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CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK
EXODUS
DR. DAVID ADAMS
#5
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>> Dr. Adams, my name is Eric. Your answer to Josh about the
land we now think of as Iraq was helpful to me. What about
another part of that region? I read somewhere that the Levant
where God gave the land of Israel to the Hebrews was called the
crossroads of the ancient world. What is meant by that?
>> Well, Eric, that phrase, the crossroads of the ancient
world, really underscores the importance, geopolitically
speaking, of the land of Israel. And geography plays an
important part in the history of the Old Testament.
Let me give you just two quick examples, one from
Deuteronomy Chapter 27 where God is telling the Israelites that
he wants them to renew the covenant that he has made with them
by having a certain ceremony. And as part of the ceremony some
of the tribes take a position upon the foothills of Mount Ebal
and the others take their position on the foothills of ***Mount
Gariseen. And across the valley between these two small
mountains or actually large hills by our standards, you know,
one side recites the curses of the covenant and the other the
blessings that go with the covenant.
And while you can certainly get a mental picture of that
without understanding this, to understand -- be able to
visualize the importance of the central mountainous spine of the
land of Canaan as the heart of Israel and where these two
mountains stand and the valley between them is important. And
in this case God uses it to make a theological spiritual point
for the people. The two mountains come to represent the
blessings and the curses associated with the covenant.
But now here is another example. And this one is a more
political or military example. In II Kings 23, we read -- we
read about the death of King Josiah. And we get just a very
sketchy phrase there in I Kings 23 (sic). We read -- Verse 29.
"In his days Pharaoh Neco, the king of Egypt went, up to the
king of Assyria to the river of Euphrates. Joshua went to meet
him. And Pharaoh Neco killed him at Megiddo as soon as he saw
him."
Now, that doesn't tell us a lot until you realize that
this valley, the valley at Megiddo, was an important pass
through which the major road passed. So the Egyptian army
coming up from Egypt to fight the Assyrians came up the major
highway, which because of the mountains made a turn through the
pass at Megiddo and then went onto the Euphrates. So what -apparently what Josiah attempted to do was to position his army
in this crucial pass to cut off the Egyptians. And here Josiah
was acting as a faithful client state to his Assyrian overlords
in this case in trying to prevent the march of the Egyptian army
through this narrow pass.
So much of the history of the Bible is tied up with an
understanding of the land in which it takes place and the
geography of the land.
Its location is crucial because it's
located right in the center between the three major powers of
the ancient world. To the east we've got Mesopotamia, the home
of Babylon and Assyria. We've already talked about that.
To the southwest we have Egypt. And we just saw in II
Kings 23 how Egypt became the crossroads of a battle that took
place between Egypt and Assyria. And Israel became involved in
it because of its location.
To the north we have the Hittites who aren't mentioned so
much in the Bible but were still a particularly important
economic source. And much of the trade took place along the
coast and down the road.
So Israel was a crossroads for military purposes. It was
a crossroads of trade. It was also a cultural crossroads where
Egyptian culture and the Mesopotamian Semitic cultures met one
another. And as a result, it was something of a melting pot of
-- between these three major cultures. So very important.
We mentioned earlier in answer to a previous question
that the land in general is dominated by these two major rivers,
the Orontes flowing to the north and the Jordan flowing to the
south out of the mountains of Lebanon. So I don't want to
mention those again. You can look back at your notes about
that.
But I do want to mention something about the land of
Canaan or later Israel itself. If we consider the land from
east to west, it's divided into five major geographical zones,
each of which is very important. The first of these, the one
closest to the coast, we call the coastal plain. In the north
it's called the Plain of Sharon. And you may have heard that
term from the Bible.
It's a flat plain. Very fertile land along the coast.
It was the course of one of the major highways, the way of the
sea or the way by the sea. That would have been the highway
that this Egyptian army would have marked up. It was also the
land because it was along the coast that the Philistines
settled. The southern part of this coastal plain became the
land of the Philistines. And that was a part of the land that
Egypt and Israel were always trying to fight over in -throughout their history. In fact, they still are today. That
part of the world we call the Gaza Strip that is still a bone of
contention today as it was in biblical times is the heart of the
southern part of this coastal plain.
Moving inland from this coastal plain, which is wider to
the south and gets narrow as you go to the north. But as we
move in from that, we get to the foothills of the mountains.
The term for this is the ***Shafala. The Shafala is the sort of
gradually rolling hills as you move from the plains to the
mountainous area in the heart of Israel. And the Shafala was
important because this is the place where the battles mostly
took place between the Israelites and the Philistines and the
Israelites and the Egyptians.
In these foothills the Israelites didn't want to come
down onto the plain and fight because they were people that
lived mostly in the mountains. And Egyptians didn't want to go
up into the mountains to fight because they gave up their
advantage of chariots and horsemen when they moved up into the
mountains. So most of the conflict came in this hill area, the
Shafala.
So it comes into the biblical story not so much as a
region but the names of the cities are mentioned as places where
battles took place. For example, it would have been in the
Shafala, in the foothills here, that David and Goliath here
would have had their famous fight. Moving further to the east
we come to the mountainous region that is really the heartland
of Israel. All of the major cities of Israel are located along
this central mountainous spine. Jerusalem is located there.
