Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is the great salt lake at the southern end of the Jordan valley, known in Scripture by several names: the Salt Sea (Genesis 14:3), the Sea of the Arabah or Sea of the Plain (Deuteronomy 3:17), and the Eastern Sea (Joel 2:20; Zechariah 14:8). As the terminal basin of the Jordan, which flows into it but has no outlet, it lies more than thirteen hundred feet below sea level — the lowest point on the face of the earth — set deep in the Rift Valley about sixteen miles east of Jerusalem. Its waters, charged to some thirty percent salts and minerals by ceaseless evaporation, support no fish and little life, and bitumen (asphalt) seeps from its bed, conditions the ancients well knew and Scripture reflects.

The lake is bound up with some of the Bible's most solemn events. In the Valley of Siddim beside it the kings of the plain warred and fell into its tar pits (Genesis 14:8–10), and on its plain stood Sodom and Gomorrah, whose destruction by fire and brimstone — with Lot's wife turned to a pillar of salt as she looked back — left the region a byword for judgment (Genesis 19:24–26). The sea formed a fixed boundary of the land of promise, marking the eastern and southern limits of Israel's inheritance (Numbers 34:12; Joshua 15:2), with Moab and Edom lying beyond it. Along its barren western shore at the oasis of En-gedi David hid in the strongholds from Saul (1 Samuel 24:1–2), and it was "by the ascent of Ziz" near its coast that Jehoshaphat saw the LORD rout an invading coalition while Judah only sang praise (2 Chronicles 20:1–2, 22–24).

Strikingly, the prophets make this very sea of death a sign of resurrection life. Ezekiel beheld a river flowing eastward from the threshold of the restored temple, growing ever deeper until it poured into the salt sea and "healed" its waters, so that they swarmed with fish and fishermen spread their nets from En-gedi to Eneglaim (Ezekiel 47:8–10). Zechariah and Joel echo the vision of "living waters" going out from Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:8; Joel 3:18). Thus the lowest and most lifeless place on earth becomes an emblem of the new creation, where the curse is undone and the water of life makes all things new (cf. Revelation 22:1–2).

In the modern era the Dead Sea gained fresh importance for biblical study: in the caves at Qumran on its northwestern shore the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered beginning in 1947, including manuscripts of nearly every Old Testament book a thousand years older than those previously known. They confirmed the remarkable faithfulness of the Hebrew text's transmission and opened a window onto the Judaism of the centuries surrounding the coming of Christ. So the Dead Sea, long a monument to judgment, stands also as a witness to the preservation of God's word and the promise of his renewing grace.