Ga´al (miscarriage), son of Ebed. He went to Shechem with his brothers when the inhabitants became discontented with Abimelech, and so engaged their confidence that they placed him at their head. At the festival at which the Shechemites offered the first-fruits of their vintage in the temple of Baal, Gaal, by apparently drunken bravadoes, roused the valor of the people, and strove yet more to kindle their wrath against the absent Abimelech. It would seem as if the natives had been in some way intimately connected with, or descended from, the original inhabitants; for Gaal endeavored to awaken their attachment to the ancient family of Hamor, the father of Shechem, which ruled the place in the time of Abraham (; ), and which seems to have been at this time represented by Gaal and his brothers. Although deprived of Shechem, the family appears to have maintained itself in some power in the neighborhood; which induced the Shechemites to look to Gaal when they became tired of Abimelech. Whether he succeeded in awakening among them a kind feeling towards the descendants of the ancient masters of the place does not appear; but eventually they went out under his command, and assisted doubtless by his men, to intercept and give battle to Abimelech, when he appeared before the town. He, however, fled before Abimelech, and his retreat into Shechem being cut off by Zebul, the commandant of that, place, he went to his home, and we hear of him no more. The account of this attempt is interesting, chiefly from the slight glimpse it affords of the position, at this period, of what had been one of the reigning families of the land before its invasion by the Israelites () B.C. 1026.
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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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