Travel Blog!

An update on each day of our Study Tour!

For the next week and a half I will be sending nightly travel updates for our tour! Click the button below in order to subscribe and receive them!

Bless God we made it safe, COVID free, and mostly awake through our first day of seeing the Holy Land. We visited 4 sites in the Shephelah (the contested land between Israel and the Philistines in Bible times). Tel Gezer—where we learned about Solomon’s grandeur, city gates, standing stones, and the geopolitical importance of controlling trade routes.

After this, we moved down near Samnson’s hometown Beth Shemesh—in the Soreq valley (vine valley) and considered how difficult a prospect it was for a Nazarite to live among the vineyards. More powerful though was the lesson we were taught by our local guide Ronen Ben Moshe—who took us into an ancient broken cistern and drew our attention towards Jeremiah 2 (Go look it up!). While the cistern may have no longer held water—it certainly had excellent acoustics—we sang two songs before moving on.

Tel Azekah was our next stop—an outstanding place to read David’s confrontation with Goliath as Azekah overlooks the Valley of Elah. We finished our day at Lachish considering the fall of Judah and what that means for the people of God.

For those of you on the trip follow this link to join a Google photoshare. It would be good to have all of our pictures in the same place!

See you tomorrow!

Zachary McCartney