Jericho

After driving in the Judean desert for miles, we began to glimpse the fertile oasis in its midst. The patches of green in the middle of so much brown and gold were a soothing sight. We soon discovered that these were date-palm groves. This is why you can find the largest and most delicious dates in the world around Jericho. Seeing the change in the landscape helped me to understand what the Israelites must have felt when they saw it after wandering around in the desert for forty years. And to think that most of them were not even going to get to leave the desert! That's what they got for being such a "stiff-necked" people.

Jericho was an attractive place then and it is now because it was built around the Spring of Elsha, which releases some 1,000 gallons of water a minute. It was the winter home not only to Herod the Great (a title he gave himself) but to the last caliph of the Umayyad dynasty around 743 AD. It is also the lowest town in the world at 1200 feet below sea level.

But Jericho is notable for so much else. Jericho is the oldest place in the world, at least 10,000 years old. By the time Joshua conquered it for the Israelites, it was already an ancient city.

During the time of Elijah and Elisha, there was a school of prophets living in Jericho, and in the New Testament, Jericho was the home of Zacchaeus, the tax collector, who climbed the sycamore tree in Luke 19:1-10 to get a glimpse of Jesus. Jesus was just passing through Jericho when He looked up, saw Zacchaeus and told him, make haste and come down; for I must stay at your house today. Imagine that! In Jericho, Jesus healed the blind man, Bartimaeus (Matt 20:29-31), and the parable of the Good Samaritan was set on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.

There in Jericho, some of us took a cable car up to the Mount of Temptation, where Christian tradition holds that the devil tempted Jesus during Jesus' forty days in the desert. A beautiful Orthodox church is built at the site.

After lunch and an afternoon in Jericho, we boarded our bus for Jerusalem. We had much to ponder and meditate upon in Jericho, this ancient city that fits so prominently in our Biblical past. Most of us spent the rest of the journey into Jerusalem in quiet contemplation.