Jericho

Jericho was an ancient walled city in the Jordan Valley, lying near the river's entry into the Dead Sea about eight hundred feet below sea level — the lowest city on earth. Watered by a perennial spring and surrounded by date palms, it was known as "the city of palm trees" (Deuteronomy 34:3; 2 Chronicles 28:15). Its mound, Tell es-Sultan, holds some of the oldest settlement remains in the world. Guarding the principal ascent from the Jordan into the hill country, Jericho was the gateway to Canaan, and so it became the first conquest of Israel in the promised land.

From the plains of Moab opposite Jericho, Moses viewed the land he would not enter (Deuteronomy 34:1–3), and from there Joshua sent two spies whom Rahab the harlot hid and saved, binding the scarlet cord that would spare her household (Joshua 2:1, 17–21). After Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground opposite the city, the LORD gave Jericho into their hand by a miracle of faith rather than force: for seven days the army and the ark circled the walls behind seven priests with rams' horns, and on the seventh day, after seven circuits and a great shout, "the wall fell down flat" and the city was taken (Joshua 6:15–20). The city was devoted to destruction; only Rahab and her family were spared (Joshua 6:25), and Joshua laid a curse on anyone who should rebuild it (Joshua 6:26) — fulfilled generations later in Hiel of Bethel under wicked King Ahab (1 Kings 16:34).

Jericho reappears across the history of Israel. A community of "the sons of the prophets" lived there, and it was near Jericho that Elijah was taken up and Elisha received his mantle; Elisha then healed the city's bitter spring with salt, so that its waters were made wholesome "to this day" (2 Kings 2:5, 19–22). In the last days of Judah, King Zedekiah was overtaken and captured by the Babylonians "in the plains of Jericho" (2 Kings 25:5).

In the New Testament Jericho lies on Jesus' final road up to Jerusalem. There he gave sight to blind Bartimaeus, who cried out, "Son of David, have mercy on me!" (Mark 10:46–52), and there he called the chief tax collector Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree and declared, "Today salvation has come to this house... for the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost" (Luke 19:1–10). The notoriously dangerous descent "from Jerusalem to Jericho" forms the setting of the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30). Thus Jericho frames the whole biblical drama of redemption: the city of curse whose walls fell to faith, where a believing Canaanite was saved and joined to the line of Christ (Hebrews 11:30–31), became at the last a place where the Saviour himself brought sight to the blind and salvation to the lost.