Day 28: Philip Farm to Beit Guvrin
Day 28, March 27: Getting close to end of month and progress is OK but not fast. Hope to be done before Passover - realistic? Sorta boring day at first, more wheat fields, but nicer at end. All gradual uphill. Ate and bought too much at lunch. End at Beit Guvrin Makhina. Passed Tel Lakhish but didn't climb.
The area toward the end was very hilly and nice. We were in the "Shphelah" region, the western Judean foothills. This would, I believe, have been an area of contention between Israelite and Philistine. It also contains Lakhish, which the Assyrians captured before heading up to Jerusalem and then getting smote to the tune of 185,000 dudes by the angel of the LORD, as referenced in Kings, Chronicles, and Isaiah.
I remember exploring it during my Middle East semester at Eastern Mennonite University and would have liked to revisit it, as everything I came back to on my second trip seemed clearer and to fit much more crisply into my understanding of things, especially history and geography. I'll have to settle for reading about it.
A "makhina" is the post-high school, pre-army leadership program, like what we stayed at in Midreshet Ben-Gurion. The one in Bet Guvrin also had a free guest room.