Up to the Heights—Day Three
In Hebrew, a sea is any large basin of water. So the Sea of Galilee is really more of a large lake than what you would typically consider a sea. Measuring thirteen miles north to south and eight miles east to west, with a maximum depth of 150 feet, it's a large shallow depression nestled into Israel's stretch of the Great Rift Valley, 200 meters below sea level. It's a perfect example of a local saying, God made everything in Israel, then He made it bigger everywhere else.
On this day, Galilee is shrouded in mist as its coastline bends to the north of us. We wind our way around the eastern shore through Tiberias with its early Roman hot springs, which are still in use today. A few kilometers north we find our destination in the village of Gosinar, the Yigan Allon Center. From its small spit of a dock, we board the boat which will carry us over the waters that Jesus walked on.
Soon we're underway, setting out across the water. The overcast yields to a strengthening sun as we sing, 10,000 Reasons...
The sun comes up
It’s a new day dawning
It’s time to sing Your song again...
The morning brings to mind Luke 1:78, "...because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven." God meets us here on this morning as He always does when His people praise Him. We sing. We dance. And we rejoice in the Lord together.
After disembarking, we hop on the busses and head north to Israel's panhandle. Our next stop is the northern city of Dan. Along the way, our road hugs the Tel Hazor, the largest of its kind in all Israel. Not to be outdone, Mount Hermon gives us a peak of its snowy flanks, parting the curtain of its cloud cover. Arriving at Dan we tour the old city's excavation after a short hike along the river Dan, one of three key tributaries for the Jordan.
We read from Psalm 42 at the river's edge.
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God...
O my God, my soul is cast down within me;
Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan,
And from the heights of Hermon,
From the Hill Mizar.
Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls;
All Your waves and billows have gone over me.
Standing by the river, hearing the sing-song rhythm of its lush surge, it's easy to see why David conjured its imagery in his masterful verse. Understanding the geography of the Upper Galilee helps us appreciate the virtuosity of Israel's great poet-king. In Israel, history is linked to geography. And this fertile highlands cradled multiple settlements in near proximity where water supplies and defensible land are abundant.
A short walk brings us out of the wooded river bed to the city of Dan. Water and stone are married in Israel. Where there is water there is life, and where there is life there are people. Where there are people there is construction. And where there is construction there is stone. The native volcanic basalt is everywhere, an abundant supply of building material. It's rustic tones lend a somber air to the ruins.
That's appropriate for Dan's history. You may remember it from the story of Abraham's march there with his fighting men to rescue Lot. It was also where Jeroboam instituted a rival cultic worship to undermine the nation's solidarity after Soloman's death and the ensuing civil war.
As we round the southern face of the site, we discover the remains of the city gates. Dan was a fortified city, with a series of defensive gates at its entrance. They served to protect what lay within the walls, but they also rendered an important civic function. It was there that the King and the city's elders would conduct business and dispense justice. The ruler sat on a raised, covered dais with an adjacent bench for his councilors.
We proceeded on foot from our first stop to a remarkable 4000-year-old Canaanite site that lay nearby. Abraham's Gate. It's there that Abraham would have first encountered a settlement in the Promised Land. He had traveled the length of the Fertile Crescent from Ur of the Chaldeans, through Haran, and finally into the land of Canaan, where Dan lay astride this well-traveled trade route.
As we move back to the time of the gates, think of a little boy growing up in a large metropolis. His father was a successful businessman. He made and sold small figurines that were popular with the people. One day the little boy’s father asked him to watch the family’s shop. His dad told him, “This is a big responsibility. Do you think you can take care of it while I’m gone?”
“Of course, papa. I will.”
“Good boy. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
When his father returned later that day he found the shop in complete disarray, with all of the figurines, smashed on the floor. The father vented his anger, “How could you have done this. You’ve ruined all of our inventory!”
“But I didn’t papa. He did.” The boy said, pointing to the only figure left standing. “It’s like I told you Papa, there’s only one God.”
One of our tour guides, Susan, shared this imaginative dramatization of a conversation between Abram and his father. Hearing it at Abraham’s Gate reminded us of an important truth. Both Judaism and then Christianity can trace their roots back to Abram, renamed Abraham by God. It’s hard to overstate everything of consequence that flowed from his simple, “Yes.” A people of promise in a land of promise walked by the promised Anointed One, who ultimately fulfilled God’s first promise—to crush the head of the Serpent.
The next leg of our trip took us from B.C. to A.D. as we landed in Caesarea Phillipi. It was there that Jesus said the Gates of Hell will not stand against His Church. It’s easy to think of that expression in figurative terms until you travel there. The most obvious feature that greets your arrival is the large rock outcropping where the city was built.
A huge cave punctures the side of this mountain and from that wound flows the life of Israel, as a lush spring feeds the Banias River which is another key source for the Jordan. Before an earthquake that occurred a couple hundred years ago, the waters existed the mouth of the cave. Collapsing stone from the quake filled the deep well with tons of stone and altered the water’s course. Ancient Canaanite people believed the well to be bottomless and the cave to be the gateway for Baal when he traveled between his spiritual realm and this world.
