The Crossroads of the Earth

So now that we’ve wrestled with the story of the conquest and sat in the uneasiness, maybe it’s time to start asking some questions about this little piece of ground in the Middle East. Why all this fuss over what seems like such an insignificant chunk of real estate? To this very day, the region of Palestine and Israel continues to be one of the hottest pieces of earth on the planet.

In the ancient biblical world, it’s important to realize that the nation of Israel geographically sits in what was called the “crossroads of the earth.” With the exception of the ancient Orient, the major world civilizations (Egypt, Chaldea/Babylonia, Persia, Assyria, the Hittites, etc.) all sat around the piece of ground that we would refer to as biblical Israel. What this meant was that all global commerce and cultural interaction happened by traveling through that small chunk of land. The major highway for their day, known as the “via maris,” travelled right through their land. Whoever controlled the crossroads of the earth heavily influenced world trade.

So was God’s desire to bless His people with incredible wealth and power?

Not exactly.

When we remember the beginnings of this story, we remember a covenant between God and a man named Abram. We remember God’s words that He would bless Abram and Abram would be a blessing. God said that all the nations of the earth would be blessed through Abram and his descendants.

We hope at this point in the story that we haven’t forgotten God’s great project: to restore peace and wholeness to the earth and brings all things back together.

God is trying to put the world back together.

And God found a partner.

And how is God going to bless all nations?

By putting His partners at the crossroads of the earth.

One of the ways that we understand this concept is by understanding geography — not just the larger geography of where Israel sits in relation to the other nations, but the geography of the land of Israel itself. To look at the nation of Israel is to see five zones that run north/south through the land. Starting at the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, we would see what’s called the Coastal Plain; pretty self-explanatory, the coastal plain was the region where all the pagans live. While the Israelites were desert people, the pagans, like the Philistines, for example, were often sea-faring people of the port cities. The region sitting to the immediate east would be called the Shephelah. This word shares a root with the word that means “to bow” and refers to the land that comes off of the Judah Mountains and bows down to meet the coastal plain — it’s the in-between. Then, to the east, lies the Judah Mountains, where God’s people settled. You rarely settled in the valleys, because of the high value on farmland. You would live in the mountain region. Then came the Judea Wilderness, the barren wasteland to the east of the mountains. And finally, the Jordan River ran through what is called the Rift Valley.

The entire story of God’s project in the world is seen through the eyes of shephelah.

Shephelah is where God’s people meet the broken world. Will God’s people go into the shephelah? Will they bring shalom to the chaos? Or will they settle in the mountains, seeking to lives lives of luxury?

The rabbis have a statement they use: How is your shephelah?

It’s a way of them asking, “How are you doing in partnering with God in His great work to restore the world?”

Because God has supposedly found some partners.

And He’s trained and shaped them in the desert.

But now He’s brought them into the Promised Land.

And the great question is whether or not they’re going to go down into the shephelah or settle in the mountains. The question is whether they are going to settle down and build a tower or build altars and pitch tents.

Because God is up to something in the world. And it’s going to be difficult to convince His partners that there’s still work to be done.

And it’s really not that old of a story is it? Because I still have a shephelah today, don’t I? And the call of the mountains is as strong as ever.

But it’s not easy to live in the shephelah. In fact, it’s quite dangerous and messy down there with the Philistines.

And this leaves us with a tension…