Holman Illustrated Guide To Biblical Geography: Reading the Land

By Holman Bible Publishers and Paul Wright

Reading the land enables us to read the Bible with greater insight. Though the truths of the Bible transcend time and place, they are rooted in them. Geographical data inform our understanding of activity in the land of the Bible, while the Bible’s own description of these events, embedded deeply in the realia of the land itself, helps us better understand the living context in which these events took place. When we develop a skill set that allows us to read the land of the Bible as fluently as we might read the text, we stand not only to gain a better appreciation of the divine-human events of Scripture, we also gain an understanding of how these events become relevant to us in our own particular living contexts.

Chapters include:

• Exploring the World of the Bible

• Building Blocks of Biblical Geography

• The Land of Ancient Israel: The Southern Regions (Judah/Judea)

• The Land of Ancient Israel: The Central Regions (Israel/Samaria)

• The Land of Ancient Israel: The Northern Regions (Galilee)

• Transjordan

• Afterword: Geography of the Heart

Biblical geography has great apologetic value. The biblical writers had to be accurate when presenting geographical material. Unlike some matters of history and doctrine, their assertions about the realities of land forms and climate, or about the relation of one city to another, or about the use of strategic routes could easily be verified both by their first readers as well as by contemporary readers. Verifiable geographic information provides a solid foundation on which to place and evaluate the veracity of other truth claims in the biblical text.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BH Publishing Group
• Release date: Dec 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9780805499414

Book preview

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2 Building Blocks of Biblical Geography

Astudy of biblical geography needs to start from the ground up—or, more accurately, from under ground up. The material substances of earth—rocks, soil, and water, together with their sources and present conditions for human use—are not incidentals to the biblical story; they are the practical stuff of life. Just as a builder must know how to use the tools and materials at his or her disposal before starting to put up a house, so we must become familiar with the basic building blocks of human and historical geography prior to examining the specific regions in which episodes of the biblical story took place. We start with a word on terms and place names, the essential points of geographical identification.

A. Understanding Geographical Terms and Place Names

First-time visitors to the lands of the Bible typically comment, This isn’t at all how I imagined it would look! They’re not alone. Medieval artists from the time of the Renaissance typically depicted biblical life in the full context of their own world, defining a scene by the costumes, architecture, plant life, and physical environment of Europe rather than the ancient Near East. We, too, quite naturally approach the subject of biblical geography—both what is described in the text and the realities of what must be on the ground—with mental images based on landforms and patterns of climate we have experienced personally. The issue is both obvious and subtle: the geographical terms we encounter in the biblical text—and some of them are quite technical—should be understood within the range of actual geographical options found in the lands of the Bible, not those from our own hometowns. Moreover, Hebrew, the language of most of the Old Testament, has a much smaller number of words than does English; thus, some geographical terms must do double duty. The biblical Hebrew term har, for instance, refers to true mountains (parts of Mount Hermon are snow-capped much of the year), as well as hills that are significantly lower. The Hebrew word yam, sea, designates both the salt water Mediterranean and the fresh water Sea of Galilee; in the vocabularies of much of the rest of the world, the latter would qualify as a smallish lake. The local inhabitants of a land as rocky as ancient Israel naturally used several words for rock, and the biblical terms tsur (cliff), sela (crag), and even (stone, large or small), though sometimes all appearing as rock in our English Bibles, should be distinguished—especially when one or another is used to describe God himself (as in Ps 18:2: "The Lord is my sela . . . my God, my tsur"). For that matter, we should not liken the wilderness of Judah to the dense woods of the Great American Wilderness. It is, rather, midbar, steppe grazing land, and yeshimon, empty wasteland. Rainfall (matar) in ancient Israel was and is seasonal, occurring cyclically as early rain (yoreh, NASB) and latter rain (malqosh, KJV) in the autumn and spring, thereby signaling the turn of the year (Deut 11:11–14). Such distinctions, and many more, are grounded in the geographical realities of the Middle East and help us connect to ways its ancient inhabitants perceived and organized the physical and, by extension, spiritual aspects of their universe.

Many geographical terms found in the Hebrew Bible come from parts of the human body. The summit of a hill is its rosh, lit. head (2 Sam 15:32). A slope dropping from a flat area is a keteph, lit. shoulder (Josh 18:19)—at least within the tribal inheritance of Benjamin, for the term occurs only in connection with that narrow territory. A bumpy ridgeline is sometimes called tsela’ot, lit. ribs (2 Sam 16:13), while the upper tributaries of a wadi form its yad, lit. hand, with crooked tributary fingers outstretched (Deut 2:37). A shen, lit. tooth, is a rocky crag (1 Sam 14:4). Both a well and a spring are an ayin, lit. eye, a hole from which water flows (Gen 24:16,20; Ezek 47:10). The rim of a canyon, the bank of a wadi, or the shore of a sea are all a saphah, lit. lip, the edge of something wet (Gen 22:17; Josh 12:2). Today’s geographers call the dry peninsula that projects into the Dead Sea from the east the Lashon (Lisan in Arabic), lit. Tongue. The writers of the Hebrew Bible, though, did exactly the opposite: they used the term lashon to refer to an elongated bay or gulf of the sea (Josh 18:19; Isa 11:15); a tongue is, after all, a wet appendage. Language used this way may seem fanciful or quaint, but it is quite natural. It also reflects the tendency of the ancient Israelites to personalize the land on which they lived.

Of all the geographical terms found in the Bible, those that are usually the most underappreciated are the place names. The study of place names (toponymy) plays an important, although usually overlooked, role in biblical studies. What people in the ancient world called the places where they lived, including the hills, valleys, water sources, and other topographical features nearby, tells us something about who these people were, about their language, history, and patterns of settlement, about the characteristics of their natural environment, and about how they related to the world.

Place names appearing on maps of US states or Canadian provinces suggest wonderful tales about indigenous populations that once inhabited those lands, as well as the first foreigners who made their homes there. All place names, in fact, hold local interest. Most are matter-of-fact; some are curious or amusing. For instance, Greeley County, in far western Kansas, is home to towns named Horace and Tribune. (Clearly some of its settlers took that news publisher’s well-known charge Go West, young man! to heart.) Comparing place names across regions allows historians to map population movements and settlement patterns over time. In principle, the same is done by biblical historical geographers who, by combining information found in texts with that unearthed by archaeology, seek to track the ebb and flow of people groups in the lands of the Bible during ancient times.

