5. Central Mountains Center

1  Jacob’s Well

2  Nebi Samuel National Park

3  Samaria/Sebaste

4  Shechem (Tell Balata)

5  Shiloh

You can visit many of the places in the central portion of the central mountain zone with a day trip from Jerusalem using Highway 60. This road generally follows the path of the biblical Ridge Route. It remains one of the most scenic rural drives you can make in this land. As you travel north from Jerusalem, watch for the geography to change around you. The mountains will become lower in elevation, the severity of the slopes will diminish, and the valley systems will widen. Rainfall increases as you move north. This ripens the grain growing in the valleys and matures the olive trees that fill the terraced slopes.

In the Old Testament this was the tribal territory of Ephraim and Manasseh, the heart of what became known as the northern kingdom of Israel. In the New Testament this was the Roman district of Samaria and home to the Samaritans. Today it is the West Bank, home to Palestinian cities and villages. Although there are comparatively fewer stops to make in this portion of the central mountain zone and although the sites are less developed for tourists, you will see a land less obscured by modern infrastructure and visit sites that offer precious insights into familiar Bible stories.

Jacob’s Well

Jesus was always the Messiah but rarely referred to himself using this title. That makes Jacob’s Well special. Here Jesus verbally declared he was the Messiah while visiting with a Samaritan woman. In Jesus’s day the well was not located in a building, but today it resides within the Greek Orthodox Church of Saint Photina. (If the door to the complex is closed, ring the bell for entry.)

This location has a long history. Jacob fled to Paddan Aram after tricking his brother into surrendering his birthright. When Jacob returned from Paddan Aram, he camped near the ancient city of Shechem (Gen. 33:18–20), today’s Tel Balata (discussed below), located in the mountain pass between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. After purchasing a plot of ground, he dug a well here, likely because all the springs had been claimed by the locals. This well became known as Jacob’s Well. Centuries later Jesus met with a Samaritan woman at this well to talk about her life, eternal life, and his identity as the Messiah (John 4:1–26). That made it a spot worth remembering. Byzantine Christians built a church over the well in the fourth century AD. The Crusaders replaced it with a church of their own in the twelfth century AD. The footprint of the Crusader church became the footprint of the modern church completed in 2007.

When you are inside the beautifully decorated modern church, look for the set of stairs at the front of the building, which will take you under the altar and into the small chapel that surrounds the well itself. The modern limestone cap, bucket, and pulley system cover a 7.5-foot-wide shaft whose depth has been variously reported from 240 feet (seventh century AD) to the more recently reported 67 feet. If you would like to take some water home, there is a small shop next to the well that will help you with that.

Christians have come to the well for thousands of years because Jesus verbally declared that he was the Messiah here (John 4:25–26). You may consider this surprising given that this well served the village of Sychar in Samaria, north of the Jewish heartland of Judea. The Samaritans who lived here descended from the non-Jewish people brought into this area by the Assyrians. Their story is told in 2 Kings 17:24–40. This non-Jewish group married into Jewish families, forming the Samaritan population of Jesus’s day that held some but not all the views of the Jews of Galilee and Judea. They worshiped the Lord and expected a coming messiah but recognized only the first five books of the Old Testament as their holy writings. Mount Gerizim rather than Mount Zion was their holy mountain.

Why would Jesus come here to make a declaration like this? It likely has to do with Old Testament expectation rooted in this place. Jacob’s Well lies just a short distance from the Old Testament site of Shechem. A series of Old Testament events made this a place of messianic expectation. At Shechem the Lord appeared to Abram and told him that he had arrived in the promised land (Gen. 12:6–7). That promise was intimately linked to the mission of his family, bringing the world its Savior from sin (Gen. 12:1–3). On two later occasions Joshua brought the tribes of Israel to the pass between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim to review their national mission in light of bringing the Messiah into the world (Josh. 8:30–35; 24:1–27). Long before the Samaritans existed, long before Jerusalem and Shiloh (discussed below) became important religious centers, there was Shechem. It was the place God’s people of the past came to think about a coming Savior from sin. When we see Jacob’s Well in that light, it was not just helpful for Jesus to come here and declare himself to be the Messiah; it was a place Jesus “had to go” (John 4:4).

