Note 14 — Chapter II · PALESTINE.

In this paraphrase I render one of the vavs by “then” instead of “and.” This will be allowed me. What will be objected to is the assumption that Lasha is Laish, especially as Lasha contains a different radical, the ayin (לָשַׁע). But the passage in Genesis may give an archaic spelling; and as Lasha signifies “the breaking through of waters,” it is eminently descriptive of the source of the Jordan at Dan. To place Lasha in the south-east of Palestine, as is done in Smith’s “Dictionary of the Bible,” is to charge the description in Genesis with being defective, for how are the limits of a people defined by tracing two sides of an irregular quadrangle?