In the biblical world, a clan or tribe typically took its name from an eponymous (i.e., name-related, or founding) ancestor, with such names often attaching themselves to the portion of ground where each clan or tribe lived. The best-known examples for Bible readers are the names of the sons of Jacob, which came to designate the specific bounded territories in which the tribes of Israel settled. On a larger scale, the spread of people groups across the earth after the flood is depicted in Genesis 10 as a process by which individuals became tribes in their own lands. Towns and cities, too, often bore the name of a founding father or other early resident of the place. For example, Shechem (Gen 33:18–19), Samaria (from Shemer; 1 Kgs 16:24), Anathoth (1 Chr 7:8), and Keilah and Eshtemoa (1 Chr 4:19) were all names of people first. Sometimes, too, a town took the name of one of its more recent residents when the flow of events moved that direction. For instance, Gibeah in the tribe of Benjamin became known as Gibeah of Saul after Saul exerted his kingship over Israel (1 Sam 15:34; Isa 10:29).

A number of written sources from the ancient world preserve the names of cities and towns in Canaan during the biblical period. Among the more helpful are lists of dozens of cities conquered by the Egyptian pharaohs Thutmose III (ca. 1479–1425 BC) and Shishak (ca. 945–924 BC; cp. 1 Kgs 14:25–28; 2 Chr 12:1–8).¹ Both city lists can still be seen in all their pharaonic glory on the walls of the Karnak temple in Luxor, Egypt. This portion of the Thutmose III city list depicts three places also known from the Bible: Rabbah (Josh 15:60, left), Gezer (1- Kg 9:15–17, center), and Gibbethon (1 Kgs 15:27, right). Each place name, written in hieroglyphics, is shown as the body of a conquered city, personified with Semitic facial features and arms tied in subjugation. Shishak’s list is important because the artists who produced it showed the conquered cities in geographical order, thus providing a kind of map that helps historical geographers identify unknown sites on the ground.

Sometimes topographical features or landforms took the names of persons who lived in their vicinity. One example is the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom, apparently the location of the Hinnom clan’s ancestral land. This valley came to demarcate the settled limits of the city of Jerusalem on the west and south (Josh 18:16; 2 Kgs 23:10). Another example is the palm tree of Deborah, a spot between Ramah and Bethel that apparently boasted a prominent palm where the prophetess Deborah made herself readily available for consultation (Judg 4:4–5). Interestingly, the elevation of the region between Ramah and Bethel, the heartland of the tribal inheritance of Benjamin, is a bit high for palm trees to grow naturally; this one likely gained special notice when Deborah made it hers.

A different kind of example of how a place name can indicate settlement patterns is Mahaneh-dan, the camping place of Dan, Samson’s hometown. Judges 13:25 places Mahaneh-dan between Zorah and Eshtaol, where the foothills of the Shephelah meet the Judean hill country. Judges 18:12 places it higher in the Judean hills to the east, by Kiriath-jearim. In fact, the name suggests that Samson was raised in a temporary tent settlement that probably moved around. In any case, Mahaneh-dan seems to have been a place that wouldn’t leave archaeologically recoverable material. Its location between the established Judean towns of the hill country and an encroaching Philistine presence in the foothills to the west suggests that Samson’s exploits should be read with the social, political, and economic uncertainty that is typically characteristic of frontiers between expanding people groups.

The Table of Nations offers the following genealogical note explaining the origin and spread of populations in the land of Canaan: Canaan fathered Sidon his firstborn and Heth, as well as the Jebusites, the Amorites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, the Arkites, the Sinites, the Arvadites, the Zemarites, and the Hamathites (Gen 10:15–18). That Sidon was listed as the firstborn of Canaan is poignant in light of ancient Israel’s subsequent history. The Sidonians, Israel’s economically successful neighbor to the north, were among the most persistent cultural thorns in Israel’s side throughout the biblical story.

Many place names mentioned in the Bible were formed from the lexical element beth (house of), plus the name of a local Semitic or Canaanite deity. Hence, Beth-anath (Judg 1:33), Beth-baal-meon (Josh 13:17), Beth-dagon (Josh 15:41; 19:27), Beth-horon (1 Kgs 9:17), Beth-shemesh (Josh 15:10; Judg 1:33), and others (probably including Beth-lehem; 1 Sam 17:12): all reflect the active polytheistic environment of Canaan into which Israel entered. Other place names highlight the pervasive presence of Baal in the region (Baal-gad, Josh 11:17; Baal-hazor, 2 Sam 13:23; Baal-hermon, 1 Chr 5:23; Baal-meon, Num 32:38; Baal-perazim, 2 Sam 5:20; Baal-shalishah, 2 Kgs 4:42; Baalath, 1 Kgs 9:18; and the like). Baal, lord or master, was the primary nickname of Hadad, the chief male deity in the Levant; by appellation, he was localized in many places throughout the land. The town of Ashtaroth (Deut 1:4) in Bashan probably was a regional center of worship for Ashtoreth, the popular Canaanite goddess of fertility and oft-times consort of the Baals. It is interesting to note that when the Israelites settled in Canaan, they did not give these cities new names reflecting the divine name YHWH. Indeed, no place name mentioned in the Bible contains the name YHWH.

On the other hand, we do have many place names formed from -el, the generic Semitic word for god/God. During the days of Israel’s earliest history, the patriarchs gave names to spots where they sensed God’s special presence dwelt, sometimes erecting altars to his name. These include Beth-el (the house of God, a name that eventually replaced Luz as the name of the nearby city; Gen 28:19), Peni-el (the face of God; Gen 32:30), and El-Elohe-Israel (God, the God of Israel; Gen 33:20). Of this type is also the place name Beer-lahai-roi (A Well of the Living One Who Sees Me; Gen 16:14). Note also the later name Jezreel, God sows (1 Kgs 18:46).

Perhaps Israel’s reticence to name places after YHWH (often pronounced Yahweh today) stemmed from an understanding that even though the land belonged to the Lord, he, unlike the Canaanite deities, was neither to be identified with it in substance (the Lord is transcendent over, not coextensive with, creation) nor to be localized (and hence limited) to specific spots within. In contrast, many Israelite personal names were built from the divine name YHWH. Examples are numerous and include Jehoshaphat (YHWH has judged), Isaiah (YHWH is salvation), Joel (YHWH is God), Jehoiakim (YHWH will establish), Elijah (My God is YHWH), and so on. The practice of using the divine name for personal but not geographical names might indicate an understanding among the ancient Israelites that the most proper locus for God and his actions was not in places but with people:

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance

and divided the human race,

he set the boundaries of the peoples

according to the number of the people of Israel.