INFORMATION east side of modern Nablus;  donations are appreciated; 

Nebi Samuel National Park

A sixth-century tradition identifies this ridge with Ramah, the village in which the great Old Testament prophet Samuel was born, ministered, and was buried (1 Sam. 1:19; 7:17; 25:1). The accuracy of this tradition is in doubt, as is the true identity of this location. Scholars have associated this ridge with a variety of Bible places including Ramah, Mizpah, and the high place of Gibeon. Don’t let their uncertainty and the doubtfulness of the tradition linking this to Samuel’s tomb trouble you. The real value in being here has less to do with what the place is than what you can see from here. The park offers one of the best views for orienting yourself to the greater Jerusalem area and the critical piece of real estate known as the Benjamin Plateau. The label may be new to you. But if you come to understand this location, you will read a number of Old Testament stories in a new way.

Let’s start with the archaeology. The large structure in front of you had its beginning in the Crusader period but achieved its current form in 1911. It marks the traditional location of Samuel’s tomb and functions as both a synagogue and a mosque, given the importance of Samuel in both the Jewish and Muslim faith traditions. You will find archaeology from a variety of periods at the base of this building. To the east you will see a Crusader quarry that was turned into a stable. To the south are the remains of a Jewish village from the Hasmonean era (second century BC, between the time of the Old and New Testaments). Among the Hasmonean ruins is also evidence of Israelite settlement from the time of the divided kingdom (eighth to seventh century BC). To the west there are more remains of the Crusader fortress.

The archaeology has less to offer a Bible reader here than the view. If time is short, move quickly to the roof of the mosque. You can get there using a set of stairs accessed just inside the south entrance of the building. And don’t forget to bring along a map. It will help you make sense of what you can see and orient yourself to places that lie out of sight beyond the horizon. From the roof, start by looking to the south. You will see Jerusalem and the extended ridge of the Mount of Olives. To the east you will be looking in the direction of Gibeah, Jericho, and the Jordan River. (Gibeah is the only one of the three in sight and can be identified by looking for the girders of a partially completed building on a distant ridge.) To the west beyond the plateau you will be looking toward the Aijalon Valley, the coastal plain, and the Mediterranean Sea. But the most significant view is the one to the north. In this direction you will see the Benjamin Plateau, the ancient site of Gibeon in the near foreground, and the modern city of Ramallah beyond.

Locations mentioned in the Bible that look so similar on the page have varying degrees of strategic value. Read that sentence one more time. Then look north onto the plateau. You are looking at one of the most strategic pieces of real estate in the promised land. Its value has to do with transportation, the economic well-being of Jerusalem, and the security of the central mountain region.

Start by thinking about transportation and economics. It was very difficult to move east and west through the central mountain zone. A series of north–south mountain ridges blocked the traveler’s progress, turning what would have been a modest east–west walk into days of mountain climbing. But the Benjamin Plateau offered a solution. Here a high plateau interrupted the mountains and allowed an east–west crossing without all the climbing. Consequently, those moving from the Jordan River valley to the Mediterranean Sea used this route, a route we call the Jericho–Gezer Road because it connected those two cities. This was the way in which the world markets gained access to Jerusalem and the way in which Jerusalem gained access to the world markets.

Now add the security of the central mountains to the picture. Armies traveled to Jerusalem in the same way that merchants did. Throughout all periods of the Bible, those who attacked Jerusalem did so by using this route. But it was not just the security of Jerusalem but also the entire mountain interior that was in play. To see that, add the main north–south road through the mountains of Israel, the Ridge Route. It crossed this plateau just to the east of your current position at Gibeah. Put those two road systems on the landscape and you will see that the Benjamin Plateau hosted the internal crossroads of the central mountain zone. The one who controlled this plateau controlled access to and movement through this entire region. That makes the Benjamin Plateau one of the most critical pieces of property in the promised land.

Not surprisingly, the plateau is frequently alluded to in the Bible. Start with the Israelite invasion of Canaan at the time of Joshua. The invasion route is defined by place names like Jericho, Bethel, Ai, Gibeon, and Jerusalem (Josh. 6–10). When you line them up on the landscape, you are tracing a route that travels through the Benjamin Plateau. Think of what that means strategically. When Joshua and the Israelites came to control this plateau, they controlled the internal crossroads of Canaan and could prevent effective communication and the movement of goods between enemy centers to the north and south. This put them in a position to divide and conquer the Canaanite city-states north and south of the plateau. Given the location’s value, you would expect Israel to conquer and occupy every village and town on the plateau. That is what makes Gibeon such a surprise. This city was not conquered, and a full chapter is dedicated to explaining this unexpected turn of events (Josh. 9). It is also why the Lord used a miracle on this plateau to give the Israelites a decisive victory over a Canaanite coalition of five southern city-states. He made sure that nothing beyond Gibeon remained in Canaanite hands (Josh. 10).