The mysterious awe of this site continued into the Age of Alexander where the worship was Hellenized and Pan took the place of Baal. Phillip, Herod the Great’s son, wanted to ingratiate himself to Caesar (and glorify himself in the process), so he built a beautiful Greco-Roman Temple at the site, which framed the cave’s opening, and a city aptly named Caesarea Phillipi. The city was a center of pagan worship in the Land with practices so deviant that they were particularly abhorrent to observant Jews.
It was here that Jesus took his disciples to ask them a specific question, “Who do people say that I am?” Peter’s confession of faith prompted praise from his Lord and a new name. Matthew 16 records the conversation and is paralleled in Mark 8.
And to think, we fit all that in before lunch!
After a hearty meal at a Druze restaurant, we departed for a jeep tour in the Golan Heights near the Syrian border. While it was shirtsleeves weather in the lower altitudes with pleasant temperatures and kisses of the sun, the Golan’s raw winds, and Oregon-like cloud cover chilled us the bone.
We traveled through a part of Israel that still bore the scars of the Six Day and Yom Kippur wars. We passed bullet-riddled outposts that were once the front lines of the Syrian army. Cows grazed in fields dotted with small, utilitarian buildings whose mortar damage gave testimony to their use. Rows of grape arbors start and stop without explanation until one notices the international symbol for minefields hanging at intervals on the naked barbed wire. Close to the road, it’s easy to see where wind and rain have unmasked some of the anti-personnel mines.
On this day, Galilee is shrouded in mist as its coastline bends to the north of us. We wind our way around the eastern shore through Tiberias with its early Roman hot springs, which are still in use today. A few kilometers north we find our destination in the village of Gosinar, the Yigan Allon Center. From its small spit of a dock, we board the boat which will carry us over the waters that Jesus walked on.
 |
A winter sunrise begins to burn off the evening's cloud cover
|
 |
| This image courtesy Steve Reiff |
Soon we're underway, setting out across the water. The overcast yields to a strengthening sun as we sing, 10,000 Reasons...
The sun comes up
It’s a new day dawning
It’s time to sing Your song again...
The morning brings to mind Luke 1:78, "...because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven." God meets us here on this morning as He always does when His people praise Him. We sing. We dance. And we rejoice in the Lord together.
After disembarking, we hop on the busses and head north to Israel's panhandle. Our next stop is the northern city of Dan. Along the way, our road hugs the Tel Hazor, the largest of its kind in all Israel. Not to be outdone, Mount Hermon gives us a peak of its snowy flanks, parting the curtain of its cloud cover. Arriving at Dan we tour the old city's excavation after a short hike along the river Dan, one of three key tributaries for the Jordan.
 |
Tumbling waters roil during the late winter snow melt.
|
We read from Psalm 42 at the river's edge.
As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So pants my soul for You, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God...
O my God, my soul is cast down within me;
Therefore I will remember You from the land of the Jordan,
And from the heights of Hermon,
From the Hill Mizar.
Deep calls unto deep at the noise of Your waterfalls;
All Your waves and billows have gone over me.
Standing by the river, hearing the sing-song rhythm of its lush surge, it's easy to see why David conjured its imagery in his masterful verse. Understanding the geography of the Upper Galilee helps us appreciate the virtuosity of Israel's great poet-king. In Israel, history is linked to geography. And this fertile highlands cradled multiple settlements in near proximity where water supplies and defensible land are abundant.
A short walk brings us out of the wooded river bed to the city of Dan. Water and stone are married in Israel. Where there is water there is life, and where there is life there are people. Where there are people there is construction. And where there is construction there is stone. The native volcanic basalt is everywhere, an abundant supply of building material. It's rustic tones lend a somber air to the ruins.
 |
The excavated and reconstructed gates lie within the area circled above.
|
That's appropriate for Dan's history. You may remember it from the story of Abraham's march there with his fighting men to rescue Lot. It was also where Jeroboam instituted a rival cultic worship to undermine the nation's solidarity after Soloman's death and the ensuing civil war.
As we round the southern face of the site, we discover the remains of the city gates. Dan was a fortified city, with a series of defensive gates at its entrance. They served to protect what lay within the walls, but they also rendered an important civic function. It was there that the King and the city's elders would conduct business and dispense justice. The ruler sat on a raised, covered dais with an adjacent bench for his councilors.
 |
This carved stone, an original from the excavation, would have supported a wooden beam,
one of four that supported a cover for the king's dais.
|
We proceeded on foot from our first stop to a remarkable 4000-year-old Canaanite site that lay nearby. Abraham's Gate. It's there that Abraham would have first encountered a settlement in the Promised Land. He had traveled the length of the Fertile Crescent from Ur of the Chaldeans, through Haran, and finally into the land of Canaan, where Dan lay astride this well-traveled trade route.
 |
Known as Abraham's Gate, this ancient entrance was built millennia
before the arch was believed to have been invented. |
 |
This model illustrates the way the gate looked in Abraham's time.
|
As we move back to the time of the gates, think of a little boy growing up in a large metropolis. His father was a successful businessman. He made and sold small figurines that were popular with the people. One day the little boy’s father asked him to watch the family’s shop. His dad told him, “This is a big responsibility. Do you think you can take care of it while I’m gone?”
