On the road to Jericho...

In the words of Christian music superstar, Keith Green, "I left Jerusalem last week for Jericho." Except that it was today, not last week, and I suppose technically I didn't leave from Jerusalem first, though we did go through it on the way...

Anyway, today was field trip day (like every Wednesday will be). We went to so many places! It was crazy. But in reality we were never more than 20 miles from "home." We drove to the west to the Valley of Aijalon (where the sun stood still/God lobbed hailstones at the Amorites). Then we made our way west, stopping along the way on a ridge that looked out toward the coast. People, Israel is amazing country. So pretty and SO diverse. The Hill Country, where we were standing, overlooks the Shephelah (pronounced "Shvelah" - it basically means low foothills) and the coastal plain. The coast is about 25 miles from us, maybe a little more, but you would never be able to tell when you stand outside here.

During the day we went to Geba, Ramah, Gibeah (which is where the "ruins" of the Jordanian palace that was never finished because of the 6 Day War in '67) Michmash, Gibeon, etc. They are all in the Central Benjamin Plateau, which is north of Jerusalem and a key crossroads area even today, but especially in Bible times. For some reference, Samuel lived in Ramah, King Saul had his palace at Gibeah, Jonathan toasted some Philistines at Michmash, the main "highway" in the Hill Country that ran north-south went through this area as did the main access highways from the east (Jericho) and west (Gezer, Aijalon, etc). So this is big-time territory.

But the coolest thing I noticed was that when we stood at the top of a ridge near Geba is that we could see clear to Tel-Aviv at the coast on one side and the high plateaus of Jordan on the other. I could stand on a mountain and look across the whole country! Standing at about 3000 feet above sea level I could look at the Mediterranean (barely visible in the haze) and down at the Jordan Rift Valley/ Dead Sea (-1000 ft sea level). Pretty awe-inspiring. So much happened in so little an area, our God is pretty phenomenal.

Our day ended at Jericho, which is not that big around, the flannel-graphs are deceiving people. We say the leftovers of the wall of the time of Joshua - for a quite interesting, but detailed, explanation of the walls and how they fell and all of that ask me when I get home, I'll be glad to share my new knowledge :) It was pretty cool to see a wall that is part of one of the oldest cities in the world. And since it's in Palestinian-controlled territory their archaeological security is pretty lax so we could look around for potsherds (broken pieces of ancient pottery). My friend Brandon found a sweet jug-handle and I found a semi-large piece that has the painting decoration on it (decoration is a relative term, apparently the Canaanites thought two parallel lines was pretty artsy, but hey, no one else found something so cool)

It was a good, good day. Lots of walking, lots of sunshine, some delicious coconut ice cream at an Israeli mall, amazing realism brought to even the more mundane parts of Scripture... what more could a small-town college student ask for?