How's your Shephela?

We are in the Land!  The trip over was long, but uneventful, praise The Lord!  We arrive in Tel Aviv around 5:15pm and met up with the Blamers to get to our hotel.  Jeff and I both got a good night's sleep and were ready for our first full day today.

Or first stop was Gezer in the Valley of Aijalon.  We saw part of the city gate from King Solomon's time.   Gezer was an important city because it controlled trade routes, along with two other nearby cities.  We know that Solomon was a rich and influential king since he controlled and fortified these cities.  The Valley of Aijalon connects the Shephela to the Judea Mountains, were Jerusalem is located.  The Shephela is the area between the costal plains, where the Philistines lived, and the Judea Mountains were the Israelites lived.  This is were the two cultures met.  Whoever controlled the Shephela shaped the culture of the time.  

   

Take away from Gezer: We saw remnants of the sewer system that bought sewage out of the city, under the gate, into the valley.  As you can imagine, the valley did not smell nice.  From the Jewish word for this sewage, we get our word "hell".    This is also where the outcasts of society lived....and where Jesus spent his time.   He turned the idea of a city upside down.  Instead of it being a place that only the rich were allowed to enter, His idea of city was all-inclusive.

This is a manger located by the city gate.  Mangers were actually used for storing water, not feed, since feed was more plentiful than water.  Kind of changes your idea of the Christmas stable, doesn't it?

One of the other things we talked about in Gezer was standing stones.  These stones are set up from the time of the Cannanites to remember something great that some god did.  Their stories have long since died.  Christ calls us to be living stones...ones that can tell His story to future generations.  When people look at us, do they see something different, something that would get them to ask us to tell our story?

Our next stop of the day was at Beth Shemesh.  This was a small border town also located in the Shephela.  Here we read the story of Samson.  From where we were sitting, we could see where he grew up, where he met his wife and Delihla, and where the Philistines came from.  When you actually read the story of Samson, you realize how much he messed up.  He lived where the intersection of the world by the costal plains met that of God's people in the mountains.  Samson really did a lousy job of "living in the world, but not of it".  

Take away from Beth Shemesh:  How is your Shephela today?  How am I doing living at the intersection of God's people and the world?  Am I being like a light to those around me, or is the world pulling me in?  

When they do excavations, they can tell a lot about how people lived by their trash.  When they excavated Beth Shemesh, they looked at the percentage of pig bones (unclean food for the Jewish people).  During Cannanite time, 50% of trash was pig bones.  During the time of the judges it was 20-30%.  Under King Solomon's rule, it was 10-15%, but under King Hezikiah there were none.  What's in your trash?  It's probably a reflection of how your living in the Shephela today.

This is our group standing in the bottom of a water cistern that was used during the time of King Solomon.

The entrance was pretty slick with mud.  After Jeff discovered this the hard way, he helped the others down.

This is the access hole at the top.  It was made off center (hard to tell in the picture) so that debris would not fall into it.

The third place we went today was Azekah.  This was the valley were David met Goliath.  The Isrealites would have been camped on the hill closest to us and the Philistines may have been on the hill just to the right of the road.

See that little curved piece that looks like it comes off the road, just before you get to the yellow road sign?  That is where the brook is.  We got to walk down there and pick up stones from the same brook that David would have.

The people of the time only went to war during the dry season, so the brook would have pretty much looked like this.

Take away from Azekah: David used a tool that he had been using his entire life, not knowing that God would call him to use this gift for his kingdom.  Throw your stones so that the world will know.

Our final stop of the day was Tell Maresh.  Although this city has no Biblical significance, it gave us some good insight into what life may have been like during Christ's time.

This was a place that they would have raise pigeons to be used as food, sacrifice, and their poop for fertilizer.

Olive press

Other side of the olive press.  During times when shelter was hard to come by - like during Passover- people would have slept in olive presses.  Jesus and his disciples may have one that they stayed in on the Mount of Olives.

Bell caves were originally used for mining limestone.  Marks in the stone lead us to believe it also was used as a place of worship later.  The acoustics are amazing.  The coolest part of today was when we were all in circle and sang hymns.  Just think...we were singing praises in the same location that God has been being praised for 1000’s of years!

It was a long day.  Jeff thought he was funny.

This will be our home for the next three nights.  Now it's time for dinner and rest.