p. 199 | JERICHO by Eugenia Ralston

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 25, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 13

JERICHO

By Eugenia Ralston

BY EUGENIA RALSTON.

ANCIENT Jericho was situated on the plain of Jericho, at the western border of the Ghor, as the Jordan valley is called. It was six or seven miles from the Jordan, and about eighteen miles northeast of Jerusalem. It was the first city taken by Joshua on entering the promised land; and although it was surrounded by strong walls, the Lord gave it into the hands of his people without their striking a single blow. All that was required on their part was faith and prompt obedience. Joshua set fire to the city, and such parts as were not burned, he tore down, thus completely destroying it. A curse was pronounced upon the one who should rebuild it; namely, that when he should lay the foundations of the wall, he would lose his oldest son, and when it was finished, would be deprived of his youngest. Five hundred years afterward, in the reign of Ahab, it was rebuilt by Hiel, upon whom this curse fell.

A short distance back of the city rises Mount Quarantana, a desolate, barren hill, which, according to tradition, was the scene of our Saviour’s temptation. At the foot of this mountain, on the southeast side, is a wonderful fountain, thought to be identical with the one whose waters Elijah healed. It bursts forth from the eastern base of a high, double mound; and its waters are clear and beautiful, as well as pleasant to the taste.

This fountain and others in its vicinity rendered that part of the plain of Jericho exceedingly fertile. Josephus calls it “a divine region,” and says that it abounded in gardens and many different kinds of palms; the latter were so numerous that Jericho was called “the city of palm-trees.”

The land is still very fertile, but the inhabitants are too indolent to cultivate it. They leave this work for the mountaineers, who sow and reap on shares.

The Jericho of our Saviour’s time is supposed to have been about a mile and a half, in a southwesterly direction, from the site of the ancient city. Herod the Great, having bought it from Cleopatra, made it a magnificent city. It was on the great camel-route between Egypt and Damascus, and this, with its fine buildings, made it quite a popular place.

Directly west of the city opens the famous Wady Kelt, through which flows a small stream supposed to be the brook Cherith. Mr. Porter says, “The Kelt is one of the wildest ravines in this wild region. In some places it is not less than five hundred feet deep, and just wide enough at the bottom to give passage to a streamlet like a silver thread, and to afford space for its narrow fringe of oleanders. The banks are almost sheer precipices of naked limestone, and here and there pierced with the dark openings of caves and grottoes, in some one of which probably Elijah lay hid.”

The road from Jerusalem to Jericho leads through this valley; and here Christ places the scene of the Good Samaritan. Probably there was no other place so well calculated to bring before the minds of his hearers the picture which he wished to present; for its numerous caverns afford ample protection for thieves and assassins.

A modern writer says that, with the exception of the country beyond the Jordan, “It is to-day the most dangerous locality in Palestine.” In relating one of his adventures, he says, “Carelessly, while going through one of the wildest of these gorges, I fell behind my company, and did not awake to the fact of impending peril till a band of seven or eight Bedouins, on foot, met me, all armed with their matchlocks, and presenting the most ferocious and robber-like appearance. One of them stepped up and seized my horse by the bit, while the others stood and looked on; but they offered me no harm. I confess to a slight nervousness, and to an impatience to overtake my party, heightened by the shouts of the men, which echoed from crag to crag, and the rapid ring of the horses’ hoofs in the shadows of the projecting rocks. One must thus actually be in those solitudes to feel the full force and beauty of the admirable tale of the man who here fell among thieves.”

A person traveling alone in this gorge must expect to be robbed or killed; for at almost any time may be seen, on the cliffs and in the caverns, the skulking form of some lawless Arab, while his confederates are out of sight, but near by.

But Jericho, like the race who once inhabited that region, is a thing of the past. Its substitute is a squalid little village, called Riha, consisting of a few rude huts, and numbering about two hundred inhabitants. Where beauty and wealth once reigned, nothing is left but ruin and desolation. Its fountains are still “beautifully cool and sweet,” and its soil still fertile; but indolence and bad government have made it what it is,—a fulfilment of the denunciations of God against a rebellious people.