But the Lord’s portion is his people,

Jacob, his own inheritance. (Deut 32:8–9)

The Bible gives only a few examples of cities that were given new names of any kind when Israel entered Canaan (e.g., Laish/Leshem was changed to Dan—Judg 18:29; Josh 19:47, and the villages of Bashan became Havvoth-jair, Jair’s Villages, after a clan of the tribe of Manasseh—Deut 3:14; Kiriath-arba was renamed Hebron earlier—Gen 23:2; Josh 14:15). Taken as a whole, these instances seem to be exceptional rather than the rule. They support the maxim that in the ancient Near East as in the modern Middle East, where indigenous populations are stable and conservative, place names are conservative as well. Once established, place names tend to resist change even in the face of population shifts. This basic principle will come into play in our discussion of how to identify the location of ancient sites, below.

For I tell you, concerning the names of villages and rivers written in the sacred writings, both written and oral, that little has changed of their names among the [Arabs] . . . for the land stands forever, together with most of its names, and the change in names is very slight. So commented the Jewish geographer Estori ha-Parhi, who in the fourteenth century AD wrote the first book in Hebrew on the geography and place names of the land of ancient Israel.²

The exception that proves the rule took place in the centuries immediately preceding the New Testament days, when the surge tide of Hellenism and then the Latin cultures of Rome washed over the lands of ancient Israel. In their wake, important cities were elevated to the status of a polis and given Greek or Latin names, signaling the coming of a new world order. Hence Acco became Ptolemais (after the Hellenistic Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy II, who controlled the east Mediterranean coast in the mid-third century BC); Paneas was renamed Caesarea Philippi in honor of both Caesar Augustus and his dutiful client Philip the Tetrarch; Herod the Great built Caesarea Maritima for Caesar Augustus, his emperor and patron, on the site of a ruined Mediterranean fishing village called Strato’s Tower; Bethsaida, the city of Jesus’s disciples, became Bethsaida-Julias after the wife of Augustus; Ahab’s capital, Samaria, was renamed Sebaste, the Greek form of Augustus; Shechem was re-founded as Neapolis, New City; Beth-shean became Scythopolis; Rabbah-bene-Ammon, the ancient Ammonite capital, was given the name Philadelphia, and so on. As a result, a New Testament map of ancient Israel reads very differently from its Old Testament counterpart.

Eusebius (ca. AD 260–340), Bishop of Caesarea and Metropolitan of the Holy Land in the early fourth century, is usually remembered for his extensive writings on church history, apologetics, and dogmatics (doctrine). Yet his Onomasticon,³ written in Greek, is the best surviving early work on the land of ancient Israel during the Roman period. Eusebius identified and commented on the location of biblical cities, towns, and villages as they (or their ruins) were known in his day, arranging them alphabetically by site in his work. When possible, Eusebius also gave the distance in miles that each site lay from key urban centers of Late Roman Palestine, according to the established system of Roman roads that networked the land in the third century AD. Jerome translated the Onomasticon into Latin seventy years later. Although Eusebius’s conclusions are sometimes more dependent on tradition than fact, his Onomasticon remains an invaluable primary source for biblical site identification. This likeness of Eusebius is found on the right-side door panel of the Church of St. Catherine in Bethlehem.

But this Greco-Roman intrusion, at least in regard to place names, was not to last. Even though these intrusive names remained in place in official documents for over a millennium, until after the Arab conquest in the seventh century AD, the local folk typically just kept calling their hometowns by the old Semitic names they were used to using. Most of the original Semitic place names then simply resurfaced, with minor linguistic changes, once the forces of Hellenism subsided. So the name Paneas returned as Baniyas (as spoken in Arabic); Beth-shean survived as Beisan; Acco again became Acco. Caesarea Maritima had so overshadowed little Strato’s Tower that its name was preserved even after the Arab conquest, as was Neapolis, modern Nablus, and Sebaste, modern Sebastieh. But even with these exceptions, the basic principle of name preservation remains intact.

Most place names in ancient Israel, however, were less politically sensitive, having been derived from notable topographic features, regional flora or fauna, or local human activity. Examples are numerous; a few familiar place names will suffice: Geba and Gibeah (hill), Ramah (height), Mizpah (lookout spot), Mahanaim (twin camps), Hazor (settlement), Ai (ruin), Sorek (finest vine), Socoh (thorn bush), En-gedi (spring of the kid), Aijalon (deer field), Gath-rimmon (pomegranate press), Gethsemane (olive press), and Taricheae (salted fish).⁴ Together these names provide an earthy witness to details of everyday life in ancient Israel, including landforms and natural resources, which would otherwise escape casual readers of the past. Such names, however, should not be over-read. Popular etymologies, midrashic allusions, and fanciful interpretations not grounded in the biblical text abound and should be avoided, such as finding anything more than casual significance in that Jesus, the Bread of Life (as mentioned by John), was born in Bethlehem, the house of bread (as mentioned by Matthew and Luke).

The discipline of toponymy is the careful study of place names and the principles that govern their preservation over time. For historical geographers, toponymy is an important tool in identifying the location of cities and towns mentioned in ancient texts. This was first understood in a practical way by Edward Robinson, an American Bible scholar who visited Ottoman Palestine in 1838 and again in 1852. Having first gleaned all available topographical and toponymic (i.e., place name) information from primary sources known in his day (the Bible and classical texts written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin), Robinson traveled the length and breadth of the land of ancient Israel, from of War during the First World War. The SWP lab Sinai to Lebanon and Syria, looking for evidence of the location of biblical sites. He was assisted by Eli Smith, a Beirut-based missionary who possessed a working knowledge of practical linguistics. With an eye for the lay of the land and an ear for place names preserved through the tongues of local inhabitants, Robinson and Smith were able to match 1,712 sites with their biblical counterparts, many through the principles of name preservation mentioned above.

Edward Robinson matched the location of the ancient city of Beth-shean (Judg 1:27; 1 Sam 31:10; 1 Kgs 4:12) with extensive ruins lying just north of the Arab village of Beisan, in the northern Jordan Valley. Linguistically, the toponymic connection Beisan = Beth-shean is perfect; what Robinson didn’t know is that the particular ruins he saw belonged to Scythopolis, the Greco-Roman-Byzantine city that replaced Beth-shean in the centuries following the Old Testament era. The majesty of Scythopolis, raised back to life and shown here with columns that once lined the city’s main street, has been uncovered by archaeologists from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The Old Testament site of Beth-shean actually dominated the tell above (left). Although archaeology has determined that the exact spot of ancient Beth-shean was the tell rather than the columned ruins at its base, Robinson nevertheless gets credit for correctly identifying the site.

