Jericho

Jericho lies in the Jordan valley a little north of the Dead Sea; the Bible calls it “the city of palm trees” (Deuteronomy 34:3). The ancient town is the mound of Tell es-Sultan, beside the spring of Ain es-Sultan on the edge of the modern city, with more than twenty layers of settlement reaching back some eleven thousand years. In Joshua it is the first city to fall to Israel (Joshua 6:20). Joshua laid a curse on whoever rebuilt it, and Kings reports that the curse fell on Hiel of Bethel, who rebuilt it in the days of Ahab (Joshua 6:26) (1 Kings 16:34). Elijah and Elisha pass through it (2 Kings 2:4). Jesus meets the blind beggar Bartimaeus on leaving the city (Mark 10:46) and stays there with the tax collector Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1–10), and his parable of the good Samaritan is set on the road down from Jerusalem (Luke 10:30). When the walls of the Bronze Age city were destroyed is disputed among archaeologists: see the dating note on Crossing the Jordan and the Fall of Jericho.