The Alliance Herald

BEERSHEBA AGES AFTER

The vastness of the war's panorama and the crowding events of a world-girdling struggle are called to mind by the fact that the fall of Beersheba has attracted little or no attention. Ancient Beersheba, fifty-two miles from Jerusalem, which has been wrested from the Turks by the British forces, still has its seven wells. Here Abraham dug a well to witness his alliance with the King of Gerar, and here Abraham's sons dug another. The interrupted sacrifice of Isaac took place at Beersheba, which was also the scene of Esau's loss of his birthright and Jacob's sacrifice on his way to Egypt. The sons of Samuel were Judges in old Beersheba, and it was there that Elijah called down fire from heaven upon the prophets of Baal.

Under the Romans the town was of sufficient importance to be garrisoned. It appears that Australian cavalry and British infantry took modern Beersheba at night "after a stern day long fight." The British correspondent with the Palestine army is thus quoted: "Just as the moon rose over the Judea hills the Australian horse charged with bayonets on their rifles, overwhelming the Turks and galloping cheering into the town. Wave followed wave until long before the last line had reached the trenches the machine gun and rifle fire had withered away."

Machine guns in Beersheba! The surrounding region is arid and the horses of the attacking force were in great need of water, but the capture of the town enabled the Australians to let their beasts drink deep from the springs that have survived since the patriarchal age depicted by the earlier Biblical writers, an age of many wars, but wars that were small indeed and purely local compared with the struggle now virtually involving the whole world.