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“It was in the time of Amraphel, king of Shinar … they went to war … The kings joined forces in the Valley of Siddim, which is now the Dead Sea.”
(Genesis 14:1–3)
In this hoary biblical episode four kings fight against five, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. The area is dotted with bitumen pits. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, fleeing, fall into the pits. Lot is captured. With his 318 retainers, Abram (later called Abraham) rescues Lot and all his kinsmen and possessions.
Later, the Lord destroys Sodom and Gomorrah when ten good men can not be found in the two cities (Genesis 18:32). Fire and brimstone rain on the cities (Genesis 19:24). Forewarned, Lot and his family alone escape, except for Lot’s wife: she disobeys the instruction not to look back at Sodom and Gomorrah and is turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26).
The Dead Sea is mentioned frequently in the Bible. It is called by several names, most often the Salt Sea (yam hammelah),1 which is its name in modern Hebrew. Apocryphal, Classical, talmudic and Arab authors refer to it variously as the “Sea of Sodom,” the “Sea of Lot,” the “Sea of Asphalt” and the “Stinking Sea.” In the Crusader period, it was sometimes called the “Devil’s Sea.” Since shortly after the turn of the Christian era, Western civilization has referred to this mysterious place as the “Dead Sea.” As far as extant records reveal, this name was first used by a Greek traveler named Pausanias, who lived in the second century A.D.2 The name “Dead Sea” appears to have been introduced into Christian tradition through the writings of St. Jerome.
In most biblical references, the Dead Sea is referred to as a geographical boundary marker. But sometimes it is also used in a poetic way. Both Ezekiel and Zechariah envision a time when even the brinish waters of the Dead Sea will be recreated afresh and from the stark lifeless water new life will come forth (Ezekiel 47:1–12; Zechariah 14:8).
To the degree we understand the character and parameters of the Bible’s geographical references, we can more fully appreciate the texture and intent of the text. Alongside such questions of “who,” “how” and “when,” the question of “where” is also a legitimate area of biblical inquiry.
Geography both initiates and limits political history. Geological formation and rock type affect the manner and extent of erosion, the location and quantity of water supplies and physical topography. These, in turn, may determine soil formation, land use and the availability of raw materials. These factors may repel or attract human settlement. In either event, they clearly influence the location, density and socioeconomic makeup of settlement. In short, as I have stated elsewhere, factors of geography often dictate where and how geopolitical events will occur.3
At no place in the biblical world can this principle be more graphically exemplified than at the Dead Sea.
The dominant geological forces that have sculpted the landscape of Canaan are most apparent in the great trough of the Jordan Rift Valley, in which the Dead Sea lies. A sunken block confined by two parallel fault lines, the Jordan Rift Valley is part of one of the longest, deepest and widest fissures in the earth’s surface. In its full extent, it is known as the Afro-Arabian Rift Valley. This fracture system is the most important continental rift system known to geologists. The Afro-Arabian Rift system probably marks the splitting and slow separation of two underlying geological plates.
Beginning in the Amanus Mountains of southeastern Turkey, the fault line extends southward through western Syria (where it is known as the “Ghab”), through Lebanon (there known as the “Beqa‘ ”), and Israel (Jordan Rift Valley), as far as the Gulf of Aqaba, or Gulf of Eilat, on the Red Sea. The crack continues southward on a line that runs parallel to the Red Sea as far as Ethiopia, where it splits. An eastern rift separates the Arabian peninsula from the “Horn of Africa,” and extends into the Indian Ocean. A western rift begins a diagonal penetration of Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawi and 051Mozambique. Known in those parts as the “Great African Rift Valley,” this geological gash has been responsible for creating most of the elongated lakes of East Africa like Lake Rudolph, Lake Albert and Lake Edward. This rift is also responsible for shaping Lake Victoria and for severing the island of Madagascar from continental Africa.
Chiseled here into the earth’s crust is one fault line that extends continuously over more than 4,000 air miles, across 60 degrees of latitude, 1/6 of the earth’s circumference.