The story of this plateau continues beyond Joshua into 1 and 2 Samuel. As Samuel gathered the Israelites for a service of rededication at Mizpah, the Philistines showed up. Once again this vital real estate was threatened. But rather than discontinue the worship service, the people trusted the Lord. He responded with miraculous peals of thunder that panicked the invaders and preserved Israel’s ownership of the plateau (1 Sam. 7). At the time of Solomon and before the temple was built in Jerusalem, the Israelites set up the tabernacle and great altar just to your north at Gibeon (2 Chron. 1:3–12). Its location on the plateau created access to the sanctuary via roads that radiated from here into all corners of Solomon’s kingdom, assuring that all the Lord’s people could get to his house.

The strategic value of places mentioned in the Bible is not always immediately evident. That is particularly true of the Benjamin Plateau and its associated towns and villages. Again and again, the biblical authors bring us to this plateau because the events that occurred here had greater importance than those occurring in other places. Understanding the significance of the plateau will open new insights and understanding into the Bible events that occurred here.

INFORMATION along Highway 436 on the north side of Jerusalem; 

Samaria/Sebaste

Can a location become so sinful that it cannot be redeemed? Samaria/Sebaste makes for a good test case. This isolated hill, naturally defended by its steep slopes and surrounded by a rich agricultural basin, caught the eye of Omri, the king of Israel who was in the market for a new capital city. He purchased the hill from a local man named Shemer and established a city that reflected the previous owner’s name—Samaria (876 BC). It became the long-standing capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel (1 Kings 16:24). That means it also became home to the infamous couple Ahab and Jezebel. Much later Caesar Augustus gave the hill to Herod the Great, who founded a new city here (25 BC), naming it Sebaste after his patron (the Greek Sebaste is the equivalent of the Latin Augusta). Here you will have a chance to see archaeological remains from all of these historical periods and get a sense for the unique mountain geography of Manasseh. What is more, the story of Samaria/Sebaste teaches us that no place is so infamous that it cannot be redeemed by the gospel.

You will meet the archaeology in the park even before you exit your vehicle. As you drive in, you will pass round towers put in place by Herod. These guarded the western entry to the city and marked the starting point for the long, store-lined street that terminated at the city’s center. The modern road follows this ancient street, which was forty-one feet wide and a half mile long and was lined with six hundred columns, some of which remain in their original place. This shopping street terminated at the main public gathering spot, the Roman forum (now partly covered by the parking area). The forum was 240 feet wide and 420 feet long, with its perimeter defined by columns.

From the parking lot, walk to the west side of the forum. Here you will find the remains of a Roman basilica, a large roofed building divided by pillars into three aisles. This was where commerce and legal proceedings of the city took place. On the north side of the basilica is a semicircular recess with stone benches, known as the exedra. This was where the magistrates of the city sat to hear legal cases. From the forum, follow the trail that begins on its eastern side to the well-preserved semicircular theater built into the side of a hill. The surviving theater dates to the second or third century AD but may well have succeeded a theater built here by Herod the Great.

Follow the trail that leads above the theater past the round Hellenistic tower, and you will come to the acropolis of Samaria/Sebaste. This high ground marks the most important part of the city in all periods. The ninety-foot-wide staircase sure to catch your eye marks the location of the Augustan temple built by Herod the Great in honor of his Roman patron. Most of the infrastructure, including the steps and altar in front of them, dates to the second-century-AD restoration of the temple accomplished by the Roman governor Septimus Severus. These later elements help provide a sense of the massive scale of the earlier temple (230 feet wide by 278 feet long). As you follow the trail along the west side of the temple, you will come to a much older wall that boasts stones cut and mated so precisely that no mortar was used to bind them together. This fine stonework is part of the palace structure at Samaria from the time of Ahab and Jezebel.

