Har Azazel - St. George's Monastery

This morning we visited the highest point in the Judean wilderness, Har Azazel. This is the place where they would push the scapegoat over the cliff on the Day of Atonement. You can see the Mount of Olives from here so the priests would signal to each other as the goat was moving to this point. It's quite a drop still to this day.



We saw some more sheep in the bedoin communities.



Next we went to St. George's Monastery in a large cavernous area between Jerusalem and Jericho. You have to hike down into the valley and back up to the monastery. It's been there since the 5th Century. David probably wrote Psalm 23 from this area, it looks like the "valley of the shadow of death." It's also believed that Elijah hid from Ahab in one of these caves and was fed by ravens here.