Palace of Herod, Samaria or Sebaste
Thirty years of silence in the midst of which our Savior grew up is broken only once. This was upon the occasion of the visit of the Holy Family to the feast of the Passover, when Jesus was twelve years of age. “Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.” The feast of the Passover began on the 8th of April, according to Dr. Andrews, and this visit to Jerusalem was made by the Holy Family in the year A. D. 8, according to the same authority.
It must be remembered, in order to understand the calendar which began the Christian era, that from some error in the calculation it is four years too late. The journey of Jesus and His mother, from Nazareth in Galilee to the Holy City of Jerusalem, would be full of historic associations which the lad with His ample knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures would readily recall. The lad of Shunem whom the prophet so long ago brought to life; the mother’s faith and devotion; the joy of that restoration; the cruel arrest and sale of Joseph over there at Dotham; the cruelty and crimes of Ahab, brought to mind by the sight of Jezreel and the remains of that King’s palace. How memory piled on memory here in the neighborhood of Gilboa, the plain of Esdrælon, the valley leading down to the Jordan, the river of Kishon, the outjutting promontory of Carmel and the great sea beyond! Did His young soul approve, though with solemn feeling, the fate of Ahab and of Jezebel? Certainly with all the purity, gentleness and grace of His later life and ministry, we see that His love was not mere amiability, but that with it was a righteous wrath against sin cherished and indulged. The glory of Ahab’s palace, as of Ahab’s fame, has long since faded. A miserable hamlet now full of poverty and squalor, is all that is left of the splendor and power of that godless king.
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