A great valley, as we have seen above, has its head west of Ai, and curving round eastwards it runs to Jericho: about two miles south-east of Ai it becomes a narrow gorge with vertical precipices some 800 feet high--a great crack or fissure in the country which is peculiar in this respect, that you only become aware of its existence when close to the brink, for on the north the narrow spur of hills hides it, and on the south a flat plateau extends to the top of the crags. On the south side of this great chasm (the true head of the Kelt valley) stands Geba of Benjamin, on a rocky knoll, with caverns beneath the houses and arable land to the east. Looking across the valley, the stony hills and white chalky slopes present a desolate appearance; and on the opposite side, considerably lower than Geba, is the little village of Michmash, on a sort of saddle, backed by an open and fertile corn-valley. The existence of this valley no doubt accounts for the place having been famous for its barley, so that the Talmudic proverb, “to bring barley to Michmash,” represents exactly our “carrying coals to Newcastle.” The pass between these two towns appears to have been more than once the place of meeting between the Jews and their enemies, though to a military man it seems curious that the main road along the watershed should not always, as it did in Maccabean times, have formed the line of Jewish defence north of Jerusalem. The town of Geba, south of the valley, is generally understood to be that notorious in the history of the extermination of the tribe of Benjamin, and to have been the place where Jonathan smote the garrison of the Philistines (1 Sam. xiii. 3). If this be so, then it must apparently be the “hill of God” (Geba-ha-Elohim) where was the garrison of the Philistines (1 Sam. x. 5), and where some of Saul’s family seem to have lived (verse 14). Thus Geba of Benjamin seems to be connected with Gibeah of Saul, but the latter name appears to have applied to a district as well as to a town, for the neighbouring city of Ramah is said in one passage to have been “in Gibeah” (1 Sam. xxii. 6). Josephus tells us of a village called Gabaoth Saule which was by the Valley of Thorns, and about thirty stadia from Jerusalem. This reminds us at once of the name Seneh, “thorn” or “acacia,” which was applied to one of the crags at the place where Jonathan crossed to the Philistine camp at Michmash. The modern name of the great valley between Geba and Michmash is Suweinît, or the “valley of the little thorn-tree” (acacia), and if this identification of the Valley of Thorns with Wâdy Suweinît be correct, the town of Gibeah of Saul is apparently to be placed at the present Jeb’a, though the distance given by Josephus is not exact.