En-Ge´di (kids' fountain), a city of Judah, which gave its name to a part of the desert to which David withdrew for fear of Saul (; ). Its more ancient Hebrew name was Hazezon-tamar; and by that name it is mentioned before the destruction of Sodom, as being inhabited by the Amorites, and near the cities of the plain (). In , hands of the Moabites and Ammonites are described as coming up against king Jehoshaphat, apparently round the south end of the Dead Sea, as far as En-gedi. And this, as we learn from Dr. Robinson, is the route taken by the Arabs in their marauding expeditions at the present day. It has been identified with the Ain-jidy of the Arabs, situated at a point of the western shore, nearly equidistant from both extremities of the lake. The site lies among the mountains which here confine the lake, a considerable way down the descent to its shore. Here is the beautiful fountain of Ain-jidy, bursting forth at once in a fine stream upon a sort of narrow terrace or shelf of the mountain, above 400 feet above the level of the lake. The whole of the descent below appears to have been once terraced for tillage and gardens; and near the foot are the ruins of a town, exhibiting nothing of particular interest, and built mostly of unhewn stones. This we may conclude to have been the town which took its name from the fountain.
The Wilderness of En-gedi is doubtless the immediately neighboring part of the wild region, west of the Dead Sea, which must be traversed to reach its shores. It was here that David and his men lived among the 'rocks of the wild goats,' and where the former cut off the skirts of Saul's robe in a cave (). 'On all sides,' says Dr. Robinson, 'the country is full of caverns, which might then serve as lurking-places for David and his men, as they do for outlaws at the present day.'
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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