Timna, Solomon's Mines, & the Tabernacle

Ruth at Solomon's Pillars, Timna, Negev Desert, Israel

 Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.  Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise and stand, each of them, at the entrance of their tents and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent.  When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses.  When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise and bow down, all of them, at the entrance of their tent.

Exodus 33:7-10 NRSVue

 Part of the enticement by Ruth's sister to visit Israel a fourth time was her assurance that we could do things there we'd never done before. Anne and her husband Herbby (yup, two B's) have lived in Israel for decades and have hiked and explored in many locations off the beaten path of tour groups. Happily, they delivered.

We spent a few days in a region seldom visited by the tour buses, the Negev desert, as well as the resort town of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba, an extension of the Red Sea. One early evening we snorkelled at a coral reef with an astonishing variety of brightly coloured fish. As we picnicked on the shore afterward we were aware of being just a few hundred metres from the border with Egypt. Across the water was the Jordanian city of Aqaba and a little to the south, a town in Saudi Arabia.

We did a couple of early morning hikes in the desert to attempt to beat the daytime heat of 37 degrees. We snooped around in Timna National Park for hours and it was a highlight of our trip, even though we had to hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. The extensive park has the feel of the American Southwest with ridges and formations of various shapes and hues. This is the site of what may be the oldest copper mines in human history, going back several millenia before the time of Christ, and mining continues not far away. 

There has long been speculation that this was the site of the fabled King Solomon's Mines and while this was discredited for a time there is recent evidence that it could be the place. One of the astounding natural rock formations is called Solomon's Pillars, adjacent to an ancient copper mine with a shrine to Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of mining.

                                                                              Tabernacle at Timna 

Timna could also have been on the route of the biblical Exodus out of Egypt. There are etchings we saw in a remote defile of Egyptian chariots from at least 3,000 years ago. Our brother-in-law oversees a reconstruction of the tabernacle which the people of Israel carried through the wilderness and which housed the Ark of the Covenant containing the tablets with the Ten Commandments. Thousands of visitors tour this Tabernacle each year while visiting the park. It has been built to the dimensions described in the Hebrew scriptures. Happily, one variance from the original is that this one is air-conditioned. 

The fact that we knew nothing about Timna before visiting made for one of the best memories of our trip, although the temperature was not. We loved the silence and being there virtually on our own at that early hour. Our sense of the exodus journey of many years became much more vivid and the beauty was captivating.