When I was seventeen I was invited to join the student ministry team at my church. I was a brand new Christian, had not yet begun reading my glossy, new Bible, and failed to realize the poetic book in the middle of the Bible was pronounced with a silent “P”. Pssss-alm eighteen quickly became my favorite passage, a place where the gloss quickly wore away and the first lines of ink were spilled underneath heart-churning metaphors,
I love you, O LORD, my strength. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge (18:1-2a).
Much of my childhood had been surrounded in inconsistency, where reality and rest were always shifting concepts. God as a “rock” and “fortress”– unchanging, shiftless, steady and strong–made a lot of sense to me. A fortress kind of God rung a dusty bell inside my heart and stirred me into believing that the things I’d always hoped might be true about my life could find their form in the God of the Bible.
The Super Bowl (world's largest erosion crater--southeast of En Gedi)
David’s psalms were written in the heart of the wilderness, forgotten arid wastelands that are totally incapable of sustaining even the most resilient lifeforms. Many believe David wrote the majority of his poems while on the run from Saul, while ducking and hiding between cliffs and in caves that dot the Negev like chicken pox on an infected five year old. The dust, sun, crumbling rock forms and oppressive lack of water would have left the languishing Bethlehemite on a frantic, daily search for places of rest, refuge and restoration. The wilderness offered little,
The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge…
A thousand years after David, Herod the Great ruled the modern day state of Israel. His job was to protect the southeastern frontier of the Roman Empire safe from the Arabian threat. During his life Herod built a number of impressive fortresses throughout the Holy Land: Caesarea (on the Mediterranean), Herodium (just south of Jerusalem), Jericho and Masada, to name only a few. Masada (the Hebrew word for fortress) was by far the most awe-inspiring. Essentially, Herod turned a dusty mountaintop in the middle of a suffocating wilderness into a vast oasis with pools, steam rooms, a series of palaces, with a casemate wall encircling its perimeter.
Herod's Masada
We’re not sure if Herod ever actually visited the palace. He had many such places. Why? Well, in Herod’s economy of stewardship of tax revenue the better question is, “Why not?” Three decades after the resurrection of Christ (in 66 or 67 A.D.), Masada, a place of little strategic significance to the Roman Empire, fell into the hands of Jewish zealots. Eventually, Herod’s successors wanted the famous place back. A massive siege ramp was built along the spur line of a small hill which rests against the base of Masada. In 74 Masada fell. Josephus tells us that the Jews who dwelt atop the fortress committed mass suicide just before the Romans stormed the top. Scholars are skeptical as to whether or not this really is the case. Either way, this massive, seemingly impenetrable wilderness hideaway eventually bowed again to the power of Rome.
Fortresses are made to fall. As I’ve spent the past couple of months zig-zagging across the Holy Land I’ve been struck by the number of ancient cities (walled, sealed and defended strongholds) eventually succumbed to invasion. It seems as though no matter how securely folks on the Biblical frontier fortified their communities, armies with more resolve, strength and resources quickly broke down doors and crashed through “impenetrable walls” before laying waste to entire societies.
David was looking for the sort of hideaway that would hem him in and hold him safe. As king, David would reinforce walls around the newly captured Jerusalem, establishing the community of faith within a sort of fortress. But David refused to cling to illusion. It was only a matter of time before Nebuchadnezzar would tear down Jerusalem’s walls, burn the Temple, and send a weeping nation into the seething jaws of exile.
Ancient site at Arad.
Man-made fortresses are porous hideaways. The walls we build, brick by brick, are incapable of keeping tragedy at bay. As we sojourn through life (a journey that so often presents itself as a vast wilderness lacking simple necessities) we anxiously scan the horizon for powerful fortresses where we can steady our hearts and revive our spirits.
Masadas always fall. The LORD alone will stand, nailed to a cross, drawing weary ones to Himself. May He, indeed, be our fortress.