Robinson and Smith identified biblical Gibeon, for instance, with the Arab village of el-Jib; Geba with Jeba’; Michmash with Mukmas; Lydda with Ludd, and so on. The name Jericho, Robinson correctly reasoned, was preserved in the name of the Arab village Eriha (it’s a good linguistic match), near the spring and tell (Tell es-Sultan) that we now know to be the exact site of the Old Testament city. When we take into account that they were working prior to the origins of scientific archaeology and without a proper understanding of tells (i.e., mounds of destruction debris built up from a sequence of layers from destroyed cities), Robinson and Smith did remarkably well in defining the principles of biblical site identification. In the process, they established the discipline of toponymics as a credible academic endeavor. Their published record, Biblical Researches in Palestine,⁵ is a gold mine of toponymic and ethnographic data interspersed with tales of courage, raw adventure, and derring-do; it makes for fascinating reading of early scientific exploration in the Holy Land.

In the 1870s, teams from the British Royal Engineers working for the Survey of Western Palestine (the SWP) were able to produce the first complete, modern map of the land of ancient Israel west of the Jordan River, from the Litani River in south Lebanon to the Beer-sheba wadi in the Negev. Most of the work of the survey was done by C. R. Conder and H. H. Kitchener; the latter would go on to become Britain’s Secretary of War during the First World War. The SWP labeled over ten thousand sites (every hill and valley, wadi, spring, well, and cistern, village, old structure, ruin, and grave they saw). Then they published six volumes of field notes, drawings, analyses, and indices, with twenty-six large map sheets at a scale of one inch to one mile.⁶ A survey of eastern Palestine (Transjordan) was started but not completed due to political unrest in the region at the time. Nevertheless, through the work of the SWP and the efforts in the decades since by historical geographers from France, Germany, England, America, and Israel, together with the careful work of dozens of archaeological missions in the land of ancient Israel from around the globe, many (though certainly not all) of the ancient sites mentioned in the Bible have now been identified with absolute or reasonable certainty.

Ultimately, the most persistent problem in site identification is that there just aren’t enough pieces of matching data to go around. Most archaeological sites do not maintain a toponymic connection with an ancient place name; those that do were identified long ago. Rather, most are known today only by modern (Arabic or Hebrew) names which bear no linguistic resemblance to the names of any known ancient site. Additionally, many places mentioned in the Bible or other ancient documents don’t appear with enough context to narrow down their exact locations (e.g., Beer-lahai-roi; Gen 16:14). Others appear in the sources with variant spellings or in multiple contexts, either of which suggests the possibility of more than one place of the same name (e.g., Geba/Gibeah/Gibeon). Or sometimes a place mentioned in an ancient text was of such a nature that archaeologically attestable material simply can’t be found to pinpoint its location. Such is the case for most of the named spots where Israel camped during their years of wilderness wandering (Num 33:5–49). Many important place names such as Libnah (2 Kgs 8:22; 19:8; 23:31), Eglon (Josh 10:3), Gilgal (there were at least three—Josh 4:19; 12:23; 2 Kgs 2:1; 4:38), and Elath/Eloth/Ezion-geber (Deut 2:8; 1 Kgs 9:26; 22:48; 2 Chr 26:2) are notorious for having several reasonable site location options. In such cases, matching name to site can seem like a grand game of musical chairs. And, if an event is mentioned in the Bible without a specific notation regarding its exact location (such as the Sermon on the Mount), we are left to the whims of tradition and scholarly guesswork as to where it might have taken place—however fine a particular suggestion might seem otherwise.

Jerusalem is an ancient place name that predates the arrival of Israel in Canaan. The name appears as [U]rusalimum in the Egyptian Execration Texts of the late nineteenth century BC,⁷ and as Urusalim in the mid-fourteenth century BC Amarna letters, also found in Egypt.⁸ The city of Jerusalem was called Jebus when David sent his opportunistic general, Joab, through a shaft in its bedrock that had been hewn to allow its residents access to the fresh waters of the Gihon spring. Climbing from bottom to top, Joab entered, then conquered, the city (1 Chr 11:4–9; cp. Judg 19:10). When David dislodged the Jebusites from the region, the city’s original name, Jerusalem, was easily restored. There have been numerous creative attempts to explain the origin of the name Jerusalem: most connect the element salem with the Hebrew word for peace, shalom, or with Shalem, a local Canaanite deity (see Gen 14:18). In spite of the appeal of these or other suggestions, the original meaning of the name Jerusalem, a word beloved by people of faith for millennia, remains unknown.

One final point regarding place names needs to be mentioned, and this is the most tendentious dilemma of all, for here the ideals of dispassionate scholarship crash headlong into the convictions and realities of modern life. What should the lands of the Bible be called, either in the time of the Bible or today? The earliest name mentioned in the Bible for what became the land of ancient Israel is Canaan (Gen 12:5). This designation, which can be traced to Late Bronze Age Egyptian sources,⁹ refers to a region that seems to include much of what is now Israel, southern Lebanon and the West Bank/Palestinian territories, but not Transjordan. The Egyptians assumed everyone knew where the borders of Canaan were and saw no reason to mention them. The only ancient texts that do are Genesis 10:19 and Numbers 34:1–12, enclosing a territory that was consistent with the Egyptian use of the term. Many Bible readers, for obvious reasons, prefer to use the name Israel rather than Canaan, although as a political term Israel referred to the land from Dan to Beer-sheba only during the short-lived united monarchy of David and Solomon (1 Kgs 4:25), then to the smaller region of the Northern Kingdom for the two centuries following. The collocation land of Israel (eretz Yisrael), which occurs frequently in the Old Testament (2 Kgs 5:2, etc.), has persisted primarily in Jewish religious texts and historical texts of a religious nature up to the present, having been resurrected as an active political term with the rise of Zionism only in the last 140 years or so. The Southern Kingdom in the time of the Old Testament was, of course, called Judah; and it is this name that survived as a political term after the Babylonian captivity, first as the Persian province Yehud, then as the Hasmonean Iudea, and finally as the Roman Imperial Province Iudaea during the time of the New Testament. Its most frequently used derivative is the word Jew (Yehudi); i.e., someone from Judea.

