Category Archives: Bible Study

he new high dam at Aswan was constructed at a time when the Soviet Union was providing technical, economic and military support to Egypt. I remember staying in a hotel in Egypt in 1973 filled with Soviet tourists. In the following years we saw none of them. Lake Nasser stretches south for more than 300 miles. Many of the Nubians who lived in this area had to be resettled by the Egyptian government.

Aswan is the location of the first cataract of the Nile River. This made it an ideal location for the Aswan Dam which was built between 1898 and 1902. This created a small lake south of the dam, but it was nothing to compare with Lake Nasser which has been formed as a result of the building of the new high dam at Aswan between 1960 and 1971.

Some scholars identify the Arabic name Aswan with the Syene of Ezekiel 29:10 and 30:6. It may be identified with the Sinim of Isaiah 49:12.

The Sahara, an Arabic word for desert stretches all the way across northern Africa. I have been able to visit deep into Morocco and in most parts of Egypt. The desert is impressive, but it is not a place one would wish to get lost.

Camels are suited to desert travel because they can drink large amounts of water and travel long distances between watering holes of one sort or another.

Along the Nile River one may see a few areas of greenery but much of the area is desert. Portions of it are covered by sand.

The story of Gideon and his 300 men includes information about the Midianites and Amalekites who had entered the promised land from the East.

And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the East lay along the valley like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number, as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance (Judges 7:12 ESV).

My first photo for today was made along the Nile River at the point of the first cataract near Aswan.

I rode a camel on very few occasions during my fifty-plus years of traveling in the Middle East. Having been brought up in the rural south in the 40s and 50s of the last century I heard and read the expression “I would walk a mile for a camel” I developed my own saying: “I would walk a mile to avoid a camel.”

David is known as a shepherd in the Bible. We are informed that he made regular trips back and forth from the Elah Valley where his older brothers were engaged in a battle with the Philistines to Bethlehem to feed his father’s sheep (1 Samuel 17). Later, the LORD called David to shepherd His people. It is a fact that shepherds were and are honored people in the villages of the Bible world.

Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said, “Behold, we are your bone and flesh.
2 In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led out and brought in Israel. And the LORD said to you, ‘You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel.'”
3 So all the elders of Israel came to the king at Hebron, and King David made a covenant with them at Hebron before the LORD, and they anointed David king over Israel.
4 David was thirty years old when he began to reign, and he reigned forty years.
5 At Hebron he reigned over Judah seven years and six months, and at Jerusalem he reigned over all Israel and Judah thirty-three years.
6 And the king and his men went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who said to David, “You will not come in here, but the blind and the lame will ward you off”– thinking, “David cannot come in here.”
7 Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion, that is, the city of David. (2 Samuel 5:1-7 ESV)

Traveling in Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and other countries of the Bible world we see numerous examples that illustrate the Bible teaching and examples.

The photo below has been scanned from a slide made in 1982 in the Wadi Farah (or Faria) near the Biblical site of Tirza (now known as Tel Farah North).

A recent report here says that after years of devastation during the war in Syria the site of Ebla will once again be excavated.

My only visit to Ebla was in 2002 when my fellow-professor David McClister and I spent three weeks in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. This means I do not have hi-res photos, except for a few slides that I have had digitized, but I am delighted to have any photos. At the site I picked up a small booklet, Tell Mardikh — Ebla, written by Faja Haj Muhammad that gives a short presentation of the history and remains of the kingdom of ancient Ebla. I will share a couple of photos with some brief info from that book.

The first photo provides a view of the archaeological mound or tell.

The Royal Archives. In 1975 the excavators discovered a square room west of the Administrative Wing, on the wall, filled with 17,000 clay tablets. The large square tablets had been on shelves. The small round ones were found in baskets on the floor.

… the texts were placed according to their subject, and different subjects corresponded to different shapes of tablet.

… There are administrative, economical, historical, judicial, religious texts. The writing is cuneiform. The language is a local language, now called by scholars (Eblaite), which belongs to the same family as Akkadian of Mesopotamia.

The Western Palace and the Archive are dated to the first golden age of Ebla, 2400–2250 B.C. This is long before the time of Abraham who lived north of Ebla at Haran in Padan Aram for a time. Haran is about 150 miles north of Ebla.

So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.  (Genesis 12:4 ESV)

Isaac took Rebekah, the daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram to be his wife (Genesis 25:20). Jacob spent more than two decades in the same area. Most of the children of Jacob (= Israel) were born in the region.

God appeared to Jacob again, when he came from Paddan-aram, and blessed him. (Genesis 35:9 ESV)