Bethel is located here. Shechem is located there. All of the
major cities, both of northern Israel and southern Israel, and
the people of Israel were primarily located in this mountainous
region.
These are small mountains by American standards. They
are not the Alps or the Bernese or the Rockies. But they are,
nonetheless, you know, small mountains or high hills, depending
on your perspective. It was enough that it made the, you know,
fighting chariot warfare difficult. And it was very important.
This is really the heart of Israel.
And then we come as we move east to this valley that's
formed by this great earthquake zone to this rift valley that we
know as the Jordan River. And if you look at pictures of
Israel, you can see how the land falls off precipitously from
the high mountains to this deep valley that is the Jordan River
Valley. And so for example, in the New Testament when the New
Testament says in the parable of the good Samaritan that he was
going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, you know, that's not
metaphorical language. He was literally going downhill. A long
way downhill, in fact, from Jerusalem to Jericho. Because
Jericho is on the edge of this Jordan rift valley and Jerusalem
is up in the mountains.
And similarly the Psalms, for example, the Psalms -- when
the psalmist says, "I look to the hills from which comes my
help, it comes from the Lord," well, again, he's speaking
literally there of Jerusalem being up in the mountains. But the
Jordan River valley is a deep cleft between the mountains on one
side and the last zone that we call the Transjordanian Plateau.
It's today where the modernization of Jordan is. And it's
really a -- once you cross -- come down through the mountains,
go through this deep valley formed by the Jordan River. And
then you immediately rise to a plateau that flattens out and
moves to the east.
Today the modernization of Jordan is there. And this is
the place where Moab and Edom were located in biblical times.
And of course the Transjordanian tribes, Reuben, Gad and the
half tribe of Manasseh were located on this Transjordanian
Plateau, as well. Again, this was a place of conflict because
the terrain made it possible for chariot warfare to take place
there.
So it was also a major place of battles. And Israel
fought a lot of battles on this plateau on the eastern side of
the Jordan River. And so all of these areas are important to
understanding how things happen and why they happen the way they
do in human terms in the Old Testament.
There are two other areas that we should mention, each to
the south. First is the area that we know of as the wilderness.
In the New Testament Jesus goes out into the wilderness to be
tempted. And this is a specific area to the south of the Dead
Sea. Very mountainous. Very barren. It is, you know, truly a
wilderness area.
And the last area is known to us as the Negev. It is a
grassy plain. Very grassy in biblical times. Today it's a
little more desert. It's not as fruitful as it would have been
in biblical times. But the Negev is also to the south and a
little to the east of the wilderness area. And to the east of
the Dead Sea was another important region.
Throughout this region there were two major highways.
One we've already mentioned, the way of the sea, which really
runs along the coast from Egypt, you know, along the coast of
the Sinai Peninsula and then up the coast of this plain. And it
makes its turn, as I mentioned, and goes through the valley of
Megiddo where Josiah fought Pharaoh Neco and lost and was
killed. And then goes on up to the city of Damascus and then on
up to the Euphrates River and Mesopotamia.
The other highway is known as the Kings Highway. And it
flows down the western side down the plateau. And in several
smaller roads then cross over the Jordan River valley and go
into Israel. And so the armies as they marched through the
ancient world went up or down one of these roads. And Israel,
of course, was right between the two of them. And that's what
gives it its military importance and also its economic
importance. Because all of the trade that passed through
Mesopotamia between the great kingdoms of Babylon and Assyria
and the kingdom of Egypt passed along these same two roads.
And so much of the wealth that came into Israel in
Solomon's time and David's time came there because of -- because
there was this central area for trade. All the trade between
the major kingdoms had to pass through there.
Ironically if geography is important to the lives of the
people and to what happens in the world, Israel is the one place
where the rivers are less important. And we talked earlier
about how important the Euphrates was and the Nile was to
Mesopotamia and to Egypt.
But the Jordan River and the Orontes to the north are
less important because they don't flood the way that the
Euphrates and the Tigris do and the way that the Nile do. So
while they are important, they don't provide means of
transportation the way the other rivers do. And their annual
flooding isn't as important to the economy and to the life of
the people. So in the case of Israel, it's not so much the
rivers that dominate things as it is the mountains and the flow
of the land from east to west.
So as you study the maps, make sure that you take a look
at these regions in particular: The central mountainous spine,
the Shafala, the coastal plain, the Jordan River Valley and the
Transjordanian Plateau. You should be able to identify those
and know the significance of them. And then the wilderness to
the south of the Dead Sea and the Negev to the east,
particularly the land of Edom you should be aware of, as well.
Because these are the areas, the geographic regions, that shape
the history of the people of God in the Old Testament.
This is the land flowing with milk and honey because of
its economic produce in biblical times. Although today it's
very barren as we look at it, it was really a rich agricultural
land in the ancient world. And it was the agricultural produce
in this case supported by the rain coming in off the seas that
gave it its wealth.
And its geographic position gave it strategic importance in the
ancient world. And that's why it has come to be known, as you
said, Eric, in your question, the crossroads of the ancient
world.
***
This text is being provided in a rough draft format.
Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in
order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a
totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
***