One identification that Robinson got wrong was Megiddo. Standing on the flat top of Tell el-Mutesellim, what we now know to be the correct site, Robinson noted that the tell would indeed present a splendid site for a city, but there is no trace of any kind to show that a city ever stood there.1 Robinson instead suggested that the ruins of the nearby site of Lejjun—which preserved the name of the Roman city Legio—must have also been the location of the earlier city of Megiddo. Robinson’s textual work lacked a toponymic connection to Megiddo. Without the aid of the discipline of archaeology to tell him that twenty-five layers of destroyed cities lay beneath his feet, he literally missed the site by a mile. The view here is through the great cut in the northeastern side, excavated by the University of Chicago in the late 1930s, with the Jezreel Valley beyond.

Other Bible readers favor the name Palestine, from the Greek toponym Palaistina first used by Herodotus in the late fifth century BC to refer to the southern coastal plain around Gaza.¹⁰ Herodotus clearly derived the term Palaistina from Philistia (Hb pelešet; Isa 14:29, etc.), homeland of the Philistines, long-time inhabitants of the region. Assyrian texts first mention Philistia (palaštu) in the eighth century BC,¹¹ distinguishing it from Israel and Judah and always limiting the name to the southern coastal regions. By contrast, the Assyrians called Israel Mat-Humri or Bit-Humria,¹² the land or house of Omri, father of Ahab (1 Kgs 16:23–29), even after the fall of Omri’s dynasty. Palestina became the official political designation of the entire area, including the interior hills and valleys of Judea, Samaria, and Galilee, only after Rome put down the Second Jewish Revolt of AD 132–135.¹³ The Romans were motivated to change the official name of the province of Judaea to Palestina in part by the need to legitimize a new, non-Jewish identity in the region, though on geographical grounds alone it makes sense that a power based on the sea would use the name of a coastal plain to reference its hilly hinterland. The Roman name of the province was actually Syria Palaestina, to indicate that Palestina was a subdivision of the larger province of Syria governed through Damascus. In any case, references to Palestine in the context of the Gospels, though frequent and typically accepted by scholars and generalists alike, are

anachronistic and not technically correct. It is also important to note that the Roman derivation of Palestina from Philistine is of linguistic and historical but not theological significance.

We read in Matthew 2:20–21 that when Mary, Joseph, and Jesus came out of Egypt, they returned to "the land of Israel" (Gk gē Israel = Hb eretz Yisrael). This is the only place in the Gospels where the place name land of Israel appears. Matthew used the term Judea, the official name of the land in the first century AD, in the very next sentence, when he mentioned that Herod the Great’s son, Archelaus, had inherited the throne (Matt 2:22). So why the land of Israel here? Matthew pictures Jesus’s return from Egypt as a reenactment, or fulfillment, of the journey Moses and the Israelites took from Egypt to their proper home in Canaan, a place that they came to call the land of Israel during the time of the Old Testament. By choosing his words carefully and citing Hos 11:1, Out of Egypt I called my Son (Matt 2:14–15), Matthew intended to show that Jesus embodied Israel, now faithful and renewed. Matthew’s account of Jesus’s return to Judea is a reminder that when we ask about the accuracy of place names, we also need to ask, Accurate for what purpose? and remember that accuracy and neutrality are not always the same thing.

The lowest level of the rock sandwich underlies all regions of the central Middle East. Composed of metamorphic rock (formed when parts of the earth’s crust are super-heated by contact with molten magma), this basement complex can be seen wherever severe uplifting has thrust the rock to the earth’s surface. This view takes in the timeworn granite mountains of southern Sinai from Jebel Musa, the traditional location of Mount Sinai. Far from areas of permanent human settlement and bearing the wrinkles of hoary antiquity, the setting is perfectly appropriate for God’s awe-filled revelation to Moses (Exod 19:1–20:21).

Modern political events clearly heighten the urgency (and sensitivity) of a reader’s preference for either Israel or Palestine in discussions of the historical geography of the land of the Bible. Some scholars even prefer the term The Levant (from the French phrase soleil levant, rising sun), although this use of the word, which originated in the context of nineteenth century Western expansionism, is both Eurocentric and largely antiquated. The term Morgenland, Morning-land, for speakers of German is similar. Others have resurrected the name Syro-Palestine, a popular scholarly convention that seeks to recognize a common cultural sphere in the southern Levant composed of the territory of ancient Israel and its near neighbors. The Near East, the Orient, or Turkish Asia (this last one was proper prior to the First World War) are also all either too ill-defined or too limiting. Without intending to make any statement regarding the modern political realm, it is perhaps easiest to simply refer to the land where the majority of events described in the Bible took place as the land of ancient Israel, making further refinements in nomenclature as the topic of discussion warrants.

The term ancient Near East refers to the landmass encompassing Egypt, Anatolia (Turkey), Persia (Iran), the northern part of the Arabian Peninsula, and, at its center, the Fertile Crescent including the land of ancient Israel. Middle East, on the other hand, refers to the same region plus outlying areas in modern times. The latter term is actually quite new, first appearing in an article by the American Navy Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan that was published in the British monthly, The National Review, in September 1902.¹⁴ It is proper to use the term Middle East for the region when speaking of current events or recent history, or when referencing the unchanging geographical realities of the region, but not in connection with events or peoples of the ancient past.

B. Geological Structure and Landforms

The land of ancient Israel is dominated by vast expanses of exposed bedrock. Various geological processes have shaped the complex surface pattern and underlying substructure of the foundations of the earth since creation (Ps 104:5; cp. Job 14:18–19; 38:1–11; Ps 90:2; Prov 8:29). The entire mass can be pictured as a gigantic rock sandwich made of three different kinds, or layers, of rock. Each of the so-called sandwich layers is visible on the surface of the ground somewhere in or adjacent to the land of ancient Israel.

The massive bottom layer, the crust of the rock sandwich, is composed of granite, diorite, crystalline schist, and other igneous rocks. Its largest exposed expanse is in the southern Sinai, where massive granite mountains, worn and weathered, dominate the landscape. Relatively small outcroppings of granite and schist also dot the edges of the southern part of the Rift Valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat.

Two types of Nubian sandstone, red (above) and white (below), are clearly visible in the rugged terrain of Wadi Dana in the Edomite highlands. Sandstone can be either durable or friable, depending on the composition of the material cementing its grains together. Areas of sandstone lie on the desert fringes of the settled lands of the Bible, offering landscapes reminiscent of those described in the book of Job.

