BENJAMIN!!

Friday we got on the bus at 7 am, early morning, and we started our trek around the Benjamin area! We started by going to a place called Beth-schmesh. This place is important because it is a passage way throught the Sorek Valley. It is also very important for the man named Sampson, the really strong guy from the Bible, who was born and buried in a place called Zorah no more than a half mile away. We then traveled up to Gezer passed Emmaus Nicopolis, which is mentioned in the Biblical text, and then arrived in Gezer. At Gezer we saw some amazing things! We got to see the Coastal Plain of Israel off the Mediterranean see! This was completely different because we have been going through a lot of hills from the Hill country. It was amazing to see so many beautiful cities along the Coastal plain and for the people of the plain it was nice becuase it was easy to farm but back in the day when the super powers of the world like Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, and Rome wanted to go through it was a terrible place to live because of all of the pillaging and stuff like that. Then we traveled to a place called Nebi Samwil. This place was an amazing look out area but also used a fortress back in the day for many different forces. They would come up on the ridge and be able to look out and see Gibeon, Jerusalem, which most were after, and smaller villages along the way. This place was called Nebi Samwil because it means the Prophet Samuel. They say that Samuel was buried under the sanctuary that is there. I am a little sceptical of this because in the Biblical text it says that he was buried in Rammah. So i believe what the Bible says and not what traditions say. Then we traveled to a place called the Lookout which looked out over the Judaean wilderness! This was completely different then what I imagined, because i thought it would be a lot of flat area like the Coastal Plain but nope! It was all hill country and it was really rough terrain. There were rocks everywhere and it was insane to get down the mountains and back up again. Me and a friend, Joe Minks, decided to go all the way down to the valley below and get a better view of the Wilderness from down there. It was intense! There were so many places to fall and slip and break something or even die! But getting down there and seeing what we saw was awesome. The view from the bottom was rolling hills and more hills. The valley was pretty massive in size unlike what it looked like from above. We then had to turn around and go all the way back up the mountain and that was just terrible. I was in so must pain, and just felt so dehydrated! But it was amazing.
We then traveled to a little place called JERICHO!!! It was amazing! The weather was awesome, and it was so much different than anything we had seen up until then! The archeological digs of the city walls were so awesome! And there stood a huge rounded tower in the middle of a dig, done by Kathleen Kenyon. This tower was amazing! It was from the Neolithic age. According to most scholars Jericho is considered to be the oldest city on the planet dating back to 6000 BCE and is considered to be the very first city with walls around it. Such an awesome place! So beautiful and so amazing!