And here they are,--seemingly not apposite to this line of reflection, yet running parallel to it very closely: [HEBREW PHRASE] The best English that can be given of these words we have in our translation: "Blessed is he who, passing through the valley of Baca, maketh it a well." Why so?
On what ground?
If a man had settled down in that valley for life, there would have been no merit in his making it a well.

It might, in that case, have been an act of lean-hearted selfishness on his part.

Further than this, a man might have done it who could have had the heart to wall it in from the reach of thirsty travellers.

No such man was meant in the blessing; nor any man resident in or near the valley.

It was he who was "passing through" it, and who stopped, not to search for a dribbling vein of water to satisfy his own momentary thirst, but to make a well, broad and deep, after the oriental circumference, at which all future travellers that way might drink with gladness.
That was the man on whom the blessing rested as a _condition_, not as a _wish_.