The deepest point in this continental depression is on the shores of the Dead Sea. Drill holes have demonstrated that the vertical displacement of the earth’s crust at the fault line is approximately 12,000 feet. Unconsolidated deposits overlying bedrock are estimated to descend below the level of the Mediterranean Sea to more than 24,000 feet. This means that were one to dig at certain spots along the Dead Sea, one would encounter only sedimentary alluvium down to 24,000 feet below sea level, where, finally, rock stratification would be met!
In such a precarious position, the Dead Sea has experienced many severe earthquakes over the millennia. Between 200 and 300 humanly undetectable seismic registrations are recorded on a daily basis along the Jordan Rift. The Nubian and Arabian plates move at an average annual speed of 1/2 to 1 centimeter. Major earthquakes have taken place beneath or in the immediate environs of the Dead Sea in 1033/1034, 1201/2, 1546 and 1927.4
The Dead Sea is oblong in shape, approximately 53 miles long—from the mouth of the Jordan River in the north to the salt swamps (Sebkha) in the south—and about ten miles wide—enclosed on the west by the steep rocky cliffs of the Judean wilderness and on the east by the precipitous heights of Moab. The sea is divided into two basins by the Lisan (meaning “tongue”) peninsula, which juts out from the southeastern shore for about nine miles. The northern basin is the larger. At its deepest point, in the northeastern sector, a water depth of over 1,000 feet has been recorded. The southern basin is much flatter and shallower, with a water depth fluctuating between 3 and 30 feet. The recent lowering of the water level of the Dead Sea resulting from the erection of dams on the Jordan and Yarmuk rivers has caused a detachment of the two sea basins at the Lisan, and resulted in the exposure of the floor of most of the southern basin. Whether the southern basin was covered with water throughout the biblical period is a controversial question.
It is difficult to describe the forbidding, unrelieved desolation and howling barrenness along the shores of the Dead Sea. The first man in modern times to investigate the Dead Sea extensively by boat was United States Navy Lieutenent William F. Lynch.a He described his 1848 adventures in a volume entitled Narrative of the United States Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1849), p. 275.
This is Lynch’s poetic description of the Dead Sea area:
“But here, above, around, below,
In mountain or in glen,
Nor tree, nor plant, nor shrub, nor flower,
Nor aught of vegetative power,
The wearied eye may ken;
But all its rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone.”
It seems the very forces of nature have conspired against this torrid chasm. At 1,305 feet below sea level, it is the lowest point on earth. By way of contrast, the lowest point in Asia (the great Turfan depression beside Lake Bojaite in northwestern China) is only 490 feet below the sea, the lowest point in Africa (the Qattara depression in the Sahara desert) plunges only to a depth of 435 feet below sea level, and the lowest point in North America (Death Valley in California) lies only at 282 feet below the level of the ocean. Imagine the almost painful sterility of the Sahara or Death Valley, and then multiply that by the appropriate factor to appreciate the geographical and psychological realities to which humans are exposed along the shores of the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea’s catchment area (the area from which it collects water) is vast: it stretches from the southern Lebanese Beqa‘ as far south as the mountains located immediately west of Ezion-Geber, at the head of the Gulf of Eilat (this is what the Israelis call it; the Arabs call it the Gulf of Aqaba). In the other direction the Dead Sea’s catchment area stretches from the central ridge of Canaan as far east as the eastern flanks of the Transjordanian plateau. The catchment area thus encompasses about 11,000 square miles. The numerous wadis and the four perennial rivers that feed the Dead Sea represent an average daily 052inflow of approximately 7 million tons of water,5 yet the sea possesses no outlet for this water except through evaporation. Because of the aridity (the area receives an annual rainfall of only 2–4 inches) and the enormous heat (the temperature sometimes soars to 125° F, and water temperatures as high as 90° F have been recorded), the rate of evaporation is extremely high.
