Benjamin, Samaria and Jericho

Today we headed out from the Gloria hotel, our home for the first 4 days of the trip, and drove north through some new territory for us. We drove through the Central Benjamin Plateau which has a lot of Biblical sites (Ramah - home of Samuel, Gibeah - home of Saul and where he had his palace/capital, Gibeon - Gibeonites tricked Joshua into signing a peace treaty). Our first stop for the day was at Shiloh - where the tabernacle was set up when the Israelites came into the land after wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. It was awesome to think about how Hannah came here to pray and ask God for a child. And then when Samuel was born to her, this is where she brought him to Eli the priest as she had promised God.

Matt looking around at the site. We were told we could pick up anything we saw laying on the surface (e.g. discarded potsherds) but were not allowed to dig :) We were able to find a number of broken pottery pieces to bring home from Shiloh!

The view down the slope of Shiloh showing how it's location was chosen because it was easy to defend.

Matt tracing the potsherds that we found into his field notebook.




Our next stop was Shechem which was such an important site in Biblical History. Our leader Todd hadn't been able to return to this site for 12 years because of political issues. But today this area is open and he was as excited as I've seen him on this trip to get to return to such an important site. Shechem is surrounded by an Arab town and it was funny seeing such an ancient site in the middle of a city. We heard the Muslim call to prayer over loud speakers up on the mountain while we were there.

Here are the ruins of the ancient city. This is also the place that God promised Abraham the land (Genesis 12:6-8). This is also the site where Joshua brought all of the tribes of Israel here in accordance with God's instructions to Moses.  We reenacted part of this history by splitting our group in half with one group standing on the Mt. Gerazim side and one group standing on the Mt. Ebal side and reading back and forth to each other the blessings and curses from God's law (Joshua 8:30-35).

Mt. Gerazim

Mt. Ebal

We then drove down to Jericho and had lunch at a local restaurant. Matt had falafel and I had shawarma again.

After that we walked across the street to ancient Jericho - one of the oldest if not THE oldest city in the world. There were other settlements and villages before the time of Jericho, but this is the first city with a city wall. We saw the base of the wall that was destroyed when the Israelites marched around the city 7 times on the 7th day (Joshua 6). The main wall was built on top of these stones (pictured) with mud bricks and part of the wall was breached that day as told in the story in Joshua allowing the Israelites entrance into this first conquered city.

Looking at more of the tel of Jericho (tel - mound built up over time as city is built upon city)

Also driving through Jericho we saw a tall sycamore tree reminding us of the story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19).

We also saw the New Testament site of Jericho just south of ancient Jericho. Pictured are the remains of another of Herod the Great's palaces.

We ended the day with a long, winding drive down into the region of the Dead Sea and stayed at a hotel at the bottom of another major Israel site, Masada. More on that tomorrow!!



It was truly another remarkable day and much more restful than some of our first few days in Jerusalem because we are pretty much over the jet lag and have been taking more trips by bus instead of walking. My highlight for the day was probably being at Shechem - the place where God first made his promise to Abraham - such a foundational point for all of Biblical history. I am so thankful to be here and so appreciative of all of the people who are taking such good care of our children while we are gone.