Mount Sartaba

• Mount Sartaba

122:7.6Bright and early the morn­ing of Au­gust 19, Joseph and Mary were again on their way. They par­took of their noon­tide meal at the foot of Mount Sartaba, over­look­ing the Jor­dan val­ley, and jour­neyed on, mak­ing Jeri­cho for the night, where they stopped at an inn on the high­way in the out­skirts of the city. Fol­low­ing the evening meal and af­ter much dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing the op­pres­sive­ness of Ro­man rule, Herod, the cen­sus en­roll­ment, and the com­par­a­tive in­flu­ence of Je­ru­sa­lem and Alexan­dria as cen­ters of Jew­ish learn­ing and cul­ture, the Naz­a­reth trav­el­ers re­tired for the night’s rest. Early in the morn­ing of Au­gust 20 they re­sumed their jour­ney, reach­ing Je­ru­sa­lem be­fore noon, vis­it­ing the tem­ple, and go­ing on to their des­ti­na­tion, ar­riv­ing at Beth­le­hem in midafter­noon.

143:3.1About this time a state of great ner­vous and emo­tional ten­sion de­vel­oped among the apos­tles and their im­me­di­ate dis­ci­ple as­so­ciates. They had hardly be­come ac­cus­tomed to liv­ing and work­ing to­gether. They were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­ing dif­fi­cul­ties in main­tain­ing har­mo­nious re­la­tions with John’s dis­ci­ples. The con­tact with the gen­tiles and the Samar­i­tans was a great trial to these Jews. And be­sides all this, the re­cent ut­ter­ances of Je­sus had aug­mented their dis­turbed state of mind. An­drew was al­most be­side him­self; he did not know what next to do, and so he went to the Mas­ter with his prob­lems and per­plex­i­ties. When Je­sus had lis­tened to the apos­tolic chief re­late his trou­bles, he said: “An­drew, you can­not talk men out of their per­plex­i­ties when they reach such a stage of in­volve­ment, and when so many per­sons with strong feel­ings are con­cerned. I can­not do what you ask of me—I will not par­tic­i­pate in these per­sonal so­cial dif­fi­cul­ties—but I will join you in the en­joy­ment of a three-day pe­riod of rest and re­lax­ation. Go to your breth­ren and an­nounce that all of you are to go with me up on Mount Sartaba, where I de­sire to rest for a day or two.

124:6.6On their sec­ond day’s jour­ney they passed by where the Jab­bok, from the east, flows into the Jor­dan, and look­ing east up this river val­ley, they re­counted the days of Gideon, when the Mid­i­an­ites poured into this re­gion to over­run the land. To­ward the end of the sec­ond day’s jour­ney they camped near the base of the high­est moun­tain over­look­ing the Jor­dan val­ley, Mount Sartaba, whose sum­mit was oc­cu­pied by the Alexan­drian fortress where Herod had im­pris­oned one of his wives and buried his two stran­gled sons.