sight of pilgrims going up to the festival; for then the question was revived whether men ought to worship at Jerusalem or Mount Gerizim. Being refused a passage through Samaria, and yet still intent upon going up to Jerusalem, Jesus Christ would turn eastward, and journey along the border, which led straight to the Bethabara ford of the Jordan. Travelling thus, with Samaria on his right hand and Galilee on his left, it is surely not incorrect to say that he was passing through the midst of Samaria and Galilee; or, as we have it in the margin of the Revised Version, he passed between. It seems to have been at one of the border villages that he was met by ten lepers, one of whom was a Samaritan (Luke xvii. 12); and where would he be more likely to find Jewish and Samaritan lepers in one group than on the border line of the two provinces? He is following this line eastward, and accordingly, when Matthew and Mark say that he crossed the Jordan and came into the borders of Judea, by the eastern route, it is in perfect accordance with the statement in Luke. In further confirmation, we read in Luke xviii. 35, as well as in the other Evangelists, that the route taken brought Jesus through Jericho. To approach Jerusalem from Jericho was a matter of course with the pilgrims from Galilee who had travelled by the eastern route.
The Jericho road was the scene of the parable of the Good Samaritan. "A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho." The actual descent would be about 3000 feet; and every expression of that kind in the Scriptures, as of "going down" or "going up," is always true to the features of the ground. The man "fell among thieves." So likely a district is it, that in the days of the Crusaders nine knights banded themselves together to defend pilgrims going down this dangerous pass: and hence arose the Order of Knights Templars. "There came by a priest and a Levite." Jericho was a sacerdotal
