le name, the
Aramaean name given to it by Laban, and the Canaanitish name of Galeed,
"the heap of witnesses," by which it was called by Jacob. The double
name was a sign of the two populations and languages which the cairn
separated from one another. Northward were the Aramaeans and an Aramaic
speech; southward the land of Canaan and the language which we term
Hebrew.

The spot where the cairn was erected bore yet another title. It was also
called Mizpah, the "watch-tower," the outpost from which the dweller in
Canaan could discern the approaching bands of an enemy from the north or
east. It protected the road to the Jordan, and kept watch over the
eastern plateau. Here in after times Jephthah gathered around him the
patriots of Israel, and delivered his people from the yoke of the
Ammonites.

Once more "Jacob went on his way," and from the "two-fold camp" of
Mahanaim sent messengers to his brother Esau, who had already
established himself among the mountains of Seir. Then came the
mysterious struggle in the silent darkness of night with one whom the
patriarch believed to have been his God Himself. When day dawned, the
vision departed from him, but not until his name had been changed. "Thy
name," it was declared to him, "shall be called no more Jacob, but
Israel; for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast
prevailed." And his thigh was shrunken, so that the children of Israel
in days to come abstained from eating "of the sinew which shrank, which
is upon the hollow of the thigh." The spot where the struggle took
place, beside the waters of the Jabbok, was named Penu-el, "the face of
God." There was more than one other Penu-el in the Semitic world, and at
Carthage the goddess Tanith was entitled Peni-Baal, "the face of Baal."

The name of Israel, as we may learn from its equivalent, Jeshurun, was
really derived from a root which signified "to be straight," or
"upright." The Israelites were in truth "the people of uprightness." It
is only by one of those plays upon words, of which the Oriental is still
so fond, that the name can be brought into connection with the word
_sar_, "a prince." But the name of Jacob was well known among the
northern Semites. We gather from the inscriptions of Egypt that its full
form was Jacob-el. Like Jeshurun by the side of Israel, or Jephthah by
the side of Jiphthah-el (Josh. xix. 27), Jacob is but an abbreviated
Jacob-el. One of the places in Palestine conquered by the