WhatsappThe earth underneath Jerusalem seems to be hard. It is. But it also contains the living history of the Jewish people from Biblical times until today. There are so many things that are unearthed every day – not just coins and artifacts that are amazing themselves. Every day, the Israel Antiquities Authority finds new insights into the lifestyle and the Biblical stories that took place in the Land of Israel. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the city of Jerusalem.
There is no place in the Land of Israel as rich in archaology as the area in Jerusalem underneath and around the Temple Mount. It is an area that Abraham bound Isaac in his final test, the test to see if he would follow God’s command to bind up and kill his beloved son, Isaac. It is the same location that King David purchased and conquered 3,000 years ago from the Jebusites. But King David did not merit to build the Temple or see it in his lifetime. That merit would fall into his son’s hands – King Solomon.
King Solomon built the first Temple and it lasted for more than 400 years in Jerusalem. the heyday of the Jewish monarchy were in the early years of his reign. Peace and justice were the norm. A strong, brilliant, and most of all, moral monarchy proved to be a wonderful system. But it lasted only as long as King Solomon did. By the next generation, King Solomon’s son, Rechavaam, the monarchy split. For the next few hundred years, there were essentially two Jewish kingdoms, the one in Samaria, and the one in Judea, centered around Jerusalem. Ultimately, there would be so much infighting, that the Jewish people were not unified enough to repel the invaders from Iraq, and the Babylonian Empire consumed the Land of Israel and the Templ in it’s midst. Today’s archaeological discoveries are unearthing more and more facets of this turbulent time in Jewish history. Each part of the story that is discovered is yet another proof of the fact that the Jewish people are the indigenous people in the Land of Israel, and especially in Jerusalem.
