Bible Passages Blog

The Dead Sea from the Judean Wilderness with the Mountains of Moab in the distance Intense rays from the sun shimmer through a haze in the skies, glittering on the placid surface of the Dead Sea. An enormous basin of scrabbly pebbles and jagged stone, all baked to a uniformly scorched brown, jumble together and rise to form the mesas and peaks of the Judean mountains in the west and the hills of Jordan to the east. In stark contrast to the faded landscape, the vivid turquoise

IMAGE INSIGHTS - It is hot, rugged, and home to a some of the rock badgers and wild goats of Israel. With its thousands of small caves and fissures it is an ideal location for finding refuge and escape from an enemy or the heat of the desert sun. This 56 by 12-mile-long barren and inhospitable land is wedged between the Dead Sea and the mountains of Judea and was the setting for several important events of scripture. In this barren location of Judah's territorial allotment,

IMAGE INSIGHTS (Qumran and Isaiah 40:8): Located near the northwestern shore of the Dead Sea, the Wadi Qumran is the celebrated site of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essene community of the Jews. Nearly 1,000 manuscripts of the biblical text (and others) were represented in the thousands of fragments and scrolls written on parchment and papyrus. Discovered in a series of caves between 1947 and 1956, the Dead Sea Scrolls are arguably the most important discover