Herman Melville, author of Moby-Dick, visited Judea in January of 1857. He was not impressed by what he saw, letting a cursory look at the rocks that seemed to be everywhere obscure his view of the larger landscape. We read a good deal about stones in the Scriptures, he observed. Monuments & memorials are set up of stones; men are stoned to death; the figurative seed falls in stony places; and no wonder stones should so largely figure in the Bible. Judea is one accumulation of stones—stony mountains & stony plains; stony forests & stony roads; stony walls & stony fields; stony homes & stony tombs; stony eyes & stony hearts. Before you and behind you are stones. Stones to the right & stones to the left. The removal of one stone only serves to reveal those stones still lying below it.¹⁵

The middle layer of the rock sandwich, thousands of feet thick, is composed primarily of Nubian sandstone, a sedimentary rock. Highly granular in structure, Nubian sandstone is easily recognized by its vivid colors, which are caused by varying amounts of minerals: silica and calcite have produced sandstones that are light tan and bright white; iron oxide yields red, rose, pink, and purple sandstones; brown and yellow sandstones are tinted by sulphur; and black sandstones have a high manganese dioxide content. White and red sandstones dominate, giving the middle of the rock sandwich a kind of peanut butter and jelly look. Huge blocks of uplifted sandstone can be seen in areas immediately south and east of the land of ancient Israel, specifically in Wadi Rum (southern Jordan and northwestern Saudi Arabia), along the eastern scarp of the Rift Valley between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba/Eilat, and edging the towering granite mountains of southern Sinai.

The top crust of the rock sandwich is composed of limestones. Limestone is a sedimentary rock of calcium carbonate formed from the detritus of marine plant and animal life that was deposited as strata in the region by successive inundations of the ancient forerunner of the Mediterranean Sea, a body of water that geologists call the Tethys Sea. Because the Tethys Sea moved into the region from the northwest, the limestone is thicker in the northern and western parts of the land (Galilee, the Carmel Range, and Gilead) and thinner as it runs up against areas of uplifted Nubian sandstone in the south and east.

Psalm 104 tells the story of creation poetically, yet in a way that reflects the geological processes that formed the foundations of the earth:

He established the earth on its foundations; it will never be shaken. You covered it with the deep as if it were a garment; the water stood above the mountains. At your rebuke the water fled; at the sound of your thunder they hurried away— mountains rose and valleys sank— to the place you established for them. (Ps 104:5–8)

We can easily recognize Cenomanian-Turonian limestone by its brown-red tint and horizontal, stratified lines. It was deposited in beds, typically ranging from one to four feet (0.3 to 1.2 m) thick and each separated from the next by a thin layer of hard marl or chert. As a result, Cenomanian-Turonian limestone is easy to quarry. Its hardness allowed this type of limestone to become the building material of choice in hill country towns and villages throughout ancient Israel. Skeletal remains of quarry sites, scarring the bedrock at right angles, can be seen in areas where flat stretches of the rock are exposed on the surface of the ground. As an added advantage, Cenomanian-Turonian limestone holds water well and produces fertile terra rosa (red earth) soil that is excellent for growing grapes and orchard crops. The result? Areas of Cenomanian-Turonian limestone such as the Hill Country of Judah, the Hill Country of Ephraim, Galilee, and Gilead were all well suited for human settlement.

This upper layer of limestone, visible as bedrock across most of the land of ancient Israel, is far from uniform in its composition. For the sake of convenience, geologists divide it into three basic types, each named with the term that corresponds with the geological period in which the limestone was deposited at the bottom of the Tethys Sea. The lowest layer (and hence oldest in the stratified sequence) is a hard limestone of the Cenomanian and Turonian periods. Above this was deposited a relatively thin layer of very soft Senonian limestone, or chalk. The uppermost and hence most recent layer in the sequence is Eocene limestone, which varies from a chalk-like to a relatively hard consistency. We should note that an even older fourth layer, Jurassic limestone, underlays the limestone of the Cenomanian and Turonian periods everywhere except in the southeast. Jurassic limestone is visible only in deep surface cuts such as the Jabbok Canyon, or on the Lebanese ranges due to severe uplifting. Thin, dark layers of hard, fine-grained chert, a form of quartz, are found throughout these limestones. The harder, black varieties of chert are flint stones (Deut 8:15; 32:13; Ps 114:8; cp. Isa 50:7). The most useful types of flint keep a hard, sharp edge and have been shaped into cutting, boring, piercing, and scraping tools for millennia (e.g., Josh 5:2).

Formed from the sediment of microscopic organisms, a relatively thin band of crumbly Senonian chalk was deposited above the Cenomanian-Turonian strata in the upper layer of the rock sandwich. Senonian chalk does not absorb water well (rather, its powdery structure tends to repel water), and when cut into building blocks, it cracks and crumbles easily (Isa 27:9 speaks of "crushed bits of chalk" that are useless for building). Here in the Judean Wilderness east of the Mount of Olives, the Senonian chalk has eroded into a jumble of smoothly rounded, egg-shaped hills devoid of vegetation, all cascading like powdery rapids into the Rift Valley. Areas of exposed Senonian chalk can support permanent human settlement only if other factors are present to override these otherwise negative qualities.

This diagram shows the geological sequence of mountain-building in the region of Judah:

A—Limestone was deposited in stratified layers, with the oldest limestones at the bottom and the youngest on top.

B—The stratified limestone layers were folded (uplifted) into an arch.

C—Faulting and erosion have given the land its present shape.

Much of the heavy rainfall west of Jerusalem seeps into the limestone strata below ground, where it follows the angle of stratification downward and eastward to emerge along the Dead Sea as some of the most powerful springs in the land.

Due largely to movements of the plates of the earth’s crust, the entire rock sandwich was compressed in some places, stretched in others. A violent upheaval on a NNE–SSW axis raised the top layers of the sandwich into a series of closely related arches (an arch is a massive geological rise, or ripple, in the underlying rock structure). These arches form the spiny limestone backbone of the land of ancient Israel. Their line parallels the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, determining the smoothly contoured shape of Israel’s coastline from Mount Carmel to the Sinai.

A series of violent fractures, slippages, and displacements dramatically altered this relatively simple geological structure. It is possible to trace an intricate network of fault lines on a detailed geological map of Israel. The most pronounced are the parallel north-south faults that mark both sides of the section of the Great Rift Valley that lies between the Sea of Galilee and the southern end of the Dead Sea. Several smaller fault lines run parallel to the NNE–SSW line of the limestone arch. Others have bisected the arch, causing the ground between to drop into broad, low valleys that function as corridors that allow travel access deep into the hills (e.g., the Wadi Farah [Fari’a], the Harod and Jezreel Valleys, and the eastern, upper end of the Aijalon Valley). Extensive fracturing throughout Galilee has produced a highly complex surface topography, providing a unique mix of tight spaces and open passageways throughout the region.

