We began our day visiting the site on the Jordan River very near where John the Baptist did his baptizing, on the Israel/Jordan border, and possibly where Jesus was baptized. As we posed for a group picture, a white dove flew overhead. They are quite common in the area, but was still a unique experience.
We drove further south along the Dead Sea through the Judean Wilderness and soaring temperatures to Masada. It is a mesa rising high above the sea, and was the location of one of Herod the Great's palaces. The location in the arid wilderness was even possible because of the cisterns built within the palace complex that would capture the area's rare rainfall - 2 inches per year - and store it in caves and basins carved within the plateau. Herod never lived there, but the cisterns enabled over 900 Jews fleeing the Romans to withstand a siege for nearly a year before they chose death over slavery.
We also visited Qumran, where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered. Temperatures here reached nearly 108°! The Qumran residents of the 1st century also used cisterns to capture rainwater to meet their needs.
Our last stop was the Dead Sea itself where we floated - bobbed like a cork is more like it - in the very heavily salty water. It was hot, crowded, and the salt and mud felt odd to the skin. It was fun.
All the while we drank several liters of water to stay hydrated.
But despite the heat and lack of rainfall, it is amazing to see how much still grows there. Through the millennia, humans have found a way to meet their thirst needs in this dry land. And one man in particular wrote of what this need was like:
"O God, you are my God;
I earnestly search for you.
My soul thirsts for you;
my whole body longs for you
in this parched and weary land
where there is no water." (Psalm 63:1)
This picture was taken in En-Gedi, the area where David once hid.
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