Inn of the Good Samaritan
Inn of the Good 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 ...
