Casiotis: Cas-jah: Exodus 17:16.

We now go on from Pelusium to mount Casius: so Pliny; "From Pelusium, the trenches of Chabrias. Mount Casius, the temple of Jupiter Casius. The tomb of Pompey the Great," &c.

Casius was distant about three hundred furlongs from Pelusium (in Antoninus it is forty miles), and the lake of Sirbon was twenty-eight miles from Casius. Thus Pliny's sixty-five miles arise from 'Pelusium to the ending of Arabia.'

Casius, in Ptolemy, is written 'Cassion,' and 'Cassiotis,' with a double s; and so also it is in Dion Cassius, who adds this story:--

"Pompey died at mount Cassius, on that very day whereon formerly he had triumphed over Mithridates and the pirates. And when, from a certain oracle, he had suspicion of the Cassian nation, no Cassian laid wait for him, but he was slain and buried at the mountain of that name."

Those words of Moses do rack interpreters, Exodus 17:16: Jad Al Cas-jah. The Seventy render it, "The Lord wars with a secret hand." All other versions almost render it to this sense, "The hand upon the throne of the Lord." So the Samaritan, Syrian, Arabic, Vulgar, and the Rabbins,--that is, 'God hath sworn.'

What if Cas-jah be Casiotis? For that country was the country of the Edomites, but especially of the Amalekites, concerning whom Moses treats in that history. We will not too boldly depart from the common consent of all, and we do modestly and humbly propound this conjecture: which if it may take any place, the words may there be rendered, without any scruple or knot, to this sense, "The hand of the Lord is against Cassiotis," (the country of the Amalekites; for) "the Lord hath war with Amalek from generation to generation."