The Jordan Valley
The Jordan Valley
The Jordan Valley is part of the Great Rift Valley which stretches for 4,000 miles from Asia Minor through the Red Sea to the Rift Valley lakes of East Africa. But the River Jordan itself is only about eighty miles in total length, excluding its meanderings. It rises in Mount Hermon, a 9,000-foot shoulder of the Anti-Lebanon mass, and then maintains a steady descent (“Jordan” means “descender”) through Lake Huleh and Lake Tiberias until it peters out in the Dead Sea. At Huleh it is still above sea level (about 230 feet), but Lake Tiberias is nearly 700 feet below, while its final descent takes it to about 1,300 feet below at the Dead Sea, whose bottom at over 2,500 feet is the deepest point on the surface of the earth.
Lake Huleh is known in the Bible as “the Waters of Merom” but does not feature prominently in the biblical narrative (only Josh. 11:5, 7). It has always been the haunt of birds rather than of men—purple herons still nest in its tall papyrus reeds—although recently most of it was drained for agricultural land.
Lake Tiberias is sometimes called in the Gospels “the Sea of Kinnreth” (or Gennesaret) but usually “the Sea of Galilee,” although to Luke, the much-traveled evangelist who knew the Mediterranean firsthand, it is always merely a “lake.” Indeed, he is right, for it is only twelve miles long and—at its widest point—only seven miles across. It is deep and full of fish, and the first disciples of Jesus, the two pairs of brothers, Andrew and Simon, James and John, were partners in a fishing business on the lake. Although it is almost surrounded by mountains, there were numerous villages round its northern and western shores, and these Jesus visited when he went about preaching, teaching and healing.
South of Lake Tiberias the Jordan River flows for a further sixty-five miles (though the mileage is more like 200 if all the meanderings are included) until it reaches the Dead Sea. For much of this distance it is unimpressive and muddy, so that one has some sympathy for Naaman the leprous Syrian general who had no desire to be cured by having to wash in it:
Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than any of the waters of Israel? Couldn’t I wash in them and be cleansed? (2 Kings 5:12)
More impressive was the thick jungle of the river valley, a famous haunt of wild animals, so that God could liken himself in his judgments to a “lion coming up from Jordan’s thickets to a rich pastureland” (Jer. 49:19).
The exact site of the baptisms administered by John the Baptist is unknown, but it must have been at one of the fords a few miles from where the Jordan enters the Dead Sea. Thus:
The whole of the Palestinian Rift Valley is called in the Old Testament “the Arabah,” meaning “dry,” and the Dead Sea is “the Sea of the Arabah” or “the Salt Sea.” This is forty-eight miles long and a scene of almost unrelieved desolation. Its eastern shore is overlooked by the sheer cliffs of the mountains of Moab, while on the west are the barren slopes of the mountains of Judah. Here (at Qumran) lived the Essene monastic community before and during the time of Christ, and here in our time the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in some of the caves which honeycomb the hills.
The heat is so intense (up to 43° C, 110° F in the summer), the evaporation so great and the rainfall so small, that the water level of the Dead Sea remains constant despite the inflowing streams and the absence of all outflow. As a result, the chemical deposits in the water (especially salt, potash and magnesium) are highly concentrated, and no fish can survive (cf. Ezek. 47:1–12). It seems likely that Sodom and Gomorrah, “the cities of the plain,” were situated in the area now covered by the southern tip of the Dead Sea. And it is not impossible that the “brimstone and fire” which the Lord “rained” on them, together with the “pillar of salt” into which Lot’s wife was changed, were the results of an earthquake and eruption which God used to destroy them for their wickedness (Gen. 19:24–29).
The Arabah continues south of the Dead Sea until it reaches the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aqabah. Here was the port of Ezion Geber (the equivalent of the modern Elath), giving Israel access by sea to the trade of Africa and Asia. For “King Solomon built a fleet of ships at Ezion-geber” (1 Kings 9:26 RSV). Copper was exported from the nearby mines which Solomon developed, while imports included such exotic items as “gold, silver and ivory, and apes and baboons” (1 Kings 10:22).