We might correctly suppose that a land as marked by faulting as this would lie prone to earthquakes, and indeed the effects of many earthquakes are seen in the archaeological and literary record of the land of ancient Israel.¹⁶ Some have been quite severe; among the most catastrophic were those in AD 749, 1034, 1546, 1759, 1837, and 1927 (this last one killed more than 500 people). As would be expected, the epicenter for most earthquakes has been somewhere in the Rift Valley, often close to Jericho. Most have registered between 6.5 and 6.8 on the Richter scale. Still, the author can personally attest that even in a relatively minor earthquake in the Judean hill country, the foundations of the mountains [of Jerusalem] trembled (Ps 18:7). Biblical writers, in fact, sometimes used a severe earthquake to date an important event (Amos 1:1; Zech 14:5) or to describe an appearance of God (Pss 18:7; 68:8; 114:4,6–7; Hab 3:10; cp. Matt 27:51).

White Eocene limestone, shown here on a hollowed-out cliff face at Beth Guvrin in the Shephelah of Judah, has a low water-carrying capacity and is generally too soft to be cut and used as building blocks. It can, however, be hollowed out into cave dwellings or harvested, as it was here, as soft limestone for plaster, leaving a gaping cave behind. Wherever it is exposed to the surface of the ground, Eocene limestone tends to be covered by a three-to-five-foot (1 to 1.5 m) thick layer of Nari crust, a hard, limey covering that is durable enough to be used as building blocks. Cities found in Eocene areas such as Megiddo and Gezer were largely built out of local Nari. Nari is rough and ashen gray in color, with the underlying Eocene light brown to white; this gives patches of exposed bedrock of the Shephelah a pallid look when viewed under a blinding summer sun.

Volcanic eruptions, another result of seismic activity, also provide a reservoir of images for the biblical writers who sought to reach beyond the norm to illustrate the power of God (Pss 18:7; 104:32; 144:5). These occurred most recently in the geological sequence of mountain building. Volcanic activity has deposited a thick layer of black basalt (lava) across the limestone core of Bashan and in the eastern part of Lower Galilee, with smaller patches appearing in the Mishor (Medeba Plateau), Moab, and Edom. While none of the volcanic cones or fissures responsible for this flow of lava are still active, a line of hot springs in the Rift Valley offers living evidence of this earlier age in ancient Israel’s geological past.

Job described the forces of erosion to illustrate a life come apart:

But as a mountain collapses and crumbles and a rock is dislodged from its place, as water wears away stones >and torrents wash away the soil from the land, so you destroy a man’s hope. (Job 14:18–19)

The landforms of ancient Israel also take their shape from the ongoing effects of erosion due to wind, rain, and fluctuations in temperature. Because the prevailing rains come from the northwest, erosion is most pronounced on the westward slopes of the limestone hills. Here large expanses of the upper, softer Eocene and Senonian strata of the rock sandwich have completely

worn away, exposing the harder and more favorable Cenomanian-Turonian layers beneath. As a result, the higher hills of the area, including most of the spiny NNE–SSW backbone that so defines the lay of the land of ancient Israel, are all typically composed of badly weathered Cenomanian-Turonian limestone.

Black volcanic basalt once flowed over the Eocene limestone strata of the northeastern part of the land of ancient Israel, then cooled into many thousands of crystalline (often hexagonal) columns. In places such as the Yehudiya Canyon on the Golan (shown here), the basalt has collapsed to expose fragments of these columns; elsewhere it has eroded into a thin layer of rich, black topsoil. Basalt rock is very hard and so makes for durable building stones even though it is difficult to cut and carve. Regions of basalt are generally sparsely populated because of the challenging living conditions in which it is found, although in areas where the basaltic soil collects into open fields, farming can be quite profitable.

The differing characteristics of these rock types were noticed by the biblical writers, who generally referred to areas of Cenomanian-Turonian limestone as hill country, regions of Eocene limestone as lowland or foothills (shephelah), and to the exposed mass of Senonian chalk lying west of the Dead Sea as slopes (Josh 10:40). Because the specific characteristics of each of these rock types differ significantly from the others, each of the geological regions of the land of ancient Israel tends to have a distinctive topography, water supply, vegetation cover, economic basis, network of routes, and pattern of human settlement. In short, the foundations of the earth (Ps 104:5) underlying each particular region strongly influenced (determined would perhaps be too strong a word) ancient—and to a large extent also modern—living conditions there. Indeed, it would not be too much to say that our entry into biblical geography must begin with, and constantly return to, rocks, because geology plays such a formative role in setting the parameters for the possibilities and qualities of life on the surface of the ground above. In the same way that scholars or students of the Bible who pursue literary or grammatical-historical approaches to the text must keep returning to aspects of phonetics, morphology, and syntax when constructing meaningful and coherent understandings of the text, those who attempt to recover the geographical context of the Bible must continually return to the grammar of the building blocks of the land.

C. Climate

The lands lying along the southeastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea sit somewhat north of the Tropic of Cancer, in a portion of the subtropical zone that experiences hot, dry summers (in May through October) and cool (though seldom cold), wet winters (in November through April). Compared to the bracing climate of the Taurus and Caucasus Mountains further north and the blistering conditions of the Arabian and Sahara Deserts to the south, the Mediterranean climate is, on the whole, relatively mild. Still, we who are blessed with warm clothing and buildings of modern construction must note the daily trials of living largely out-of-doors, or surrounded by a shelter of, at most, goat-hair, mud brick, or stone. There I was [protested Jacob]—the heat consumed me by day and the frost by night (Gen 31:40). And Job gave this insight: "Without clothing, they spend the night naked, having no covering against the cold. Drenched by mountain rains, they huddle against the rocks, shelterless" (Job 24:7–8).

The climate of the land of ancient Israel is affected in part by larger weather patterns that surround the region, and in part by the effects of local topography. Moreover, because the land of ancient Israel is so narrow and pinched tightly between the humid Mediterranean Sea and the arid North Arabian Desert—regions with opposite climatic tendencies—any slight variation in global weather patterns can result in extreme fluctuations in temperature and rainfall from one year to the next. This interplay of desert, sea, and elevation on such a tiny stage causes the climate to vary greatly on the micro level, and it is difficult to speak of overall averages except in relation to specific regions.

