Beit Shemesh and Khirbet Qeiyafa ... by Hannah

Let me begin by saying that I am completely aware that I ended my last post by saying, "I will try to have the next post ready in a day or two :)" ... and that it has been 2 + weeks! Maybe I'll have to get Tommy to take care of the captions on some of these, and they might get done quicker :)

These pictures were taken on Monday, June 13th. Tommy and I joined a tour group that Avi and Dina were hosting, and we were able to visit some really neat places! Their tour bus picked us up at the Har-El junction and the first stop was the archaeological site of Beit Shemesh.

This town was first mentioned in Joshua 15:10, but is probably best known from the story in 1 Samuel 6. The Philistines had captured the ark of the covenant from the Israelites, but it was causing them all sorts of trouble ... their idol fell over by itself and was broken ... they suffered from plagues ... and mice overran the land!

They finally decided to send the ark back to the Israelites, by placing it on a cart pulled by two female cows. Miraculously, the cows began walking up the valley toward Beit Shemesh. When the people of the town saw the ark on the cart, they were very excited and rushed to take it off and offer sacrifices. The problem was that the people of Beit Shemesh looked into the ark, which was strictly forbidden. They suffered for their disobedience, and the scriptures say that YHWH killed 50,070 of them.

The archaeological site of Beit Shemesh.

The Sorek valley is behind us ... it is mentioned in Judges 16:4.

Samson lived somewhere on those hills across the valley.

These hills are Zorah and Eshtaol, and we read in Judges 13 that Samson was here.

This is the Sorek valley, below Beit Shemesh.

We can only imagine that the Israelite people from the story of 1 Samuel 6 were reaping these fields when the cows came along with the ark of the covenant :)

An Arab shepherd with his flock.

The archaeologists discovered a very large water cistern under the town

 They found this hole in the ground while excavating, and lowered a video camera down to see what was underneath. We took this photo from the cistern.

There was one very large "room", with "channels" going in different directions.

After spending some time at Beit Shemesh, we all boarded an open jeep "safari" vehicle, and drove through the Elah Valley to Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Khirbet Qeiyafa is a site that archaeologists have begun to excavate in the past couple years. Professor Yosef Garfinkel from the Hebrew University is in charge of the excavations, and he gave us a tour of the site. He believes that the town here is the town referred to as Sha'arayim - the name means "two gates". During excavations, they have discovered two gates for this city.

Sha'arayim is mentioned in Joshua 15:36 as one of the towns of Judah, and it is also mentioned in 1 Chronicles 4:31 as being where the family of Shimei lived. The third reference to Sha'arayim in the scriptures, is 1 Samuel 17:52. After David killed Goliath, we read that the "men of Israel and of Judah arose, and shouted, and pursued the Philistines, until thou come to the valley, and to the gates of Ekron. And the wounded of the Philistines fell down by the way to Shaaraim, even unto Gath, and unto Ekron."

At Sha'arayim ... overlooking the Elah Valley.

Part of the city wall.

Mr. Garfinkel led us around the outside of the wall, so that we could enter by one of the gates.

One of the gates.

The view from the gate.

This was the threshold for the gate .. notice how it is designed to keep the gate from going further than it was supposed to.

We were told that this was a kitchen gadget, but I can't remember the purpose of it! I think it was for crushing grain.

This may have been used as a mortar and pestle.

More of the wall.

The short walls show where houses and rooms were.

Cactus!

Professor Yossef Garfinkel.

Archaeologists ... some of them were from the Adventist school near Chattanooga TN.

We took a group photo in the second gate.

Part of the Elah Valley.

Rocks, rocks, and more rocks! (Ever wonder why the Palestinians throw rocks when they're rioting? There are plenty of them around!)

More information about Sha'arayim (Khirbet Qeiyafa) can be seen at: http://qeiyafa.huji.ac.il.

I will post the photos from the second part of the tour in the next entry ... there were too many of them to fit into one post!