Perea

Perea (Greek Peraia, "the land beyond") was the New Testament name for the Jewish region east of the Jordan, a long strip running from near the Jabbok in the north down toward the Arnon, opposite Samaria and Judea. It corresponded roughly to the old tribal lands of Reuben and Gad, and in the time of Christ it was joined with Galilee under the tetrarch Herod Antipas (Luke 3:1). Because faithful Jews preferred not to pass through Samaria, pilgrims traveling between Galilee and Jerusalem often went down the east bank through Perea and crossed the Jordan near Jericho.

Perea is above all the country of the forerunner. Here John the Baptist preached and baptized — "in Bethany beyond the Jordan" (John 1:28) and at Aenon near Salim, "because water was plentiful there" (John 3:23). And here, within Antipas's realm, John rebuked the tetrarch for taking his brother's wife Herodias, was bound in the desert fortress of Machaerus (Mark 6:17), and at last beheaded to satisfy a rash oath (Mark 6:27) — the first of the gospel's martyrs, the voice silenced for the truth.

The region also frames the close of Jesus' ministry. As he set his face toward Jerusalem he withdrew into the country "beyond the Jordan" (Matthew 19:1; Mark 10:1), where great crowds gathered and he taught them — on marriage and divorce, on the kingdom and the children, on the cost of following him. When his enemies in Jerusalem sought to stone him, he came again across the Jordan to the very place where John had first baptized, and there many believed in him (John 10:40; John 10:42).

So Perea stands as the threshold of the Passion. In this land beyond the river the forerunner had pointed to "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29); to this land the Lamb returned before his hour, and from it he went up through Jericho to the cross. The witness that began with John's baptizing here runs unbroken to Calvary — the wilderness voice and the Word he announced meeting in one place, on the road that leads to the salvation of the world.