Today, we had the fewest sites to visit to date. However by far, the day seemed the longest. We visited three tels, hills that contain layers or strata of ruins and took a walk through a wadi, a valley that sometimes contains water. Our first stop was only a few minutes from the Super Bowl (Mactesh Ramon) where we stayed last night. Our first stop was the Tel Avdat. We visited an early Byzantine Church in a time when some of the liturgies still used today in the Orthodox Church were being developed. Also, we got to see examples of a grape press and an olive press. The grape press was a large rather extensive press, where you had six areas surrounding the “press” to perhaps lay out individual crops for comparison to determine a percentage of the final juice. The center of the area was for stomping the grapes where the juice flowed into a lower vat for collection.
Our second “stop” was for a long walk through the Nahal Zin (wadi). We were experiencing travel in ancient times. While the walk was hot and exhausting, it was an exceptionally great time as we wound our way up the winding paths up, up and up to the rim of the deep wadi overlooking a tall trickling waterfall while exploring monk caves. It is very obvious that travel in this harsh land has never been easy.
Next, we traveled to Beer-Sheba. Here, we had a great example of seeing how ruins within a tel are literally built upon another. We could see the layers in the walls as the wall were built higher on top of previously built walls. It was also the site where the horned altar, now in the Israel Museum, was found. It was rather fun to crawl up upon the reconstructed altar for a photo opportunity. It was also interesting to have the ability to walk the city streets along the residential and commercial centers within the city, as the walls had been reconstructed enough to really get a feel of the layout of the city. It also afforded us another really neat underground tour of the water system of cisterns and passageways.
Our final destination was the Tel Arad, not far from our home-away-from-home stay on our last night of this field trip. This site was exceptional in that we were able to explore two differing sites in time. We began in a later period, Iron II (800 BC). In the tower on top of the hill overlooking the earlier lower site, we found the remains of a house of worship that had been respectively retired estimated during the reform of Hezekiah. It is really something to tread the ground where worshippers of the Old Testament had respectfully and sincerely worshipped the True Living God.
The lower site was from the Early Bronze period (2800 BC). It was amazing to walk through these two sites that housed its residents around 2,000 years apart. I had the fortunate opportunity to visit with Dr. Stone while returning to the bus hypothesizing potential reasons for the seemingly abandonment of this site as well as others throughout the greater region all around the same time period.
The day was one great big adventure of exploring and hiking but along the pathways of our patriarchal fathers in the land given to be a blessing to His people…
Shalom
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