Throughout all Judah. — Asa was not content to destroy or occupy the hostile fortress, but pushed his own fortifications further on. Geba, named in Joshua 21:17 as a city of the priests, in the territory of Benjamin, the scene of Jonathan’s victory over a Philistine garrison in the days of Samuel (1 Samuel 13:3) — identified with the modern Jeba — lies on the edge of a valley some distance to the north. It is noted in 2 Kings 23:8 as still the northern outpost of the kingdom of Judah. The Mizpah here referred to — for there were many places so called — a city of Benjamin (Joshua 18:26), famous in the earlier history (see 1 Samuel 7:5; 1 Samuel 10:17), seems to have been situated at the place afterwards called Scopim (“the watch-tower”), on “the broad ridge which forms the continuation of the Mount of Olives to the north and east, from which the traveller gains his first view” of Jerusalem (Dict. of the Bible: MIZPAH).

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