“Of course, papa. I will.”
“Good boy. I’ll be back this afternoon.”
When his father returned later that day he found the shop in complete disarray, with all of the figurines, smashed on the floor. The father vented his anger, “How could you have done this. You’ve ruined all of our inventory!”
“But I didn’t papa. He did.” The boy said, pointing to the only figure left standing. “It’s like I told you Papa, there’s only one God.”
One of our tour guides, Susan, shared this imaginative dramatization of a conversation between Abram and his father. Hearing it at Abraham’s Gate reminded us of an important truth. Both Judaism and then Christianity can trace their roots back to Abram, renamed Abraham by God. It’s hard to overstate everything of consequence that flowed from his simple, “Yes.” A people of promise in a land of promise walked by the promised Anointed One, who ultimately fulfilled God’s first promise—to crush the head of the Serpent.
The next leg of our trip took us from B.C. to A.D. as we landed in Caesarea Phillipi. It was there that Jesus said the Gates of Hell will not stand against His Church. It’s easy to think of that expression in figurative terms until you travel there. The most obvious feature that greets your arrival is the large rock outcropping where the city was built.
A huge cave punctures the side of this mountain and from that wound flows the life of Israel, as a lush spring feeds the Banias River which is another key source for the Jordan. Before an earthquake that occurred a couple hundred years ago, the waters existed the mouth of the cave. Collapsing stone from the quake filled the deep well with tons of stone and altered the water’s course. Ancient Canaanite people believed the well to be bottomless and the cave to be the gateway for Baal when he traveled between his spiritual realm and this world.
 |
| The cave near Caesarea Phillipi known in Jesus' time as "The Gates of Hell |
 |
| The source of the Banias River flowing from springs beneath the cave entrance. |
The mysterious awe of this site continued into the Age of Alexander where the worship was Hellenized and Pan took the place of Baal. Phillip, Herod the Great’s son, wanted to ingratiate himself to Caesar (and glorify himself in the process), so he built a beautiful Greco-Roman Temple at the site, which framed the cave’s opening, and a city aptly named Caesarea Phillipi. The city was a center of pagan worship in the Land with practices so deviant that they were particularly abhorrent to observant Jews.
It was here that Jesus took his disciples to ask them a specific question, “Who do people say that I am?” Peter’s confession of faith prompted praise from his Lord and a new name. Matthew 16 records the conversation and is paralleled in Mark 8.
And to think, we fit all that in before lunch!
After a hearty meal at a Druze restaurant, we departed for a jeep tour in the Golan Heights near the Syrian border. While it was shirtsleeves weather in the lower altitudes with pleasant temperatures and kisses of the sun, the Golan’s raw winds, and Oregon-like cloud cover chilled us the bone.
 |
| Our jeep tour awaits us. |
But it is not only the land that bears the scars. As we roll into the small roadside rest area where our jeeps await us, we see out drivers. They have side arms. Some limp. A few are missing bits of an ear or a finger, at least as much as we can see. All have served in the military. The older men fought in those early wars. The younger ones have seen more recent combat. A tall youngish man with a leathery smile, we’ll call him Jossif, is clearly in charge and with famous Israeli warmth, welcomes us to our jeeps.
In short order, we are off road and touring the battlefield where the Six Day War was fought. The trail is wet, rutted, and well worn. At one point a vehicle gets stuck and we free it. We welcome a military convoy to our rear for a bit. It’s all so different from the lush, almost sleepy comfort we left behind in the valley.
Finally, we arrive at our destination. We enter the abandoned western headquarters of the Syrian army, where the general staff had its command post. The building has been in decay since the 1967 war, and the work bullet, mortar, and tank had left undone are now taken up by wind, rain, and ice. Our guides continually remind us to be careful in the dilapidated structure.
Finally, we arrive at our destination. We enter the abandoned western headquarters of the Syrian army, where the general staff had its command post. The building has been in decay since the 1967 war, and the work bullet, mortar, and tank had left undone are now taken up by wind, rain, and ice. Our guides continually remind us to be careful in the dilapidated structure.
The tour leader, Jossif, gathers us in the main lobby and begins to tell us about Israel’s fight for independence and security. Within minutes it’s clear that he is much more than a tour guide. With dizzying ease, he holds forth on the complexities of geopolitics within the Middle East. After his talk, we learn that he served seven years as a Special Forces paratrooper, and after his regular service continues to work in the reserve.
Even within 500 yards of the Syrian border, we felt quite safe.
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