Most of the streams feeding the Dead Sea are unusally saline, flowing through nitrous soil and sulfurous springs. This simply adds to the extensive sulfur deposits and petrochemical springs that line the shores of the Sea (see Genesis 14:10). Near the south-western corner of the sea, a 300-foot-thick rock-salt ridge named Mt. Sodom is exposed. This is only the tip of an estimated 4,500-foot salt block that stretches for five miles. Openings in the floor of the sea permit chemicals (sulfur, bromine, magnesium, potassium, calcium) to be pumped up from underlying fault crevices. Resting on the floor of the sea itself are extremely high concentrations of sodium chloride.
All of these factors combine to produce a total water salinity that varies between 26 and 35 percent, which means that the Dead Sea is the earth’s most saline body of water. By contrast, the Great Salt Lake in Utah is about 18 percent saline; the average ocean salinity is only 3.5 percent. Obviously, the Dead Sea is devoid of all aquatic life, aside from a few bacteria and parasites.
It is well known that the specific gravity of the water exceeds that of the human body. The Roman emperor Vespasian is reported to have tied the hands of men who could not swim and thrown them into the Dead Sea to verify the fact that its waters were heavier than a person.6
In some periods of history the minerals in the Dead Sea have increased the value of the surrounding real estate. As early as the Neolithic period (7500–4000 B.C.) and even into the Chalcolithic period (4000–3150 B.C.), the sea was prized for its bitumen, a commodity used for waterproofing and in the manufacture of baked mudbricks. Bitumen is simply petroleum hardened through evaporation and oxidation. The city of Jericho was probably settled at such an early date (about 7000 B.C.) because of its proximity to the bitumen supply from the Dead Sea. At the turn of the era, the Dead Sea bitumen trade was apparently controlled by the Nabateans, who exported it to Egypt, where it was used in embalming. The Egyptian word mummiya originally meant “bitumen.” More recently another important mineral, potash, has brought a kind of limited prosperity to the area. Potash is used in the manufacture of chemical fertilizer. In the 1950s, the state of Israel founded the Dead Sea Works to produce potash.
Bathing in the thermo-mineral springs along the Dead Sea coast has become a popular treatment for various skin ailments, especially psoriasis. Many sufferers find unusual comfort from the baths, especially when combined with the area’s hot, dry heat supplemented by body-covering mineral-rich mud packs. A number of luxury hotels now incongruously overlook the sea. In one sense the Dead Sea has now come to life.
According to Genesis 19, Sodom and Gomorrah were located in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. All proposed locations of these cities, however, remain speculative, as does the exact nature of the destruction rained upon them.b The cataclysmic event has been variously interpreted either as a volcanic eruption or as a spontaneous explosion of subsurface pockets of bituminous soil.
It is hardly surprising that the fearful spectacle of desolation surrounding the Dead Sea should have provided a suitable refuge for the fugitive David fleeing from King Saul’s wrath (1 Samuel 21–31) or for the paranoid Herod the Great (who built fortress-palaces at Masada and Machaerus). The contemplative Essenes of Qumran whose library was discovered nearly 2,000 years after their community was destroyed by the Romans also sought spiritual comfort here. And the disenfranchised Jewish insurgents of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome held out—and finally died—atop Masada. It was in barrenness like this that Jesus was confronted with temptation (Matthew 4:1ff); perhaps such dismal surroundings contributed to the anguish he felt. To understand the geography gives the text a new meaning.
“It was in the time of Amraphel, king of Shinar … they went to war … The kings joined forces in the Valley of Siddim, which is now the Dead Sea.” (Genesis 14:1–3) In this hoary biblical episode four kings fight against five, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. The area is dotted with bitumen pits. The kings of Sodom and Gomorrah, fleeing, fall into the pits. Lot is captured. With his 318 retainers, Abram (later called Abraham) rescues Lot and all his kinsmen and possessions. Later, the Lord destroys Sodom and Gomorrah when ten good men can […]
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Footnotes
See
See “Have Sodom and Gomorrah Been Found?” BAR 06:05.
Endnotes
Genesis 14:3; Numbers 34:3, 12; Deuteronomy 3:17; Joshua 3:16, 12:3, 15:2, 5, 18:19. It is also called
For additional information, see Atlas of Israel, 3rd ed. (Tel Aviv: Survey of Israel, 1985), pp. 14–15.