Twelve tribes looking for home

Pages 22 and 23 of The Bible Atlas: A pictorial guide to the Holy Lands (text Dr. Stephen Motyer, illustrations Brian Delf) offer a spread titled “The Promised Land.”

There is an interesting set of stories: (1) Moses sees the Promised Land (remember, he wasn’t allowed to cross over Jordan and enter it because he had struck the rock to get water, whereas God had told him to speak to it: disobedience); (2) Rahab and the spies; and (3) The Fall of Jericho. There are two more stories (not numbered):  The Twelve Tribes of Israel – a small map shows the tribes and the symbols which represented them, and The campaigns of Joshua.

The River Jordan

My first reading found me curious about the River Jordan, which is shown in its length. We are told that it flows from north to south, passing through the Sea of Galilee and ending in the Dead Sea which is 1,365 feet (416 m) below sea level. I wanted more figures, so I consulted Google.

The river rises at the base of snow-capped Mount Hermon*, and it just happens upon the Sea of Galilee then travels 100 miles to the Dead Sea. 256 miles in all. It is only 1 to 2 foot deep! The Dead Sea is endorheic: a closed body of water with no outlets, the water only leaving the lake through evaporation or seepage. (Lake Eyre is an example of an endorheic body of water until it is flooded by water coming down from Queensland.)

The 12 tribes

West of the Jordan (N to S):

•                 Asher
•                  Naphtali
•                  Zebulun
•                  Issachar
•                  Manasseh
•                  Dan
•                  Ephraim
•                  Judah
•                  Benjamin
•                  Simeon

East of the Jordan:

•                  Gad
•                  Reuben

I have found it difficult to get details of the symbols shown against each tribe. This next list is from Wikipedia (Ed. This list excludes Manasseh and Ephraim but adds in Joseph and Levi.):

•        Asher: a tree
•        Naphtali: gazelle (Genesis 49:21)
•        Zebulun: ship, due to their bordering the Sea of Galilee and Mediterranean
•        Issachar: Sun, moon and stars (1 Chronicles 12:32)
•        Dan: Scales of justice
•        Judah: Kinnor, cithara, and crown, symbolising King David
•        Benjamin: jug, ladle, and fork
•        Simeon: towers and walls of the city of Shechem
•        Gad: tents, symbolizing their itinerancy as cattle-herders
•        Reuben: Mandrake (Genesis 30:14)
•        Joseph: Palm tree and sheaves of wheat, likely references to the dreams he received as a child (Genesis 37:7)
•        Levi: Priestly breastplate, symbolizing the Kohanim

It is interesting to compare these with the Glossary definitions in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy of some of the sons:

·       Asher (Jacob’s son).  Hope and faith; spiritual compensation; the ills of the flesh rebuked. (p. 581)

·       Benjamin (Jacob’s son).  A physical belief as to life, substance, and mind; human knowledge, or so-called mortal mind, devoted to matter; pride; envy; fame; illusion; a false belief; error masquerading as the possessor of life, strength, animation, and power to act.

       Renewal of affections; self-offering, an improved state of mortal mind; the introduction of a more spiritual origin; a gleam of the infinite idea of the infinite Principle; a spiritual type; that which comforts, consoles and supports. (p. 582)

·       Dan (Jacob’s son). Animal magnetism; so-called mortal mind controlling mortal mind; error, working out the designs of error; one belief preying upon another. (p. 583)

·       Gad (Jacob’s son). Science; spiritual being understood; haste towards harmony. (p. 586)

·       Judah. A corporeal material belief progressing and disappearing; the spiritual understanding of God and man appearing. (p.589)

·       Levi (Jacob’s son). A corporeal and sensual belief; mortal man; denial of the fulness of God’s creation; ecclesiastical despotism. (p. 590)

·       Reuben (Jacob’s son). Corporeality; sensuality; delusion; mortality; error. (p. 593)

Of course the Bible is the source of this knowledge. For example, Dan is, for me, a stand-out. In Genesis 49, where Jacob called his sons together, “Gather yourselves together, that I may tell you that which shall befall you in the last days,” he says of Dan: “Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall fall backward.” The horse was blamed rather than the real culprit, the adder.

There is much more on these two pages. I like the picture of the priests blowing the horns, for instance. I’ll leave it to the reader to catch up with those for themselves.**

Joyce Voysey

*Ed. Mt. Hermon is not on the map, unfortunately, but Wikipedia has a spectacular photograph and has this to say: “Mount Hermon is a mountain cluster at the southern end of the Anti-Lebanon range, straddling the borders of Syria, Lebanon, and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Rising to 2,814 m (9,232 ft), it is the highest point in Syria and features the only ski resort in the region.”  A further comment notes that Mount Hermon ... is uniquely special due to its strategic military dominance, profound biblical history, and its role as the primary water source for the region. Gotquestions.org/Mount-Hermon.html is helpful.

