In the meantime, one of the girls on our trip has let me borrow her camera from time to time so that I can take some picture while we are up here in the north.
Today we stayed pretty focused on the Jezreel valley. What is important about the Jezreel valley you ask? Ok, I’ll tell you. The Jezreel valley is a kind of giant crossroads in Israel, anyone going north or south to Egypt, to Mesopotamia, to Damascus, to Greece will pass through the Jezreel valley. There were a ton of important stuff that happened in the Jezreel valley. It is where Saul went to visit the witch of en-dor, it is where Saul fought his last battle and committed suicide, it is where Ahab’s body ended up and dogs licked up his blood, it is where Jezabel was thrown from the window of a tower and was eaten by dogs, it is where Deborah and Baruk (book of Judges) defeated one of the –ites that were oppressing Israel. It is where Gideon was from, and where all the Gideon stuff happened. It is where Elisha raised a woman’s son from the dead, and it is where Jesus raised a widow’s son from the dead. It also sits between Mt. Carmel (where Elijah faced off against the prophets of Ba’al, and the Nazareth ridge, where (you guessed it) Nazareth is.
Our first stop today was Megiddo (Armageddon means mountains of Megiddo) Megiddo is the city that guards the best pass through the Mt. Carmel range, but also the narrowest pass. We looked at some different stuff from Ahab’s time and from Solomon’s time at Megiddo, and we looked out at the valley of Jezreel and about the different routes that ran through the valley.
After that we went to the city of Jezreel, which is where Jezebel was when her eunics threw her out of a window and dogs ate her. There isn’t much that is visible on the tel (hill that the city is buried under), but we looked out at the valley and talked about the story of Jezebel and Ahab and how they met their demise.
(Looking into the Jezreel valley from Jezreel. Is this what you expected when you thought of the area where Jezebel was thrown from a tower and dogs licked up Ahab's blood?)
It’s funny, I had a comic book Bible when I was a kid that I loved and read a lot. In fact I think that I learned a lot of Bible stories from that comic book Bible. And the story of Ahab and Jezabel were so vivid that I still remember the pictures of dogs lapping up Ahab’s blood and Jezebel getting thrown out of a window. Even though it was for kids they didn’t pull any punches.
After Jezreel we went to lunch, which was pretty good. I have had a request to talk about the food so I will mention a few things here. Honestly the food in Israel is ok. We have had some good stuff to eat at most of the hotels that we’ve stayed in, but we have also had some stuff that was not great. In some ways it is thoroughly Middle Eastern, lots of hard boiled eggs, cucumbers, flat bread and hummus. Most places are Kosher which means no pork and no meat and cheese together (it probably means other things too.) The deserts have been more western, which has surprised me. I expected a lot of baklava, and a lot of honey and nut based desserts, but we have had a lot of chocolate desserts, there has been this cheese thing with honey that I don’t remember the name (but is good) that we have had a couple of times.
In Jerusalem there was a really good pizza place (not kosher) where we had Arabic cheese pizza, which tasted like it was a kind of feta that melted, and a meat pizza, which was like salami and turkey and roast beef.
At Joel’s house yesterday we had little homemade pizzas from a fire oven in the backyard that were made on homemade flat bread, and then you put hummus and tabouli on top.
But far and wide, the most popular food has been Magnums. Whenever we stop at a convenience store or gas station, someone gets on the bus with a Magnum. What is a Magnum? A Magnum is an ice cream bar coated in chocolate. They use good ice cream and good chocolate and sometimes add in fruit or other things. The best one that I had was pretty simple. It was a dark chocolate coating with vanilla ice cream and it was delicious (I had that one at the dead sea). I have also had one that was chocolate outside with chocolate inside and chocolate chunks in the chocolate ice cream. I had one that was called Magnum desire (you have to say desire in a whisper) that was not what I expected, it was white chocolate outside with strawberry icecream, chunks of cherries and raspberry swirl (that one was a little much for me), and I’ve had a plain milk chocolate and ice cream one. Perhaps the most fun food thing has been mystery candy on the afternoon in the bus. On days where we stop and there is a convieniance store I have started to by candy or snack food where the wrapper is completely in Hebrew and the picture gives you no idea of what it is. Then at some point (usually in the afternoon) I open it up and pass it around to the eight or ten people around me count to three and then we all eat it at the same time. Today’s mystery candy ended up tasting like crunch berries from Capitan Crunch. We all kind of wished that we had milk with us.
(Me standing in front of Nazareth.)
Ok, back to our day. After lunch we went to Nazareth. We didn’t spend much time in the city, what was a small village in Jesus time is now a pretty large city. We went up on a hill that overlooked the city and the valley and talked about a couple of stories that happened there.
After Nazareth we went up to an outlook that overlooked the Sea of Galilee. We didn’t do any teaching up there today but we did take out our atlases and find the major points of interest around the sea of Galilee. Then we hiked down from the ridge in a pretty fun hike, some of which was on steep enough and narrow enough trails that they required hand holds for large portions. Then we came to our hotel for the next three days, the En Gev Resort right on the sea of Galilee. Our back door actually opens up out to the sea. I haven’t tried to walk on it yet, I’m hoping that tomorrow we get back with a little bit of light left and I’ll give it a shot then.
(The sea of Galilee)
Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.
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