Israel Experience (Day 5)

This morning we left the Sea of Galilee (boo) in Tiberias and headed up to Cana (yay) where the miracle of Jesus changing the water into wine took place.  The church there was absolutely beautiful.  We saw a basin that would have been used to fill up with water.  It was bigger than I had imagined it to be.  I bought wine from Cana and look forward to sharing it with my wife.

                We drove through Nazareth.  We did not stop at the Church of the Anunication, but we did pass by it.  Our next stop was the Mountain Precipice...where some angry Jews tried to throw Jesus off because of his revolutionary and perceived-as-blasphemous teaching.  This would have been the place many people were thrown over and stoned to death.  I always wondered where they got the rocks to stone people, when you go to the site, it's obvious, there are sizeable rocks everywhere.

View from Mountain Precipice 

  Large stones were abundant

Next, we made our way through Palestinian territory over to Megiddo.  Megiddo was really neat.  Throughout history Megiddo has been destroyed 25 times and rebuilt 25 times.  It made sense to the biblical writers that this would be the place the final battle would happen: Armageddon.  It was conquered and occupied so many times and was so sought after that it made sense.

It was so important for many years because it was located off of a main road called the Via Maris.  If you controlled this road you had power and money and wealth.  That’s why it was conquered so many times.  Ahab and Solomon both reigned from Megiddo.  

 Ruins of Megiddo

View from bottom portion of Megiddo - you can see why the area was sought after...so green and lush and conducive to most farming 

A manger...yes, probably similar to what Jesus was placed in...minus the water. 

The metal horses were a little out of place so why not have fun with it! 

Tunnel for the water system coming into Megiddo 

Again, no wonder it this area was considered so valuable.

We then went to what I would call was the highlight of the day: Jacob’s Well.  In Bible times this was Shechem today it is called Nablus.  What is so amazing about Jacob’s well is that people know it is the same well that Jesus used.  The church recently built there is absolutely stunning. We could see Mt. Carmel and we passed through Bet Sha’an and Shiloh. We could see Mt. Ebal and Mount Gezerim as well. 

The drive from Nazareth to Samaria was long.  When scripture says that Jesus traveled from Nazareth/Galilee through Samaria it wasn’t a short walk.  It wasn’t an easy walk.  It was long and hilly and stoney and difficult and probably took a week to do.

Another reason Jacob's well was so amazing is that driving this route to visit the place for tourists had been shutoff for a long time.  We drove through Palestinian cities and saw how their resources were so much fewer than that of the Israelis.  The conflict between the Palestinians and Israelis is one that involves the Jews coming into the land in 1948 because of World War 2 and being allowed by the UN to occupy the territory even though the Palestinians were already there.  Eventually there was a peace agreement that gave Palestinians some territory, however, the Jews kept building settlements within Palestinian territory to occupy more land and resources.  This conflict continues today.  Neither side has kept their end of the bargain with the most recent peace agreements.  The wall into Jerusalem is a constant reminder of the divide between Palestinians and Israelis.  That's my very brief and not-researched-enough understanding of the situation.

On a very different note, when we got back to Jerusalem where we would stay the next three nights, I was surprised to find that the key I was given actually worked for this room:

Yep, I was accidentally given a Presidential Suite!  I took it at as a blessing.

Views from the room of Jerusalem:

It was an amazing day even though it was a lot of bus riding.  We were on the bus for 3 hours, that's how long it would have taken in total to get back from Tiberias to Jerusalem going through Samaria...of course the stops along the way broke it up, but it was still a lot of time on the bus.

The dinner at this hotel (the Olive Tree) has been the best so far.  Check out the spread: