in
annihilating them there; to have simply scattered them would have
brought him but little advantage. That this was the point to which he
gave chief attention is apparent from one most significant circumstance
in the history; the Amorites fled by the road to Beth-horon.

There have been several battles of Beth-horon since the days of Joshua,
and the defeated army has, on more than one occasion, fled by the route
now taken by the Amorites. Two of these are recorded by Josephus; the
one in which Judas Maccabaeus defeated and slew Nicanor, and the other
when Cestius Gallus retreated from Jerusalem. It is probable that
Beth-horon was also the scene of one, if not two, battles with the
Philistines, at the commencement of David's reign. In all these cases
the defeated foe fled by this road because it had been their line of
advance, and was their shortest way back to safety.

But the conditions were entirely reversed in the case of Joshua's
battle. The Amorites fled _away from_ their cities. Jerusalem, the
capital of Adoni-zedec and the chief city of the confederation, lay in
precisely the opposite direction. The other cities of their league lay
beyond Jerusalem, further still to the south.

A reference to the map shows that Gilgal, the headquarters of the army
of Israel, was on the plain of Jericho, close to the banks of the
Jordan, at the bottom of that extraordinary ravine through which the
river runs. Due west, at a distance of about sixteen or seventeen miles
as the crow flies, but three thousand four hundred feet above the level
of the Jordan, rises the Ridge of the Watershed, the backbone of the
structure of Palestine. On this ridge are the cities of Jerusalem and
Gibeon, and on it, leading down to the Maritime Plain, runs in a
north-westerly direction, the road through the two Beth-horons.

The two Beth-horons are one and a half miles apart, with a descent of
700 feet from the Upper to the Lower.

The flight of the Amorites towards Beth-horon proves, beyond a doubt,
that Joshua had possessed himself of the road from Gibeon to Jerusalem.
It is equally clear that this could not have been done by accident, but
that it must have been the deliberate purpose of his generalship.
Jerusalem was a city so strong that it was not until the reign of David
that the Israelites obtained possession of the whole of it, and to take
it was evidently a matter beyond Joshua's ability. But to have defeated
the Amorites at Gibeon, and t