What a desolate place this is.
C-3PO, Star Wars: A New Hope
Continuing my long weekend journey, Sunday was our journey south to the dry land of the Negev. Negev is Hebrew for dry and south, which accurately describes the region.
The first part of the Negev is what we can call the Biblical Negev, which is a set of basins immediately south of the regions mentioned last time. This region is just past the rainfall line, receiving less than the amount needed to grow grain. Instead, shepherding works better. The ancient city of Arad was in the eastern Negev. Beersheba was located in the center of the Negev, situated at the crossroads of a few roads and wadis (dry riverbeds which receive water occasionally when it rains upstream).
We continued south and the land got drier and drier with less and less vegetation. We stopped in Nahal Zin to hike the wadi there. Israel doesn’t get rain in the summer and we’ve only received light rain so far. However, in the winter, massive storms occur. The rains from these storms channel down wadis, which are often otherwise dry (or with little water from a spring). Today the most common cause of death in the desert in Israel is from floods. If you’re down in the bottom of a wadi on a sunny day, it may be raining miles away. Without warning, the waters will cascade down the canyon and carry you away. Every year people die this way. We didn’t have anything to worry about and enjoyed hiking through this wadi and up the side of it.
Our final stop farther south brought us to the Maktesh Ramon. This is a giant crater that stretches out for miles, not formed by a meteor, but from erosion, the largest such crater in the world. We sat on the upper rim of it, looking down at the bottom 1200 feet below.
The best thing about visiting the desert is heading back to a comfortable, air-conditioned place to stay with plenty of food and water. The Israelites did not have that pleasure, however. They spent 40 years wandering in this dry, desolate place. After they came out of Egypt, rescued by the Lord’s mighty hand, they had to journey through the desert before reaching the land of promise. I haven’t been to Egypt yet, but from my understanding, it is quite beautiful…as long as you are near the Nile. It is no wonder they wanted to go back to Egypt instead of wandering in the desert. The desert is a place that requires complete dependence on God. In the same way, the dry, desert times of life are the times that require us to depend totally on God because you can’t do it alone. I’ll explore this idea further later.