Israel thus stood in close relation to almost all the chief linguistic divisions of the Semitic world. Its first forefather had been born in the land where Babylonian—or Assyrian, as we usually term it—was spoken, and its contact with Aramaic had been early and intimate. Its desert wanderings had led it into a region into which the Bedâwin tribes of Central Arabia could make their way, and the Hebrew article seems to be a relic of its intercourse with them and the Arabic they spoke. But with all this contact with other Semitic tongues, Israel nevertheless remained true to that of the land of its destiny: the language of the Old Testament is the language which was spoken in Canaan before the days of Moses, the language of the inscriptions of Phœnicia and Carthage, the language of Hannibal as well as of Joshua. If Israel was connected by language with Canaan, it was connected by blood as well as by language with Moab, and Ammon, and Edom. In fact, Edom and Israel were brothers. While the relationship with Moab and Ammon was comparatively distant, the relationship with Edom was peculiarly close. The fact was never forgotten, and in the later days of Jewish history the unbrotherly conduct of Edom caused a bitterness of feeling towards it on the part of the Jews such as no other Gentiles were able to excite. Moab and Ammon were the children of Lot, and had possessed themselves of the mountain and fertile plains on the east side of the Dead Sea and southern course of the Jordan long before Israel had entered into its inheritance, or even Edom had carved out a possession for itself with the sword. They were accused of being of incestuous origin, and it was related how the ancestors of each had been born in hiding and in the wild solitude of a cave. Moab was the eldest, Ben-Ammi, ‘the Ammonite,’ being the younger of the two.