PART I. -NAME AND IIISTORY. —This far famed and most sacred of all cities has a name which at once suggests inquiry as to its meaning and origin. The old traditions and natural pm possessions both of Jews and Christians connect it with that Salem of which Melchizedek, the priest of the Most High God, was king, and there is no doubt that it is the place which the Psalmist had in view when he sung—` In Judah is God known ; his name is great in Israel. In Salem also is his tabernacle, and his dwelling-place in Zion.' It is also worthy of note that, at the conquest of Canaan by the descendants of Abraham, the king of Jerusalem had a name, Adonizedek (Lord Righteousness), almost identical in meaning with that of Melchizedek (King of Rz:ghteousness), who was king of Salem in the time of Abraham.
Josephus, writing in Greek, endeavours to clothe the Jewish notions on the subject in a Greek dress, by saying that the city having been formerly called l'ONui.ca, received the name of lepocr6XuAca, or the sacred Solyma, from its Hebrew captors. This would be an easy explanation of the change of name from Salem to Jerusalem, if there was anything m the prefixed syllables of the Hebrew word, p5c,1-0, to convey that idea of sacredness which is asserted by the Greek prefix lepo. lt is needless to say that such is not the case. Various opinions are enter tained as to the meaning of the Hebrew prefix, but none of them quite satisfactory or quite consistent with the rules of Hebrew etymology. We may dismiss, almost without consideration, supported though it be by Lightfoot, the rabbinical notion that the word Jerusalem is derived from Jireh, the name given to the place by Abraham (Gen. xxii. 1.1), and Shalem, the name which it received from Shern, whom they hold to be the same person as 'Melchizedek. Of the derivations enumerated by Gesenius, and which would give to the word the several meanings of fearing peace, fearing Salem, possession of peace, Salem a possession, house of peace, fozendation of peace, he prefers the last, expressing this name in German by the word Friedensgrund. There is also something in the latter part of the word which is suggestive of inquiry. Though the letters are the same as those of the word Salem, the vowel points are different, the one being written ntr:.;, Shalem, and the other p9e5, Shalainz, and in • some places with thc insertion of a 4, lint. This g,ives to the word a dual character, which has been considered referable to the two cities, the one on a height and the other in a val ley, of which it consisted. Nor is it unnatural to
suppose that the original name of the place having been Salem, it might in the course of time, when it embraced more ground within its circuit, and be came a double city, have acquired a pronunciation which described to the ear its local form and cha meter. At the conquest of Canaan the place was known by quite another name. It was called Jelmis or Jebusi, winch simply means the city'of the Jebusite, just as we find innumerable French towns of the present day with names derived from tribes enumerated by Cmsar. Thus we may imagine such a combination of xvords as Salem Jebus, or Salem Jebusi, with a meaning analogous to that of Lzdetia Parisiorum ; and as Paris is the only por tion of this appellation which has been retained, we can conjecture how Jebus may have usurped the place of Salem at the time of Joshua. Some, indeed, have supposed that the xvord Jebus still lies concealed in the first syllables of the word Jeru salem, while others are led by St. Jerome to iden tify the Salem of Melchizedek with that Shalem, a city of Shechem,' upwards of seventy miles to the north of Jerusalem, in the neighbourhood of Scythopolis (or Bethshan), to which Jacob came after he had left Padanaram (Gen. xxxiii. 18). There is little, however, beyond the mere assertion of St. Jerome to contradict the uniform tradition both of Jews and Christians ; and the inference we are disposed to draw from the above considerations is that Jerusalem was originally the Salem of Mel chizedek, that the place was afterwards familiarly known as Jebusi or Jebus, from the name of the people who occupied it, while its older name was ;till kept in memory ; and that it received the name of Jerusalem when it was finally conquered by David, partly in memory of its ancient founder, partly to indicate the secure enjoyment of peace which the acquisition of so important a fortress seemed to promise. The use of the word in Toshua and Judges, either by itself or as an equi valent of Jebus, was probably in anticipation of the name which it afterwards received, The dual form of its termination, which was first embodied in the letters of the word by the prophet Jeremiah 400 years after its conquest by David, may have crept gradually into use ; and be now indicated by the Masoretic vowel-points wherever the word occurs, because it had long since been established as its proper form when those points were invented (A.D. 500).