It is hard for Bible readers to find a place so steeped in infamy as this city of Samaria/Sebaste. The story begins with Omri, the founder of the city, who is characterized as more sinful than any of the kings who preceded him (1 Kings 16:25–26). Rather than focus on Israel’s spiritual health and mission, Omri focused on his nation’s economics. He had a plan for making his kingdom as financially prosperous as the kingdom of the Phoenicians, his neighbor to the north. This plan required diversion of merchants transporting aromatics, spices, and wool north on the King’s Highway. Rather than having those goods bypass his kingdom by traveling the King’s Highway on the east side of the Jordan River, he wanted them to move through his own country and then to world markets via the seaports of Phoenicia. As the middle man in this commodities trade, he stood to profit in grand fashion. To facilitate this arrangement with Phoenicia, he arranged for his son, Ahab, to marry a Phoenician princess named Jezebel.

These two pursued the economic strategy of Omri but added a theological twist to the plan. Presuming that the financial success of the Phoenicians was in large part associated with their worship of Baal, Ahab and Jezebel sought to popularize the worship of this pagan deity in their kingdom, even going so far as to build a temple to Baal here in their capital city. Ahab quickly succeeded his father in earning the title of worst of the worst kings (1 Kings 16:29–34). The Lord sent prophets to condemn this violation of the very first commandment and the rampant social injustices that followed (Jer. 23:13; Hosea 7:1–7; Amos 4:1; 6:1–7). When there was no response, the Lord allowed the invading Assyrian army to capture Samaria (2 Kings 17:6).

Centuries later this same city passed into the hands of Herod the Great, who did nothing to improve our perception of the place. While he did not champion the worship of Baal, he did champion worship of the emperor here. The temple set on the acropolis of Samaria was meant for making sacrifices to the emperor of Rome, not the Lord who had given this land to his chosen people.

The infamy of the place makes it a location to ponder. Could a city so filled with pagan infamy be redeemed? The answer comes to us in Acts 8:4–25. Philip went to “the city of Samaria” (Acts 8:5, author’s translation), likely Samaria/Sebaste, to announce the life-changing message of Jesus Christ crucified and risen from the dead. When he did, the city that so long lived in infamy saw one healing miracle after the next, people baptized, and joy that only forgiven sinners can know. When news of this reached Jerusalem, Peter and John were dispatched to the area not to correct Philip’s actions but to build on them. They prayed and laid hands on the locals, who then received the Holy Spirit just like those in Jerusalem. Could this place of pagan infamy be redeemed? Absolutely! And that becomes the enduring spiritual legacy of Samaria/Sebaste, a legacy that gives every place and every person hope, for there is no place and no person so infamous that they cannot be redeemed by the gospel.

INFORMATION along Highway 60 near modern Sebastia; 

Shechem (Tell Balata)

Shechem does not rank with places like Bethlehem, Capernaum, and Jerusalem in the minds of most Bible readers, but it should. No space in the promised land was more sacred during the early part of the Old Testament era than this. The ancient town is located in a half-mile-wide valley, beautifully framed by Mount Ebal (3,084 feet) and Mount Gerizim (2,891 feet). Given the agricultural advantages, water resources, and central location of Shechem in Canaan, this place would be expected to have a long human history. And it does, evident in the archaeology and in our Bible reading. It is where Abraham learned that Canaan was the promised land, where Joshua held services of rededication, and where King Jeroboam established the first capital city of the northern kingdom of Israel.

After spending a few minutes at the visitor center, enter the town as the ancients did through the northwest gate. On your way to the gate, you will pass a massive wall that rises thirty feet from the ground. Use your imagination to add a mud-brick wall on top of these foundation boulders and then picture this wall encircling the entire site. That is how the city looked to the one approaching it at the time Abraham’s family was in the land (1650–1200 BC). A right turn through the gatehouse brings you into the city proper. Just to the north of the gatehouse is a small room with a tiny opening that allows a view of those approaching the town. The town’s guards would use this peephole to assess the threat of a prospective visitor when the gates were closed. To the south of the gatehouse is the impressive foundation of the fortress temple (sixty-nine feet by eighty-six feet), its worship plaza, and sacred standing stone. This worship complex served the citizens of Samaria up to the time Joshua led the Israelites into the promised land and was likely the temple of Baal-Berith mentioned in Judges 9:4. Abimelek, the son of Gideon, took silver from this temple to hire reckless adventurers who helped him gain the title “king of Shechem.”

