So Joshua ordered the officers of the people: “Go through the camp and tell the people, `Get your supplies ready. Three days from now you will cross the Jordan here to go in and take possession of the land the LORD your God is giving you for your own.’ “
Joshua 1:10-11
I had one more day with my mom and friends last week before they departed. We had a fun day seeing some sites around Jerusalem. But their time was soon up and they departed. I, on the other hand, had other travels to make.
Our final field study for Physical Settings was taking us east across the Jordan River into new and mysterious lands of the country of Jordan for four days (Thursday through Sunday). I’ve decided that instead of talking about each day in order I’ll split the next few blog posts up by theme or location over the next week.
Border crossing is a pain. It took over an hour to cross to Jordan and around two hours to come back. There were a number of Palestinians coming back from Mecca from the holiday of Eid al-Adha. I saw a number of large jugs of holy water being carried across the border. Unfortunately, no pictures are allowed while crossing, so I can’t show you what we saw.
With the large time to cross, it gives the impression that these are two different lands. However, that is only a recent reality. In fact, these lands contain almost the same geography. One aspect we often discussed was if these lands are easier to divide or combine. Are they naturally connected or disconnected? Is the Jordan River a barrier or one that allows easy flow of traffic?
One of our first stops was the ancient city of Pella. In the first century many Christians fled there from Jerusalem and Israel because of the Jewish Revolt, not wanting to be around when the Roman war machine destroyed the country. Looking west from the city, we could see the Jordan River Valley and Beth Shean on the other side, which we had been at just a couple weeks prior. In between were several miles of flat land and the river. Would Beth Shean feel more connected to Pella or another town out of sight in the hills on its side of the Jordan?
Later that same day we went farther north to Gadara. It’s situated just a few miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee. There are vantage points in the site where the lake is visible. More remarkably, we could see mountains south of Beth Shean that form the eastern side of the Jezreel Valley all the north to the city of Tiberias on the lake and the Arbel cliffs beside it. This makes the land feel small.
There was still much more to explore in this foreign land…