Samaritan
Whoever makes the journey from Jerusalem to Jericho finds the words of our Lord again and again recurring to his mind: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves.” One passes, in going eastward, directly between rugged hills, “sad and silent heights” of white rock now and then relieved by a curious rose-colored stratum with stripes of green on the terraces where shepherds watched their flocks of sheep and goats. Jericho lies thirty-six hundred feet below Jerusalem, so that the eastward journey is a literal “going down to Jericho.” The sudden appearance of the head or spear of a Bedouin above a pile of rock or the unsuspected encounter with a group of horsemen reminds one of the man of the parable “who fell among thieves.” The Jericho road has been the dread of travelers for twenty centuries because of the lawless Arabs that infest these hills, making their strongholds, as David was obliged to do, in the caves of the rocks high above the reach of pursuers. In these very defiles Sir Frederick Henneker was robbed, and that as late as 1820. A friend of one of the editors had the same experience in 1860. The khan of the Good Samaritan is not far from Jericho. It is a large shed with a courtyard at the back upon foundations much more ancient than the present structure. A Roman watch tower on an overlooking point near by gives a view of the approaches in all directions. All around is desolation without an inhabitant, but here one can find refreshment. Marion Harland says: “We were surprised to learn that the parable of the good Samaritan is here considered a real incident as historic as the fall of the tower of Siloam.” The site of this inn is very old, and has probably borne for hundreds of years the name “of Him who showed mercy to a feudal foe.”
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