To visit Israel enables experiencing where kings and prophets walked. Today just out of Jerusalem along highway <375> are the remains of towns in Judea mentioned in the Bible/Prophets: Lachish, Azeka, Shaarayim, Adullam, Socho.

Today was a beautiful day as we drove to Tel Socho, a hill containing the buried remains of the city, covered by a spring carpet of purple lupines, yellow daisies, mustard flowers and more.

In the time of King Saul, the Philistines encamped in the Elah valley in the territory of Judah between Sokho and Azekah after their defeat at Mikhmas, putting forth Goliath as their champion (1 Samuel 17:1). Almost everyone knows the story, how young David slew the giant Goliath with a slingshot and a smooth river stone and the Philistine army was routed. Today there was a family visiting the tel and the daughter, studying the Prophets for her bat mitzvah, was retelling the story. And I was taking photographs of the flowers.

Rabbi Antigonus of Sokho, mentioned in the Mishna, Ethics of the Fathers (Pirkei Avot 1:3), likely came from another town of the same name south of Hebron.

A less visited site on Meron than the well-known tomb of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, are the ruins of a late 3rd century CE synagogue in the basilica style (a large rectangular room divided by two rows of columns) which survived an earthquake in 306 CE, but was severely damaged or destroyed by another earthquake in 409 CE. Only the façade is still standing with three openings, inside are the remains of the bases of the columns that once stood. According to a local legend, when the cracked lintel above the central doorway falls, the Messiah will come. I’ve visited this ancient synagogue 3 times over the years in different seasons, February, April and September and taken photographs of it.

The technical details – the photo above was taken last week with a Nikon 5300 digital SLR camera  (ISO 1600, 27mm, F14 at 1/2000 sec).

Below are two earlier images. Clicking on the images will display them larger.

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Photographs on this website are © Shmuel Browns (unless marked otherwise) – if you are interested in buying or using one of my photos for your own project please contact me.