Explore "Out-Of-Doors in the Holy Land" by Henry Van Dyke on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Naphtali was the northernmost of the tribes of Israel, a bold and free highland clan, inhabiting a country of rugged hills and steep mountainsides, with fertile vales and little plains between.
"Naphtali is a hind let loose," said the old song of the Sons of Jacob (Genesis xlix: 21); and as we ride up from the Lake of Galilee on our way northward, we feel the meaning of the poet's words. A people dwelling among these rock-strewn heights, building their fortress-towns on sharp pinnacles, and climbing these steep paths to the open fields of tillage or of war, would be like wild deer in their spirit of liberty, and they would need to be as nimble and sure-footed.