Shechem is for the Old Testament what Bethlehem is for the New Testament, the start of the story. Bethlehem is the beginning of Jesus’s story in the land in the same way that Shechem is the beginning of Israel’s national story in this land. The Lord had promised Abram that his family-turned-nation would bless all nations of the earth in connection with a yet undisclosed land the Lord would show him (Gen. 12:1–3). When Abram arrived at Shechem, the Lord identified Canaan as the promised land. Abram honored the importance of this event by building a memorial altar here so that his family would never lose sight of this key moment in their history (Gen. 12:6–7).

That is the first important Bible story to occur here, but not the last. The biblical authors bring us to Shechem again and again. When Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, returned from Paddan Aram, he purchased property near the town of Shechem, built a memorial altar of his own, and dug a well to serve those visiting this sacred spot (Gen. 33:18–20; John 4:5–6). After the extended stay in Egypt, the Lord directed Abraham’s family-turned-nation to hold a service of rededication here, using the natural amphitheater formed by Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, to review the law that defined Israel’s national mission and lifestyle (Deut. 27:1–8). When Joshua led Israel into the promised land, he brought the nation of Israel to this spot, built an altar on Mount Ebal, wrote the law code given to Moses on stones coated in plaster, and then positioned the people at the base of the twin mountains for the service of review and rededication (Josh. 8:30–35). Just a few years later, when the conquest had come to an end, Joshua brought Israel back to this same location to once again review the law and rededicate the nation to its founding principles and its mission (Josh. 24:1–27). His final impassioned speech to Israel echoed off these mountainsides: “But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD” (Josh. 24:15). After Israel declared their passion to do the same, they buried the bones of Joseph in Shechem on the tract of land purchased by Jacob in order to fulfill the request Joseph had made before he died in Egypt (Gen. 50:25; Josh. 24:32).

INFORMATION in the heart of modern Nablus, just north of Ramallah Road near the site of Jacob’s Well; 

If the importance of Shechem had escaped your attention, realize that it is regarded as one of the most important locations in the Old Testament era. Before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, before the temple was built in Jerusalem, before there was a sanctuary at Shiloh, there was Shechem. This becomes the place most intimately associated with the founding promises given to Abraham and the covenant made with Israel at the time of Moses. During the early part of the Old Testament, there is no more sacred space in the promised land than this. That is how the biblical authors and poets thought about it. And that is how Bible readers need to think about it, a place of hope, forgiveness, and expectation of all that was to come.

Shiloh

Shiloh plays a vital role in the story line of the Old Testament. Although less stellar than Shechem, it belongs near the top of a list of key biblical towns. Shiloh was home for the tabernacle, home for Samuel, and home to a legacy that Jeremiah employed in a sermon hundreds of years later. Its location is precisely defined in Judges 21:19, evidence that points us to the well-developed archaeological site of Tel Shiloh.

The ruin of Shiloh covers approximately 7.5 acres, a typical size for an Israelite town during Old Testament times. But the archaeology here is far from ordinary and begs for exploration. From the reception building walk north toward the hill on which ancient Shiloh is built. Just to the northwest of the picnic area outside the reception building you will find an ancient winepress used to extract juice from harvested grapes. Here the bedrock has been refashioned into a rectangular treading floor on which the grapes were crushed underfoot. Imagine the juice flowing by gravity from this floor through the small channels cut in the treading floor and into two square collecting pools excavated into the stone.

To the northeast of this winepress and before you get to the hill on which the ancient city was built, you will encounter the reconstruction of a Byzantine church that rises above original mosaic floors. Christians built a number of early churches here because tradition remembers this as the spot on which the tabernacle at Shiloh stood.

