Jerusalem is in the midst of Sukkot, the seven-day Festival of Booths (Lev. 23:39–43). It’s one of three festivals for which the Torah says God’s people should come to the Holy City. Sukkot is both a harvest event and a time to remember God’s faithfulness when Israelites were vulnerable in the wilderness. People celebrating Sukkot…
Category: Jerusalem
Human sacrifice and gun violence
Dome of the Rock in Old Jerusalem enshrines faith stories, including the almost-sacrifice of Isaac. By Jewish and Muslim tradition, the bedrock protruding inside this seventh-century structure is the top of Mount Moriah, to which Abraham took his son at God’s command. The boy carried firewood, Abraham carried fire and knife. “The fire and the…
Grace for a marginalized man
A foreigner from a sexually marginalized group was one of the first Gentiles to receive baptism in the name of Jesus (Acts 8:26-40). The new believer, from the court of the queen of Ethiopia, was a eunuch—a castrated male. Often made so as children without their consent, eunuchs functioned as administrators and servants for rulers…
A tyrant loses moral authority
On the west side of Old Jerusalem, outside the city wall, lads from a Yeshiva school visit with their teacher and play. They gather among scant ruins of what probably was the western entrance to Herod the Great’s palace at the time Jesus was born. Matthew reports that wise men from the East, presumably Gentiles,…
Will a wall protect us?
Expecting imminent attack by the merciless army of Assyria in 701 BC, King Hezekiah of Jerusalem prepared for siege. He built a 1700-foot tunnel to supply the city with water. He set about “repairing all the broken sections of the wall and building towers on it.” He added “another wall” outside that one and reinforced…
Holy Lands Peace Pilgrim 