June 2nd: The northern edge

Since I have been home from Israel, nary a Sunday goes by when I don’t give my wife a nudge in the middle of a sermon and whisper, “I was there!”—in reference to a Bible verse or other anecdote made by the pastor. I’ve been back for nearly four months, so now that I think about it, she’s probably getting tired of it. However, one thing that was so awe-inspiring about this trip is that I had the privilege to be at so many locations mentioned in the Bible. Some of these places were rather obvious, like the Temple in Jerusalem. But some were rather obscure. But in either case, I found all of these places fascinating just the same. On June 2nd we traveled to the north of the Sea of Galilee region to the extreme northern end of the country of Israel. We saw some well-known, and some not well-known, biblical sites.


“This is the account of the forced labor that King Solomon had imposed to build the Lord’s Temple, his own palace, the supporting terraces, the wall of Jerusalem, and Hazor, Megiddo, and Gezer.” 1 Kings 9:15 The photo you see here is the gate to the town of Hazor from the time of King Solomon. Yes, sirree, an actual “Solomonic Gate.” We saw many such gates in Israel (for instance, we also visited Megiddo and Gezer, mentioned in this verse from 1 Kings), and it never ceased to amaze me that we were looking at the actual walls built during the times of the Bible. Solomon built the town of Hazor as a fortress in order to defend Israel from would-be invaders from the north.


“Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’” Matthew 16:16 Later on we visited the town of Caesarea-Philippi, several miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had taken his disciples to this town to “get away for a bit” before His final journey to Jerusalem to be crucified. While alone with His disciples in this town, Jesus asked them a very pointed question: "Who do people say that I am?" The disciples had several responses. But then Jesus asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter, of course, answered with his famous confession.


In Caesarea-Philippi, we saw a large, heavy device (sorry I didn’t get a picture of it) that could be turned in a circle and leave an imprint in the sand. The imprint, which you can see in the photo here, commemorates the important interchange between Jesus and Peter in this town.


“The Danites set up the carved images for themselves. Jonathan son of Gershom, son of Moses, and his sons were priests for the Danite tribe until the time of the exile from the land.” Judges 18:30 This verse in Judges tells us that the tribe of Dan, in northern Israel, worshiped carved images over the course of several centuries. The photo you see here is a cultic site in the town of Dan, one of the places where this false worship was conducted.


By the end of the day we had made it pretty close to the northern border of Israel. The photo here shows a white gravel road toward the top of the photo and a gray gravel road parallel to it in the foreground (harder to make out). Before 1967, the gray gravel road was in Israel and the white road was in Syria. The border is now a few miles to the north of here, but this shows you just how close we were to the border. It also reminds me of just how much of the country we traversed in this three-week trip.

When our day was done, we returned to the resort at the Sea of Galilee and took a nice refreshing swim. On this day I had seen places that had references back to three very different times—the Judges, Kings, and the New Testament. This, I think, gives you a good flavor of the layers and layers (and layers) of history that exist all over Israel. Anyway, after a swim in the Sea of Galilee and a great dinner, it was once again time to prepare for the next day and get some rest. June 3rd would be the day that took us to many places where Jesus walked—including the Sea of Galilee itself!