You can see the square fresh water pool with the circular feature in the middle. While RVL was teaching us, Palestinian kids were pretending to machine gun us for not giving them handouts.
The interesting story here is the location of the Herodium. The article says it is “near Jerusalem”. However, it was about a days march from Jerusalem. You see Herod’s family were from Edom. Edom was south of Israel. Herod was an outsider and considered his reign as tenuous. To protect himself he built several palaces which were designed to protect a possible retreat to Edom should the Jews revolt.
The Herodium was one of those palaces. It stood on top of a large hill at the end of a valley. It was at least five stories high with the highest level intended to house Herod’s family. It was an imposing sight.
Now for the irony. Edomites are descended from Esau while Jews were descended from Jacob. They were twins in the womb, but Esau happened to come out first. The Bible, in the book of Genesis, promised the Jews that the eldest would serve the youngest. The promise was that the Edomites would serve the Jews, but instead, the Jews were serving the Edomites.
Consider that Bethlehem was within that valley. Consider that Jesus was born literally in the shadow of the Herodium. When the shepherds looked up they saw the symbol of Herod the Great, the King, the descendant of Esau. When they looked down, they saw the promised King, our Lord in a manger, the descendant of Jacob. They worshiped the promised King while ignoring the majesty of the earthly king.
This information was included in an archaeological video produced by Focus on the Family. The suggested lesson is that it is easy for us to be dazzled by the imposing world around us and forget to cling to the promise embodied by the King of Kings.
Thank you for the history and insight.
You can see the square fresh water pool with the circular feature in the middle. While RVL was teaching us, Palestinian kids were pretending to machine gun us for not giving them handouts.