Dead Sea

• Dead Sea

124:6.8By the fourth and last day’s jour­ney the road was a con­tin­u­ous pro­ces­sion of pil­grims. They now be­gan to climb the hills lead­ing up to Je­ru­sa­lem. As they neared the top, they could look across the Jor­dan to the moun­tains be­yond and south over the slug­gish wa­ters of the Dead Sea. About half­way up to Je­ru­sa­lem, Je­sus gained his first view of the Mount of Olives (the re­gion to be so much a part of his sub­se­quent life), and Joseph pointed out to him that the Holy City lay just be­yond this ridge, and the lad’s heart beat fast with joy­ous an­tic­i­pa­tion of soon be­hold­ing the city and house of his heav­enly Fa­ther.

• Dead Sea

135:1.1John had no school from which to grad­u­ate at the age of four­teen, but his par­ents had se­lected this as the ap­pro­pri­ate year for him to take the for­mal Nazarite vow. Ac­cord­ingly, Zach­a­rias and Eliz­a­beth took their son to En­gedi, down by the Dead Sea. This was the south­ern head­quar­ters of the Nazarite broth­er­hood, and there the lad was duly and solemnly in­ducted into this or­der for life. Af­ter these cer­e­monies and the mak­ing of the vows to ab­stain from all in­tox­i­cat­ing drinks, to let the hair grow, and to re­frain from touch­ing the dead, the fam­ily pro­ceeded to Je­ru­sa­lem, where, be­fore the tem­ple, John com­pleted the mak­ing of the of­fer­ings which were re­quired of those tak­ing Nazarite vows.

• Dead Sea

135:2.3John and Eliz­a­beth re­turned to their home and be­gan to lay plans for the fu­ture. Since John re­fused to ac­cept the priest’s al­lowance due him from the tem­ple funds, by the end of two years they had all but lost their home; so they de­cided to go south with the sheep herd. Ac­cord­ingly, the sum­mer that John was twenty years of age wit­nessed their re­moval to He­bron. In the so-called “wilder­ness of Judea” John tended his sheep along a brook that was trib­u­tary to a larger stream which en­tered the Dead Sea at En­gedi. The En­gedi colony in­cluded not only Nazarites of life­long and time-pe­riod con­se­cra­tion but nu­mer­ous other as­cetic herds­men who con­gre­gated in this re­gion with their herds and frat­er­nized with the Nazarite broth­er­hood. They sup­ported them­selves by sheep rais­ing and from gifts which wealthy Jews made to the or­der.

124:6.5The road now led im­me­di­ately down into the trop­i­cal Jor­dan val­ley, and soon Je­sus was to have ex­posed to his won­der­ing gaze the crooked and ever-wind­ing Jor­dan with its glis­ten­ing and rip­pling wa­ters as it flowed down to­ward the Dead Sea. They laid aside their outer gar­ments as they jour­neyed south in this trop­i­cal val­ley, en­joy­ing the lux­u­ri­ous fields of grain and the beau­ti­ful ole­an­ders laden with their pink blos­soms, while mas­sive snow-capped Mount Her­mon stood far to the north, in majesty look­ing down on the his­toric val­ley. A lit­tle over three hours’ travel from op­po­site Scythopo­lis they came upon a bub­bling spring, and here they camped for the night, out un­der the star­lit heav­ens.