This simplified geology map shows the placement of the major rock types within the land of ancient Israel. The main line of hills running NNE–SSW of the Rift Valley is composed of hard Cenomanian-Turonian limestone, framed in places by softer Eocene limestone and Senonian chalk. A large area of basalt dominates the northeast, with the area of Transjordan dominated by Senonian chalk. The overall surface pattern of these rock types reflects various economic tendencies—and, often, historic political divisions—within the land.

Probably the most important climatic element in the land of ancient Israel—and certainly one that is directly affected by elevation, desert, and sea—is rainfall. The main line of mountains defining the overall topography of the land lies NNE–SSW, parallel to the coast but perpendicular to the direction of the prevailing rains, which typically blow in off the Mediterranean from the northwest. Because the mountains block the rain, the amount of moisture that reaches the Rift Valley and eastern regions beyond is dramatically reduced.

The spiny line of hills that form the backbone of the land of ancient Israel acts as a watershed, trapping moisture on its western side and preventing significant rainfall from falling onto its eastward-facing slopes. The Judean Wilderness’s desert conditions are largely due to the rain shadow that forms between the top o this watershed ridge and the hills of Transjordan. It is not unusual in the wintertime to see a large gap of blue sky exactly over the wilderness and southern Jordan Valley as the clouds of the Hill Country of Judah and Ephraim dissipate, then reform over the hills of Gilead, the Mishor, and Moab further east.

The traditional way of viewing the structure of the land of ancient Israel is to emphasize its longitudinal zones. From west to east, these are the Coastal Plain, the Western Highlands, the Rift Valley, the Eastern (Transjordanian) Plateau, and the Arabian Desert. It is easy to appreciate the effect of rainfall on the western slopes, the impact of the rise of hills that blocks the ready movement of traffic, and the dominance of the eastward-facing deserts. Note that in the Galilee cross-section (Section 1), the Jezreel Valley creates a broad corridor through the hills, connecting the coast with the rift.

It is possible to speak in terms of three basic rules of rainfall for the land of ancient Israel:

higher elevations generally receive more rainfall than lower elevations;

the regions in the north tend to be wetter than those in the south; and

rainfall amounts decrease significantly from west to east.

For example, it is not uncommon for Mount Carmel (with an elevation of 1,790 ft/545 m), which rises abruptly out of the Mediterranean Sea in the northwest, to receive 40 inches (1,016 mm) of rain during the course of a year, while the region of Masada, only one hundred miles (160 km) to the southeast yet lying 1,200 feet (366 m) below sea level, typically sees only 1 to 2 inches (25 to 50 mm) annually. The rainfall of Jerusalem (with an elevation of 2,600 ft/792 m), midway between Mount Carmel and Masada, averages 21 to 24 inches (533 to 610 mm) per year, about the same as Abilene, Texas, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, or London, England—although in London precipitation is spread out over 170 days per year while Jerusalem has on average 50 rainy days annually.

Bible readers often wonder whether the climate in Israel has changed significantly since ancient times; after all, it is hard to imagine a land flowing with milk and honey (Exod 3:17; Deut 6:3; Jer 11:5) among the sun-bleached, rocky hillsides that dominate much of the landscape today. All available evidence, including that gained by tracing patterns of human settlement or the presence or absence of plant and animal species over time, or from rock weathering and soil formation, suggests that the climate of the land of ancient Israel has been essentially stable for the last four millennia.¹⁷ The centuries between 2300 and 2000 BC were a little hotter and drier than today, but over the last four thousand years the influence of human activity in the region (e.g., improved farming techniques) has tended to level out any minor long-term variations in climate that might have occurred. Of course, there are always yearly fluctuations (drought one year followed by ample rainfall the next, or a few dry years in a row followed by a single wet one; Gen 41:29–30; 2 Sam 21:1), but these do little to change the long-term average.¹⁸ Scientific evidence for overall climate stability since ancient times is confirmed by numerous biblical statements about the weather, all of which ring as true today as they did when they were written millennia ago (Deut 32:2; Job 38:22-38; Ps 65:12–13; Prov 25:14; Jer 4:11; 14:1–6; Matt 16:2–3; Mark 4:37; and Acts 27:14–15).

The land of ancient Israel can be divided into two subsistence zones based on yearly rainfall averages. Regions in which twelve or more inches (300 mm+) of rain fall every year are able to support farming villages and other permanent settlements, while areas that see less than twelve inches annually (as indicated by areas that are shades of orange on the map) are better suited to semi-nomadic, sheep-herding lifestyles. This twelve-inch (300 mm) rainfall line has played a significant role in population density levels over time. It has also influenced the location of the borders of viable regional nation-states.

Perhaps the most helpful way to view the climate of the land of ancient Israel is to journey through the yearly cycle with an Israelite farming family, folk who were the economic backbone of the biblical world. Theirs was an agricultural society, deeply dependent on rainfall and on the Lord your God . . . [who] is always watching over [your land], from the beginning to the end of the year (Deut 11:12). Even people who lived in larger cities such as Jerusalem during the time of the Bible maintained close ties to the resources of their ancestral lands (Jer 32:6–12). The cycle of life for everyone was wrapped tightly in the land and its seasons. The earthy realities of moisture and soil are present on nearly every page of the biblical text.

The onset of heavy winter rains adds an amusing touch to the setting of Ezra’s fiery sermon in which he chastised the people of Judah and Benjamin for their sins. Ezra called everyone to Jerusalem for the somber occasion and made them sit in the open square before the temple. It was late December. The dark clouds moving overhead burst open, dumping their contents on the recalcitrant people who were listening to Ezra’s sermon, trembling because of this matter and because of the heavy rain (Ezra 10:9). It didn’t take long before the people came around: Yes, we will do what you say! But . . . it is the rainy season. We don’t have the stamina to stay out in the open (Ezra 10:12–13). Ezra relented, though only for the moment. He was a good teacher, planning his sermon for just the right time of year to show his congregation that before God, everyone is chilled to the bone.

The agricultural year begins with the onset of the early rains (Hb yoreh), a technical term that English Bibles sometimes translate autumn rains (Deut 11:14; Ps 84:6; Joel 2:23). With them, rock-hard, sun-parched ground is transformed to the promise of simple mud. Almost always the early rains are preceded by a change in the air that beckons moisture but doesn’t quite deliver. Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of his gifts falsely ran the proverb (Prov 25:14 NASB), and those who spoke it knew the edgy anticipation of waiting for the heavy cloud that would finally burst its contents onto the land (Job 36:27–28; 37:11; 38:37–38).