This past weekend I went to Jordan for a field study with my Cultural Background of the Bible Class. We went to experience the life of the bedouins in the southern part of the country, which was Edom in Biblical times. Here, many bedouins have preserved the life and culture for thousands of years. Many people think, including my professor Dr. Wright and myself, that the bedouins there now are offspring of the Arabs that moved north into Edom from Saudi Arabia when spices and laxuary items began to become the hot commadity, spreading west to Egypt and the Mediteranean, as well as north to Damascous. Whether the bedouins' ancestors are actaully these Arabs or not, they live a very similar life of those that we read about in the Bible. Now that I have began to understand the details of their life and culture these things stand out to me as I read scripture with suprising importance. I have always read scripture with a western, suburban world view. While I have no doubt I still find truth in Scripture and I can understand what I need to know, Scripture comes to life and I find lessons in things I would have just browsed over before when I think about it in the context of the writers life and culture.
The trip started early on Friday morning, leaving the bus stop at 6AM. It took a good portion of the day to make our way down to the Elot border crossing, cross the border, and drive to the Wadi Rum. Here we had lunch at a "bedouin camp", which was pretty much just a really really really cheap hotel made of long goat hair tents. They have a restaurant buffet, which they serve one main dish, but it was clean and prepared well. Then we all piled in Jeeps and the bedouwins drove us out to the real bedouin tent we would be staying at. It was located in a crevise of a huge rock formation with sand dunes bordering the front. There were sheep and goats and some bedouin girls were milking a camel. After tea, the bedouins killed the fatted sheep for us. It was...not exactly pleasant. I tried to force myself to watch. Considering I can't even handle gruesome movies, I did pretty well, but I wasn't in the front row or anything and I didn't actually see the first slice of the throat. What really sticks in my mind is the brightness of the blood that just poured out of its throat onto the rock and sand. That may sound horribly gruesome, but it really was, at least I'm not posting pictures. I think it was good for me to see, it put a new image of Christ sacrifice in my mind; "the lamb of the world who was slain" is a more horrible and beautiful picture.
After that we had a few hours to explore. I already had a slight headache from dehydration (it was hot!), but JE and I climbed up the large rock face behind the tent. I got kind of freaked out in some places, it would have been a lot better if we had ropes, but we made it up pretty far. We finally turned around when climbing became a little to vertical and the sandstone was becoming brittle. I love that type of climbing though, its like a big persons playground, demanding both physical activity and problem solving.
The rest of the night I was pretty sick with dehydration. I felt on the verge of unconsciousness, so I just past out behind the tent and missed dinner (the lamb they had killed hours earlier).
In the morning I went into the rocks and read the end of Job for devos. It was pretty incredible. When God answers Job is one of my favorite passages in the Bible and I love to read it when I'm camping or out in God's creation. Here it was unbelievable, because I was there. Job was an Edomite and the descriptions and imagery used in Job was surrounding me as I read it. God spoke of the animals, dessert, flash floods, and rock formations, and other physical characteristics that make up that area. The next morning I woke to rain hitting the side of the tent. I went out early to devos and watched storm clouds roll over the mountain like smoke and thunder rumbled to the east. Again I read Job, a lot of sections stuck out to me but here are a few.
Job 38 (The Lord answers Job)
25"Who has cleft a channel for the torrents of rain and a way for the thunderbolt,26to bring rain on a land where no man is, on the desert in which there is no man,27to satisfy the waste and desolate land, and to make the ground sprout with grass?
34"Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, that a flood of waters may cover you?35Can you send forth lightnings, that they may go and say to you, 'Here we are'?
I also watched as an eagle or hawk glided in circles near the edge of the highest ridge to the west.
26"Is it by your understanding that the hawk soars and spreads his wings toward the south?27Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up and makes his nest on high?28On the rock he dwells and makes his home, on the rocky crag and stronghold.
I love the book of Job, its so humbling and glorifying of God. Its also in a way so comforting. As God exclaims his greatness, I realize how much greater my hope is when I placed it in him, rather than when I rely on myself.
It was really an amazing experience and there is so much to talk about, I really only made it through the first day. However I need to write three large papers this week and better get started. One is actually a reacton to this trip, so I'll just post it here in order to share the rest of the experience.
