We spent 4 days in the Negev and Judah Wilderness around the Dead Sea. This post reflects on those days.

Israel Day 2: The Negev Wilderness – Part 1

The view from our hotel balcony. Not bad, right?

Stop 1: Ein Advat

Day 2’s stops didn’t include any biblical places, but were beautiful and informative, nonetheless. Ein Advat is a national park in the Negev desert but it reminded me a lot of Zion National Park in Utah, as far as the high cliff walls and walking up the side of cliffs. The first part of the hike was pretty easy and level. We walked along a stream that is fed by a spring further on, before we were pointed up some stairs that were carved into the side of the wall we were walking along! That part of the hike reminded me a lot of Angel’s Landing; definitely tricky for those afraid of heights! The steps were carved into the cliff, with a couple chains and handles on your right side, but nothing to your left to keep you from plummeting down the hard rocks below. I don’t know how the kids that were there for field trips did it.

We found some shade and received a really nice lecture comparing the 10 Commandments being wedding vows between God and His church. Something like, I am your husband. You will have no other husbands. You will not lie to your husband. You will not kill your husband (lol), etc. I really liked that lesson, anyway.

After our lecture, we climbed yet another set of stairs up another wall we were walking next to! This one took you to the top, where luckily our bus was waiting for us! Again, the views reminded me a lot of Zion and made me feel like if you can climb Angel’s Landing, you can climb anything!!!

 

Stop 2: Advat

Not to be confused with Ein Advat. We paused for lunch here and watched a short, 10-minute presentation on Advat and the surrounding area. Advat was one of the major cities/stops on the Incense Road from Petra to Gaza. You could totally imagine a 100-camel long train (with each camel carrying 500lbs of incense and spices), walking down the road. By the way, I found out later that this is where the “Jesus Christ, Superstar” movie/musical was filmed.

Stop 3: Wadi

I don’t remember the name of the Wadi, but on our way back to the hotel, the bus pulled over on the side of the road and dropped us all off, to go hike down to a wadi (a dry riverbed, or a valley in which rain water would travel through) all the way back down to the Dead Sea. This might have been my least favorite hike on the trip; mainly because we were walking on top of stones, rocks, pebbles, and otherwise loose ground.

Israel Day 3: The Negev Wilderness – Part 2
The Judah Wilderness Part 1

Stop 1: Arad

Our first stop of the day was the area of Tel Arad. This was generally the area where Abraham pleaded with God to spare the destruction of Sodom where his nephew Lot was living, about 20 miles away. We huddled around a well which was around during Abraham’s time, and walked up to the ruins of a town. One of the buildings was still standing (or at least reconstructed with a roof), so we went in to seek a little shelter from the sun and wind. We got a lecture about what it meant to be behor, the head of a Bet Ab like Abraham was. A Bet Ab is that group of people that live under the protection of the patriarch (behor, like Abraham). So when you watch movies or read picture books of people who lived in the middle east and huge communities under one leader, etc; that’s a Bet Ab. Anyway, we got a breakdown of 3 things that the behor was obligated to do:

1) He has to rescue his people when they’re in trouble.
2) He has to take on the debt of the people he brings into his behdov (like Boaz did with Ruth).
3) He is responsible to find people without a behdov, to bring them into his behdov.

Sounds a lot like Jesus…
He rescues us from sin.
He paid the debt of our sins and brought us into the family of God.
He pursues all of us, whether we know Him or not, to bring more people into His family.

What a revelation! So cool!!

Stop 2: CAMELS!

We hopped back on the bus and took some winding roads through the desert, occasionally seeing sheperds with their heards, and roaming camels. The whole bus made a fuss about seeing the camels on the side of the roads; I don’t know why we did that, but we were all excited about seeing them haha… At one point, Ronin got on the PA and told us to leave our backpacks for the next stop, but bring our drivers’ license. What???

So we stopped into a dirt lot in the middle of nowhere and realized that we were about to RIDE a camel!!! It was said while we were in Advat the day before, that the camels that brought spices across the desert on the Silk/Spice Road, carried up to 500lbs of cargo a-piece, so we all rode 2 per camel. There were jokes about this was Camelot (Camel. Lot. Get it?) and how the day was Hump Day even though it was Tuesday.

The camel ride took about 30 minutes out along the road and back, and was an attraction that a roadside inn provided, run by some Arabs or maybe Bedouins. After the ride, we went onto the property where there was a giant Bedouin tent, which we went into, sat on comfy mats and listened to Ronin talk about hospitality on the Silk Road while a gentleman in a keffiyeh (which I think are beautiful!) served us Turkish tea and coffee (it was delicious).

Part of the lesson included how these places were a place of safety and that everybody was welcome to stay for 3 days, no questions asked. In the middle of the desert, people don’t tend to stay for long periods of time, they’re usually just passing through. So if someone was staying for an extended amount of time, traditional Bedouin hospitality allowed strangers to stay for 3 days, sleep under their tent, eat their food, with no questions asked. After the third day, it would be appropriate for the host to ask what the deal was and when the stranger was moving on. We go another tidbid about how when a host poured coffee, they never filled your cup completely if you were a welcome guest. But if they filled your cup completely, it meant disrespect and they wanted you out. I thought it was pretty interesting learning about the culture and traditions of other peoples.

