Our Last Day

The Judean Hills

As we turn, we can see that we are on a hilltop after all, and it was just my impression that we were not because of the higher hill above us.  The valley is actually quite a distance below us.

There is another church here, which we will not approach, and a well which is supposed to be where the angel spoke to Mary.  This is one of several competing sites.

The Judean hills are beautiful and plenteous.  Trees are everywhere, but they would not have been here in Jesus' day.  

As we wind through these hills, they could be our mountain valleys and hills at home, except that there is a little town on the top of each of these hills.  It is as though the cities in Israel sit like yarmulkes of brick and stone on top the hillsides to show reverence to God.

The Scrolls of Fire

The monument is called the Scrolls of Fire.  It is a monument to all of those who died in the Holocaust, and also for those who died during the 6-day War.  The 6-day War occurred while the artist was creating the sculpture.

Bet Shemesh

There is also an Egyptian temple to the sun god, Ra, here.

The Philistines lived below here on the plains.  The Jews were up on the hills.  When the Ark of the Covenant was lost to the Philistines, this is where the two cows brought the Ark from the Philistine territory.

This also is where Samson would have come across carrying the city gates.  He may have carried it as much as 40 miles and all of it a gradual uphill from Gaza to the top of Hebron. 

We are descending rather rapidly and seeing a change in the vegetation.  Some of the trees look like they might be scrub now, but it is still basically the same type of country.  Succulents are not planted here by policy.

David's Brook

We are coming now to the place where David had his battle with Goliath.  Our David says that they are able to identify this area almost exactly.

There is a little stream here and some low hills.  There is a hill directly above the stream which may be where Goliath stood.  There are a couple of hills that are possibilities right here.

We can see a line of trees at the bottom of one of the hills, which would have been where David picked up the stones.  It may well be the hill above that.

The scholars know that this is the place because there is a tel here where they have found the remains of the Israelite encampment.

Bet Guvrin

We have just passed some sheep in a pasture, reminding us that this is David's country.  

We are coming to a town now that is about 10 miles south of where we were.  We are opposite Ashkelon.  This location is riddled with caves.

The caves where we are going are referred to in the Bible as Mareshah.  The tel has that name.  The Bell Caves are a little bit further on, the other side of the tel.  The Jews who lived here lived underground, because it was very easy to dig it out here.  As soon as they would dig it out, it would harden and they could make bricks from it.  They could make solid walls from it, and so today they have found some 5,000 man-made caves here.

We are going down into one of the caves.  It's a long ways down.  

We are maybe 50' underground now, and this whole area has been dug out.  There are several rooms and a passageway, or hallway.  This particular cave is a columbarium.  There are pigeonholes in the walls.  The pigeons were used for Temple worship.  The columbarium probably dates from about 200-300 BC.

They are called Bell Caves because they are wide at the bottom and narrow at the top.  This was probably a cistern originally.  Later on somebody added the dovecote to it.

There are some families here with young children.  The kids are zipping up and down the stairs and their voices carry throughout the caves.

There are several types of gethsemanes (olive presses) set up in some of the caves and restored to working condition.

These caves are really quite large.  We've been through a number of caverns, all of which were hewn out by hand.  Much of it is dark and narrow with low passages.  I've hit my head twice.  This is an amazing place.

This was possibly active in the period of the kings and possibly as far back as the time of the judges.  David says as far back as Joshua.  Mareshah is mentioned in the Book of Joshua, but there is no indication whether the caves had been dug then, or whether the city was above ground.

We are going into a Sidonian cave.  The entrance is hidden behind bushes.  The cave is a different style, not bell-shaped.  It has been hollowed out quite a bit.  There are carvings and holes in the walls for burial crypts.  Original drawings on the walls were vandalized and then restored more recently.

We are told that where we have been so far are the smaller caves.  We are going now to the Bell Caves, proper, where we can only go in a short ways, because they are so much larger.

The cave here is very large and open.  Part of the roof has collapsed in one area.    We are walking through another part of the cave that is at least as large as the first part, all part of one cave.  Now we are going down into another one.  We have to wear a hard hat going through here, although they won't be much help if a chunk falls from the ceiling, thirty feet or so above us.

I have taken a few pictures.  There are a lot more shots I could take, but it would be just more of the same.  The walls of the cave are basically chalk.  I can dig into it with my fingernails.

Journey's End

One of the places we did not get to visit on this trip is Jericho, because it is deep inside Palestinian territory.  This site apparently is the Biblical Jericho.  There was some doubt about that for a number of years.  One of the reasons there was doubt was because we know that Joshua burned Jericho, and they did not find any evidence of the burning.  However, David tells us that in the last couple of years they have dug down deep enough that they have found the burn, and they have also found some of the stones that were toppled from the wall.  It's apparent from their positions that they did fall from the wall as it crumbled.

We are back at the hotel and the tour is ended.  It seems kind of a let-down to be through.