CHERITII (nrin ; Sept. xogdo), a river in Palestine, on the banks of which the prophet Elijah found refuge (I Kings xvii. 3-7). Eusebius and others have conceived themselves bound by the words ii-ort rendered ' east of the Jor dan,' to seek the river in the Trans-Jordanic coun try : but although the words sometimes may re ceive this translation (as in Gen. xxv. IS ; Josh. xix. I I), they properly denote simply before—' before the Jordan' (comp. .Gen. xviii. r6)—that is, in coming from Samaria. And this interpretation, which places the Cherith west of the Jordan, agrees with the history, with Josephus (,4ntiq. viii. 13. 2), and with the local traditions which have uniformly placed the river of Elijah on this side the Jordan. Dr. Robinson drops a suggestion that it may be the Wady Kelt, which is formed by the union of many streams in the mountains west of Jericho, issuing from a deep gorge, in which it passes by that village and then across the plain to the Jor dan. It is dry in summer.—J. K.
Addendum. —No spot in Palestine is better fitted to afford a secure asylum to the persecuted than Wady el-Kelt. On each side of it extend the bare, desolate hills of the wilderness of Judaea, in whose fastnesses David was able to bid defiance to Saul. The Kelt is one of the wildest ravines in this wild region. In some places it is not less than 500 feet deep, and just wide enough at the bottom to give a passage to a streamlet (i Kings xvii. 6) like a silver thread, and to afford space for its narrow fringe of oleanders. The banks are almost sheet
precipices of naked limestone, and are here and there pierced with the dark openings of caves and grottoes, in some one of which probably Elijah lay hid. The Wady opens into the great valley, and from its depths issues a narrow line of verdure into the white plain; it gradually spreads as it advances until it mingles at the distance of a mile or more with the thickets that encompass Riha, the modern representative of Jericho. To any one passing down from Jerusalem or Samaria towards Jericho, the appropriateness of the words in i Kings xvii. 3 would be at once apparent—` the brook Cherith, that is before Wady el-Kelt is unquestionably the valley of Achor, in which the Israelites stoned Achan (Josh. vii. 26), and which served to mark the northern border of Judah (xv. 7). Along the southern bank of the Wady, by a long and toilsome pass, ascends the ancient and only road from Jericho to Jerusa lem. This is doubtless `the going up to Adum mim, which is on the south side of the river' (xv. 7). The Kelt being near Mount Quarantania, the tra ditional scene of the Temptation, was a favourite resort for anchorites when the example of St. Saba made that order fashionable in Palestine (Robinson, B. R., i. 558 ; Handbook of S. and P., 190. Van de Velde locates Cherith at Ain Fesail, a few miles north of the Kelt (ii. 3 to).—J. L. P.