Continue north and climb the hill. This is where you will find the ruins of Old Testament Shiloh. It is unmistakably marked by a modern, round building that doubles as observation deck and media presentation center. Follow the path that leads along the western side of the tell, past Byzantine structures with their neatly trimmed stone, until you come to an area of fieldstones left in their natural shape on the west and northwest side of the hill. The more substantial wall dates to the seventeenth century BC, when Abraham’s family was in Egypt. This is the Canaanite defensive wall that encircled their 4.2-acre city perched on top of the hill. In its day, this perimeter wall stood twenty-four feet tall and in places grew to eighteen feet wide! It was complemented by a sloping ramp of earth (a glacis) outside the city wall. This glacis was eighty-two feet wide at the bottom and pitched at twenty-five degrees. This open slope below the wall made it difficult for attackers to find any protection from the defenders shooting arrows at them from the top of the wall. Although the battle is not recorded in Joshua, the Israelites overcame these defenses and took possession of the town. Ironically they did not rebuild or reuse the Canaanite defensive works. Instead, the Israelites built their homes and storehouses through and outside of the earlier defensive works. Of particular note are the storage rooms in which archaeologists found large ceramic storage jars. This complex of rooms is presumed to be a set of auxiliary buildings that provided storage for the supplies used at the tabernacle when it was here.

Israel had only one sanctuary, to remind them that they paid allegiance to only one God. The tabernacle was highly portable and had multiple zones, which imposed increasing restrictions on those approaching the innermost chamber, the place where the Lord was present in a special way.

1   Courtyard

2   Altar of burnt offering

3   Bronze basin

4  Tabernacle

Multiple layers of material were draped over a wood-framed structure to create the tabernacle proper (30 feet long and 15 feet wide), which was divided into two rooms: the holy place and the most holy place. The outer layers were weather resistant, while the interior layer provided color and design. Access to the interior of the tabernacle was denied to all but Israel’s priests. There are two possible locations for the tabernacle. The first is the area south of the tell on which the Byzantine churches were built. The second is on the north side of the archaeological site where a rectangular plateau with an east–west orientation conforms to the necessary dimensions of the tabernacle courtyard. You can get a nice view of this plateau from the deck of the round visitor center.

As Bible readers, the first impressions we have of Shiloh are warm and positive, associated with the tabernacle and land division. Joshua erected the tabernacle here because this small hill was centrally located in the promised land and accessible to all the tribes via the Ridge Route. The tabernacle remained here until the time of Eli (Josh. 18:1). After Joshua had led the Israelite army to victory over all the major city-states in Canaan, it was time to divide the remaining land among the tribes that had not yet received a land parcel. This took place at Shiloh, the religious center, because land division had a religious as well as a practical dimension. The land these families farmed and used to pasture their livestock was their part of the promised land that reminded them of the Lord’s promise to send a Savior from sin. Consequently, the final land division started and ended in Shiloh. From here Joshua sent teams to survey the land. When they returned, the reports combined with the casting of lots saw to it that each tribe received a land parcel that fit who they were and where the Lord wanted them to be (Josh. 18:1–10).

However, the good feelings associated with Shiloh quickly fade when we begin reading 1 Samuel. The young boy Samuel was here. His humble words to the Lord, “Speak, for your servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:10), stand in sharp contrast to the religious leaders at Shiloh, who were doing anything but listening to the Lord (1 Sam. 2:12–17, 22–25). As a result, the Lord allowed the Philistine army to ransack the place and bring harm to the very sanctuary Joshua had erected here. The good feelings associated with Shiloh turned to disdain. And the memory of the land division faded into a new lesson taught by Shiloh: personal disregard for the Lord by his worship leaders and thoughtless worship by his people are offenses so serious that they result in the Lord allowing his own sanctuary to be ransacked.

It is in this light that Jeremiah mentions Shiloh hundreds of years later. By this time Solomon had built a permanent temple for the Lord in Jerusalem. The faithfulness of God’s people faded again despite Jeremiah’s passionate pleas for a change of heart. He even warned the people of Jerusalem that the Lord would allow the holy city and its sanctuary to be destroyed by the advancing Babylonian army if they failed to repent. Instead of repenting, the people countered with these words: “This is the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD!” (Jer. 7:4). The popular assumption was that the Lord would never allow Jerusalem and the Lord’s sanctuary to face harm. In response, Jeremiah urged them to consider Shiloh and what the Lord had done to his sanctuary there at the time of Eli (Jer. 7:12–15). Here the Lord taught an important lesson that lingers to this day on the landscape: it is better for the Lord’s sanctuary to lie in ruin than for it to endure with corrupt leadership and thoughtless worship.

INFORMATION within the modern Jewish settlement of Shilo, about thirty-two kilometers north of Jerusalem on Highway 60;