**Ed. I also liked seeing the trumpets (horns) and the Ark of the Covenant. I gather from this account, that after 40 years in the wilderness, there was still much work to be done in this, "The Promised Land", before they could settle down and call this place home.

The Mount of Olives

From time to time, the New Testament locates Jesus and his disciples in the Mount of Olives. For instance, Luke 21:37 says: "And in the day time he was teaching in the temple; and at night he went out, and abode in the mount that is called the mount of Olives." When we were in Greece and Turkey a couple of years ago, we noticed olive trees thriving everywhere. A little research tells me that they need a Mediterranean climate: hot dry summers and cool wet winters. To me, they offer a sense of timelessness, stability and peace.

Image by Chikilino, from Pixabay

Writing in the January 1926 issue of The Christian Science Journal, Allan Carson writes (The Mount of Olives) that "as night spreads her veil of silence over [Jerusalem's] activities, we catch another view of [Jesus], as he moves quietly away from the throng to the mount of Olives, there, through the still hours of the night, to commune more closely with God and gain inspiration, understanding, strength, and guidance for the work of the following day. We love to follow him in thought, as he slips unnoticed through the gate of the city wall, down over the brook Cedron, up through the quiet garden of Gethsemane, .... and on to the mount."

The Bible Atlas: a pictorial guide to the Holy Lands (written by Dr. Stephen Motyer, illustrated by Brian Delf, published by Penguin Random House 2001/2025) explains that the Mount of Olives is "just to the east of Jerusalem" and from there anyone travelling from Jericho would have had "a wonderful view" of that city. The double page spread on pages 56-57 of the Atlas describes Jesus' betrayal, death and resurrection in five clear and concise paragraphs, each accompanied by beautiful sketches, and a lovely map of the walled city of Jerusalem.

I especially like the sketch of Jesus and his disciples sitting down on the ground to celebrate Passover - when "Jewish families gathered to remember the night when the Israelites left Egypt for the Promised Land", and also the sketch of Judas' betrayal. The commentary explains that when Judas kissed Jesus, it was a signal to the menacing crowd - who were armed with swords and burning torches - that this was the moment they would arrest Jesus.

Julie Swannell

Doris Peel on angels and Ishmael

I have enjoyed reading the poetry that was selected over the past month and was particularly helped by the final post referring to a piece by Todd Nelson in the Christian Science Monitor of May 18. It reminded me that I am often as nourished by enlightened responses to poetry as I am by the poetry itself. So Thank You, Todd, for amplifying my enjoyment of e.e. cummings’ delightful poem, written with such a special feel for childhood’s adventures and wonders.

Though I am a few days late, I would like to add my contribution.

There is a little treasure of a book called Doris Peel, Selected Poems 1955 - 1975 which I happened upon in my bookcase a day or two ago. The frontispiece to this book is like a light which illuminates my appreciation of Doris’s poems. It reads in part:

 

These poems are deceptively simple. What may seem at first glance to be fragmentary, slight, casual, dipping and wheeling like the flight of a gull, reveals in the context of its fellow poems a remarkable centrality of vision,  a structure of relatedness that is both movement and rest, pattern and unpredictability.

 

Doris Peel’s work brings to mind T. S. Eliot’s definition of wit in metaphysical poetry as “a tough reasonableness beneath the slight lyrical grace.” The subsurface tension in this case is between a quick-witted woman and a wide-eyed child - that child who, in New Testament terms, can alone receive the kingdom of heaven.

 

Here is an extract from an early poem.

 

I AM EASILY PERSUADED

                  by the arrival of angels.

The feel of them: the sense of a melodious murmuring

in the air, and the faint stirring

of wings that will shelter me

if I am good.

                 I am much comforted

                             by the intimation of an authority

that has nothing to do with the discipline of nannies.

Angels never scold. Or rap over the knuckles

somebody who has stumbled. Being, themselves, shaped purely

from light, they are all lightness in performance and presence:

with song, not sermon, their special province

                  and laughter (I suspect) more native

to their nature than common--or even uncommon--speech. Not

that they resemble, for a split second, those sanguine earthlings

with their tedious insistence on Sunny-Side-Up. Angels

aren't optimists....

Oh, it is altogether otherwise with angels.

...

                     In what tongue tell

of a murmuring, a stirring, and that sudden incandescent elation

in the air? Or of how, long after the visitants have withdrawn

and room or street appears usual again,

            there is a lingering of intimations

all about, and even the lilt - faint - faint - not yet quite gone -

 

of law caught as laughter:

of power as song.

 

And another excerpt, this time from a poem called

 

WHEN WILL THE FORGIVING OF IT COME TO PASS?

 

Palestinian Village: Occupied Territory

 

This gone-from place,

these windows gaping in a golden glare

of pitiless sun,

      once knew (however poor it was)

life going on.

Once brimmed with breath.

Once throbbed aloud with those

 

who held it, passionately - Ishmael deep -

to be their home.

 

 Marie Fox