the Gerun gate: the portal in its present form belongs to the Byzantine or Roman period. And before this gate is the Gêrûnîje, a spacious, vaulted structure, mostly very old, which has been used since the Mussulman occupation of the city as a mêda'a, i.e., a place for religious ablutions. The topographical writings on Damascus trace these two names back to a Gêrûn ibn Sa'd ibn 'Ad ibn 'Aus (עוץ) ibn Iram (ארם) ibn Sâm (שׁם) ibn Nûh (נוח), who settled in Damascus in the time of Solomon (one version of the tradition identifies him with Hadad, Jos. Ant. viii. 7),