At Gilboa and in the Decapolis

144:0.1Septem­ber and Oc­to­ber were spent in re­tire­ment at a se­cluded camp upon the slopes of Mount Gil­boa. The month of Septem­ber Je­sus spent here alone with his apos­tles, teach­ing and in­struct­ing them in the truths of the king­dom.

144:0.2There were a num­ber of rea­sons why Je­sus and his apos­tles were in re­tire­ment at this time on the bor­ders of Samaria and the De­capo­lis. The Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious rulers were very an­tag­o­nis­tic; Herod An­tipas still held John in prison, fear­ing ei­ther to re­lease or ex­e­cute him, while he con­tin­ued to en­ter­tain sus­pi­cions that John and Je­sus were in some way as­so­ci­ated. These con­di­tions made it un­wise to plan for ag­gres­sive work in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee. There was a third rea­son: the slowly aug­ment­ing ten­sion be­tween the lead­ers of John’s dis­ci­ples and the apos­tles of Je­sus, which grew worse with the in­creas­ing num­ber of be­liev­ers.

144:0.3Je­sus knew that the days of the pre­lim­i­nary work of teach­ing and preach­ing were about over, that the next move in­volved the be­gin­ning of the full and fi­nal ef­fort of his life on earth, and he did not wish the launch­ing of this un­der­tak­ing to be in any man­ner ei­ther try­ing or em­bar­rass­ing to John the Bap­tist. Je­sus had there­fore de­cided to spend some time in re­tire­ment re­hears­ing his apos­tles and then to do some quiet work in the cities of the De­capo­lis un­til John should be ei­ther ex­e­cuted or re­leased to join them in a united ef­fort.