A Trip to Israel: Sorek Valley, Beit Lehi, and Elah Valley

One of the greatest shifts in thinking I had in Israel had to do with the scenery. 

Mark Twain visited Israel in 1867 and described it as a ".....desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds--a silent mournful expanse....There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country." I left for Israel thinking Mark was right. I always pictured Jerusalem looking like this. The Middle of Nowhere starts a few miles out of Billings and pretty much extends nearly to Colorado. It's what we see whenever we drive to visit the kids in Colorado: boring brown with a few random tufts of grass or grey tumbleweed, with one or two scraggly trees thrown in from time to time.

Nowhere, USA

Imagine my surprise (and delight) to see the colors of Jerusalem.

When we drove out of the city and into the countryside, we were greeted by an explosion of flowers.

 Even the cows couldn't resist smelling the blooms.

The hills everywhere were blanketed in yellow.

Rocks were astonishingly plentiful--no wonder rocks are used so often in New Testament symbolism.

The stones were often gathered into picturesque fences.

I was astonished at the variety of flowers: white,

several shades of yellow,

purple,

 red,

poppy red,

pale purple,

and bright purple.

The land was bursting with color, and I couldn't help think about how THIS is the time of year Christ was born and resurrected. The intensely alive fields of Israeli spring are a vivid reminder of birth and rebirth, pointing observers to Christ.

Of course, the heat of summer will end this beauty and perhaps the place WILL look more like Nowhere, USA. It was interesting to learn that most of the trees were cut down by invading Turks. Most of the trees growing today were planted after the end of the 18th century.

Our travels on Friday, March 13 began at Sorek Valley. This is the home of Delilah, that secret-wormer-outer, hair-cutting woman who ruined Samson's life.

Modern day Sorek is situated between Jaffa and Jerusalem. 

This was the beginning of my realization about the close proximity of Bible places. I imagined Samson's story taking place at least a day's drive from the stories of Jesus, but nearly everything in Israel is within a day's walk. Suddenly, it was easy to picture Christ walking throughout the country, healing, blessing, and teaching people.

From Sorek Valley, we headed to Beit Lehi, or house of Lehi. This area is also known as Beit Lei. According to the official beitlehifoundation.org website, the original name "Jerusalem Cave" became Beit Lehi when an Israeli archaeologist named Joseph Ginat became interested in the site and went to investigate it. "While doing so he was surprised to meet a Bedouin who told him that just above this cave, about 1/4 of a mile away, were the remains of an ancient oak tree. This was the place where, according to the traditions and legends of the Bedouins, a Prophet named Lehi sat while he blessed and judged the people of Ishmael as well as the people of Judah. the Bedouin said that Lehi lived many years before Muhammad." It's murky if there is a connection to the LDS Lehi. "Lehi", by the way, is Hebrew for "jawbone" and the near-by valley where Samson killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass is called "Valley of Lehi". Some think even the name should not be interrupted as Lehi=Jawbone, but as Lei=twisting and believe there's been too much made of a connection to a Book of Mormon prophet. Nevertheless, it's an interesting place. 

This archaeological dig was discovered by road workers. The original find was 8 skeletons in a burial chamber.

We took a nice, bumpy ride out to the dig.

The first place we viewed at this dig was a space used to make olive oil, used in temple ceremonies. In this area, a coin dating to second half of the first century AD was found. However, this place is much older, probably dating back to 600 BC, according to several sources.  The original floor was used as a quarry, and the coin was found in the soil in this "second use" level.

 With 90 members in our tour group, there were sometimes too many people to really be able to see, photograph, and be where we wanted to be.

If you study the space above the door of the olive press room, you can see some symbols etched into the stone, including a 7 candle menorah. Etched into other places are some of the oldest known references to God and Jerusalem.

This room took 3 years to excavate. 

This room was smallish, but tall-maybe 20' from floor to ceiling. The original floor was lowered when a subsequent group used this space as a quarry.

The stones were left in the same positions they were found in. Although Stan may appear to have turned to stone, he is not original to this area.

 The ceilings had collapsed in some these rooms, and the stones from the ceiling were neatly stacked, but no one is sure when that might have happened or why the stones had been tidied up.

This stone was about 4' across.

