BETH- HACCEREM (a-qn House of the vineyard). This name occurs twice, Jer. vi. t and Neh. iii. hi; from the former passage we have some evidence of the situation of Beth haccerem, while the latter drops a hint of its importance. • 0 ye children of Benjamin,' says Jeremiah, 'gather yourselves to flee out of the midst of Jerusalem, and blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and set up a sign of fire in Beth-haccerem : for evil appeared) out of the north.' Flight from a northern foe would seem to indicate a southern direction from Jerusalem. With this agrees the following comment of St. Jerome, in loc. Writing from his monastery of Bethlehem, he says :— • Thecua ' (so designating Tekoa) ' we daily see before our eyes, a village lying on a hill some twelve miles from Jerusalem ; and between them both there is another village (vicus), also situated on a mountain, the name of which in Syriac and He brew is Bethacharma' (S. Hieronymi Opera, ed. Bened. iv. 882). With this version of the name exactly agrees the LXX. (in Jer. vi. r), which in the text of the Alex. Ald. Vizi. and Coi,p/ot edi tions reads BaLaxapp.d, while the Cod. Al. has B7/-axcip, and the Vulgate Bethacarem. This authority of St. Jerome has led some modern travellers to identify this place with the well-known eminence, called by the natives 7ebel-el-Fureidis,* and by Europeans • the Frank Mountain.' If this identity t be correct, the site of Beth-haccarem has been the scene of many a remarkable change. Two great kings, in different ages and different ways, probably adorned it with magnificent works. From their lofty city the old inhabitants must have seen stretched before them, up the green vale of Urtas, the beautiful gardens and fountains of King Solomon, which suggested to the royal poet some of the exquisite imagery of the Canticles ; and nearly a thousand years later, Herod the Great erected, probably on this very hill of Beth-haccarem, ' a fortress with its round towers, and in it royal apartments of great strength and splendour' (Jose phus, Antiq. xv. 9. 4) ; making it serve as an
acropolis amidst a mass of other buildings and palaces at the foot of the hill (Bell. .7nd. i. xxi. 20). To this city, called after him Herodium, the Idumean tyrant was brought for burial from Jericho, where he died (Antiq. xvii. 8. 3). The locality still yields its evidence of both these eras. Solomon's reservoirs yet remain (Stanley, 165) ; and the present state of 'the Frank Mountain' well agrees with the ancient description of Herod ium (Robinson, ii. 173). In Nch. iii. 14, the name I3ETH-HACCEREM (LXX. 1371cucxap(p., Vulg. Betha eamm) occurs, with these additional facts, indicative of its importance at the period of the return from the captivity (somewhat more than midway between the ages of Solomon and Herod), that it constituted, with its neighbourhood, a district or ward, called in Hebrew 1, D, presided over by its prefect or mayor and appearing, in this respect, on a par with Jerusalem itself* (cf. Neh. iii. 12). Ewald, indeed, after the Chaldee Targum and Kimchi, regards Beth-haccerem, in Jer. vi. 1, as an appel lative noun only, and renders it Weinbergshause, in allusion to Isaiah v. 2 ; as if the call were to raise the fire beacon on the lowers of the vineyards. This acceptation will hardly stand in the face of the LXX., which always treats Beth-haccerem as a proper name—which it unquestionably is in Neh. iii. 14 (Ewald, Die d. Alt. Bundes. ii. 47).
Between verses 59 and 6o of Josh. xv., the LXX. of the Codd. Al and Vat. inserts a group of eleven cities ; among them one is called Kapli.t. Even if the passage be authentic (which Keil, 7oshua, Clark's Tr. p. 389, gives good reasons for believing), the Karem mentioned in it must not be confounded with our Beth-haccerem. Robinson and Van Velde place it immediately' west of Jerusalem, and iden tify it with the modern 'Ain Karim, a flourishing village with fountain, the Franciscan convent of St. John Baptist being in the midst of it (see Robinson's Later Researches, p. 272).—P. H.