Traveling to the South (Tuesday, June 22nd)

Today is the first day of our first three day trip into the Negev and the Southern reaches of the Judean Wilderness. Our 1st stop after leaving the school this morning was in the Valley of Elah between Soho and Azekah. Do you remember this place from your Bibles? It is the valley where the Israelites and the Philistines set up to face each other in battle. The Israelites (sadly under equipped with only farming equipment for weapons) against the Philistines (armed with all the latest battle technology). It was bound to be a blood bath. So the Philistines gave the Israelites a way out. (They could afford to be generous.) Just send one man out to fight our champion Goliath. Yeah Right! The guy was armed to the teeth with all of the latest equipment (an iron tipped spear! not to mention all his armor - he might as well have come out in a tank), he had been trained as warrior since childhood, AND he was enormous!! Well you know the rest of the story. David comes to bring food supplies to his brothers and decides to show them all (Philistines and Israelites alike) what the God of Israel can do!


From there we moved on to the ruins of Lacish where the horrific story of Senacharib's attack on the city came to life. You can still see the ramparts built up against the outside of the city wall by the attacking army to get in and the rampart built against the inside of the wall to meet their attack. And then to hear the written report (mostly from Senacharib's point of view as the Bible doesn't give much detail) about people being impaled on stakes outside the gate to be an example to those on the inside and to cause them to loose hope. The more I learn about his land the more I realize that it has always been a place of tension and bloody battles.

From there we drove down to Ashkelon, the Philistine city on the sea. Ashkelon is just a few miles north of the modern day Gaza Strip which was a little unnerving. At Ashkelon archeologists have unearthed a huge city, some of it dating back to the time of the Philistines, some to the time of the Romans. We got to walk along the shore of the Mediterranean. We couldn't actually swim because of the rip tides and the jelly fish but it was beautiful! We ate lunch with an ocean view. Let me just say that this all sounds very picturesque but the truth is that by lunch time I was having a hard time enjoying it because all I could think of was how dirty I was. Between the sweat and the dust (at Azekah the wind was blowing huge clouds of dust onto us) and the salt from the hot humid sea air all caking onto me, I don't think I have ever been so dirty in my adult life!

But the day ended well. We drove down to Mitzpah Ramon where we would spent the night. Mitzpah Ramon is a town built on the edge of a huge crater and as we got off the bus and walked to the edge, the view from where the ground falls dramatically away at your feet was breath taking. We had dinner and spent some fun free time in town and finally I got my shower and a chance to sleep.