I believe this space, found on the right of the room, is an oil vat. It's hard to remember what every picture shows, but I remember a vat in here somewhere.....

 Next to the oil press room was a ritual room, used by workers to wash themselves before making the oil. The pool was fed by falling water. Levitical law requires washing to be done using flowing water. As our guide explained, basically workers baptized themselves  each morning before they made oil to use in the temple.

Picture of the roof of the room. Looks like the local version of popcorn ceiling.

        The hole in the wall on the left leads to an underground tunnel and was added later. Not later                                                 as in last year, but later as in early AD.

Although this dig has been going on since 1983, work is done only 3 weeks at a time, twice a year. BYU is a big supporter of this place, and Cleon Skousen was heavily involved in getting the project going.

 There is still plenty of work to do. They estimated 22% percent of the dig was uncovered in the last 10 years, but new things are constantly uncovered. For example, one day a worker was digging when he fell into an opening and screamed in terror.  All of the others workers screamed too, but they were screaming for joy because they knew the first worker had fallen into an undiscovered chamber and they were excited about the new find.

One of the interesting places that has been extensively excavated here is the columbarium. This is the place they keep the turtle doves, used for temple sacrifice. 

There were thousands of these little triangles cut into the rocks of this underground structure.

These openings are maybe an inch and a half or two deep, apparently just the right size for nesting doves.

There are large holes in the ceiling to let in air and sunlight, as well as provide a way for the doves to get in and out.

These columbariums are still used by modern birds-we saw the remnants of eggs, and plenty of fertilizer. The intrepid ancients gather up the bird poop and used it in their fields. Sounds like a fun job.

Another picture of the open skylight.

At one point, workers found evidence of another room behind one of the walls, and with great excitement opened it up, 

only to find a whole bunch more of these.

Land 'o lots 'o rocks. This dig borders a military firing range, so we avoided wandering too far.

This is an underground stable uncovered in this dig. There are five steps going down into the stable, and the size of this room indicates it was likely home to donkeys. The feed for the animals was placed in these arches. 

When I asked, I was told this hole has the delicate name "Donkey Urine Pit". It would have had a capstone.

Long view of the feeding area. 

A couple of token animals.

This place is full of caves.

I'm not going to lie, caves make me anxious. They're just a little too claustrophobic for me. Nevertheless, I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity to see what was down below.

The final spot we investigated at the dig were the remains of this incredible Byzantine church. These mosaic floors date back to 5th -8th century AD.

Some of the mosaic have been covered with a kind of cement or plaster to protect it until proper steps can be taken to permanently preserve it.

A depiction of James and John. Some of these looks so modern. Hard to believe they are around 1500 years old. 

Anyone care to read this to me?

This was just beyond the mosaic floor, part of the same ancient church. Great view!

It kind of troubled me that we were allowed to tromp all over these delicate, ancient floors.

Imagine the time it took to lay all of these little tiles. There's no way I'd let guest walk on my floor if it looked like this. These mosaic floors were uncovered by Dr. Skousen and another anthropologist in just 2 hours. Because there was a cemetery on top of the tiles, it could be determined there were practicing Christians here until the 8th century BC.

Subsequent groups took the time to erase the faces and other details that clashed with their beliefs, 

but they missed a few faces here and there.

This checkerboard was in the baptismal area. You can see some words in the center which translate as "Righteousness to all who enter".

Baptismal area.

A really fancy cistern. 

More olive press equipment.

 Stan doesn't have enough t shirts (yes he does), so he bought one under the guise of supporting the dig. He and Bob posed with Oren Gutfeld, the head archaeologist and a graduate from Hebrew University. He is well acquainted Mormons, and mentioned BYU is currently building a museum to house exhibits related to this place.

The roads in this area are rough, bumpy, mostly dirt, but we climbed back on the bus and headed to the Elah Valley.

Here David met Goliath and gave him a headache.

Michael Wilcox, our guide pointed out the area the Philistines lived, up there in the trees,

and the place David's side would have come from, up over the mountain. Bro. Wilcox talked about how David came down from the mountain alone, just as we all need to come down from our mountains alone at times in life, and lead the charge.

This was another great day. The scenery was incredible and I'd never seen an archaeological dig. Amazing.