Stop 3: Masada

 

The final stop of the day was Masada. Again, not really a biblical spot (except that Herod the Great built it as his worst-case-scenario escape palace) but more of an Israel history lesson. It hasn’t really been a historical site until recently; the nation of Israel didn’t really care to remember when the Romans seized the fort from the Zealots during the 6-Year War. We hiked all that way and it was 108, though I was grateful we took the Roman siege ramp, and not the Snake Trail on the other side, which seemed to wind down forever! I was also grateful for the cable car we took down from the top haha…

In Masada, we toured Herod’s two bath houses, cisterns, storehouses, and Herod’s palace, including his patio that overlooked the Jordan Rift Valley and Dead Sea. We also took a brief beak inside the synagogue, where an Orthodox Jewish scribe was hand-writing a copy of the Torah. It kind of inspired me to hand-write my own copy of the Bible. We will see if that happens, but it might be neat to do. A couple people stopped him to ask to write names of their children on little cards, which I kind of thought was neat, but also kind of didn’t want to interrupt the scribe or burden him. He had beautiful handwriting, which I’ve been looking for, for my next tattoo.

I kind of chuckle right now, looking at my notes as I update this blog. Day 3, and I had already felt like we’d been in Israel for a week.

Israel Day 4: The Judah Wilderness Part 2

Ein Gedi was the only stop for the day, and I have to admit this was one of my Top 3 favorite days in Israel.

This is the place David hid when Saul was chasing him (it’s also in Songs of Solomon 1:14). After hiking up what ended up being equivalent of 47 flights of stairs in 108-degree heat with little to no shade, it really drove home what it means for Jesus to be living water. We arrived at a spring, and where there’s a spring, there’s trees, which means shade! The pastor shared a story and message about Saul chasing David through the area, and how honorable David was, having the opportunity to kill Saul but sparing his life and asking for peace instead. And then the pastor jumped into the spring!!! We were all shocked, like “what the heck are you doing!? You’re soaking wet!” But we all ended up jumping into the spring, you know, because it was 108-degrees out. It was so refreshingly cool (in temperature and figuratively).

We continued to hike on to some waterfalls and pools, and got another lecture in the Dodim cave, before we were given an hour to “swim” in one of the three pools we came across. Most of us just sat in the pools to cool off, fully clothed except for taking our socks and boots off.

After an hour of relaxing in the cool pools, we continued our trek to the David Waterfall, which was really pretty. As we were getting ready to head out again, we realized one of the women in our group was missing. Long story short, our Israeli tour guide and another member in our group went back to retrace our tracks while the rest of us continued on, and she did eventually show up unharmed (no heat exhaustion, injury, etc). I don’t know yet how she ended up missing, she joked about using the bathroom and coming back and everyone was gone. I don’t know if she was joking or not. But she ended up going all the way back to the buses where we started, thinking Eli was there. He wasn’t; he was at our destination, starting to unload our lunch. I guess the bus drivers in the area kind of all know each other though, because Eli got a phone call from the bus that the woman had run back to, and he left to go pick her up and bring her back. We were all definitely a bit worried about her up until then. She said she was so scared the pastor was going to be mad at her, but I think most of us knew it was the rest of us that were going to get in trouble for losing someone. We had “tribe checks” where we had a small group of people we would make sure were present before continuing to the next place. Kind of like the buddy-system, but with a group of 4-6 people. That storm never came though. I think he knew we all felt bad and was relieved that she came back safe and sound.

 

Anyway, after our picnic lunch, we got another lecture in an old synagogue before heading back to the hotel so we could go swim in the Dead Sea! Cross THAT off the bucket list!! The water was unfortunately either the same temperature it was outside (104), or warmer. So while trying to sink and failing was fun, it wasn’t refreshing in the slightest. Floating was pretty cool though! It was a really weird sensation!

Israel Day 5: The Judah Wilderness Part 3

Today we transitioned out of the Dead Sea and headed north to Galilee.

Stop 1: Qumran

Our first of two stops was to Qumran. This is where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found! We got to see two of the caves (#9, and I don’t know what the second one was) on our trip up to the top of the mountain. It was equivalent to 74 flights of stairs, but like I mentioned earlier, my fitbit numbers are lower than 4 other people wearing the same model fitbit, so we could have climbed higher for all I know. It was in the high 90’s today, and no shade on the hike. The top of the mountain was also apparently where Moses arrived at the Promise Land. The farms you see in the picture attached weren’t there at that time. I didn’t realize the Promised Land was the land surrounding the Dead Sea. From the top of the mountain, we could also see the area where Elijah ascended to heaven, and where Jesus was baptized. It’s hard to see in the photo, but there’s a little point of land towards the top of the sea, and Jesus was baptized within a mile of there.

 

I was surprised to find that what I had imagined the Judah wilderness to look like, was actually at the TOP of the mountain! The top of the mountain looked a lot more like a desert than most of the other places we had gone to.

Stop 2: Shepherd’s Cave

Our second stop was in a shepherd’s cave somewhere. Literally every inch of the inside was covered in pigeon and sheep poop (not even exaggerating), so I was ready to leave almost as soon as we got there.

That stop was supposedly mostly to break up the 3-hour drive to Galilee. On the way to Galilee, we went through an Israeli checkpoint leaving the West Bank and some people on the bus were making a big fuss about one of the guards having an assault gun. As if they didn’t notice the 20-something kid at breakfast a few days ago with a gun slung around his back, or the 3 or 4 kids at Masada with guns across their backs. I guess I kinda expected it after seeing photos from Uncle Karl’s trip to Israel in November. It was strange and curious to me, but also kind of normal? I didn’t feel uncomfortable or worried at all and almost never gave it a second thought.

Our Israeli tour guide gave us the history and explained to us what the West Bank is. I had no idea Jordan isn’t even supposed to exist today (WTH, Britain?!).

We arrived at our hotel on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee right at dinner time. Mary and I decided to run down to check out the shore before heading to dinner though, of course.

The Story Continues at Israel Part 2: Galilee.