The King Nobody Wanted | Page 7

old, he was "a son of the Law," like other
boys his age, and for the first time he went with them. Many friends
and relatives kept them company as they started on the road.
Now from Nazareth it was more than eighty miles to Jerusalem, and
eighty miles is a long way to walk.
It would have been easier to ride in a cart; but nobody traveled that way
in Palestine. The roads were too rough and narrow for anything but
walking. Donkeys and horses might carry the heavy luggage, but the

people went on foot. There were no bridges, and so the only way to get
from one side of a river to the other was to find a shallow place and
wade across.
It would take two or three days to go from Nazareth to Jerusalem.
When the travelers were tired at night, there was not likely to be any
place to sleep along the road, except under the open sky and the stars.
There were three stages to their journey. The first was the pleasant part,
through Galilee. When the travelers left Nazareth that day, the sky was
clear and the air was fresh. The fields lay lovely in the sunlight. The
roads were full of people from many countries. There were always
merchants on the road traveling from the East to Greece and Egypt, and
back to the East again. Galilee was beautiful, and Galilee was busy.
Sooner or later the time must come to leave pleasant Galilee behind.
But which way would they go from there? Should they go straight
south through Samaria? That would have been the shortest and the
easiest way. The only thing against it was that the people of Samaria
were not friendly to Jews. Long years before, Samaria had been the
home of many of the Jewish people. But foreigners came and settled
among them. Then their ways became so different that the people of
Jerusalem said they were not Jewish any more. They were bitter rivals
of the Jews, and it was hardly safe to go among them.
So the travelers chose, for the second stage of their journey, the long
road down the valley of the river Jordan. But they did not find this very
pleasant, either. High above the river stood the banks, and it seemed as
though the river itself were at the bottom of a great, deep ditch. And
down there was the road they had to take. In some places they came to
slime and mud, and dead trees and twisted roots. But sometimes there
were farms and villages. It was hot at the north end of the Jordan, when
first they came to it; and the farther south the travelers went, the hotter
grew the weather.
Very hot, very tired, and very thirsty, they finally reached the last
stretch of the journey--across country from the Jordan to Jerusalem.
They were nearly there. But the last part of the trip was the hardest of

all. Around them stretched a dreary desert. There were bleak hills, and
ugly rocks, and hardly a drop of water anywhere to drink. No wonder
nobody went to Jerusalem, except Jews and Roman soldiers! There
were no gay caravans of Eastern merchants here. Galilee seemed very
far away.
Up one side of a hill, and down another, and then another higher hill to
climb! Up and up, over stones and bare earth and bushes and thorns,
until they were high above the Jordan--that was the road to Jerusalem.
Would they ever get there? What they would have given just to sit
down and wash the sand off their hot, tired feet!
Then all at once they saw it. From the top of the hill they saw it, walls
and roofs and towers gleaming in the morning sun. A shout of joy went
up. Every man and woman and child joined in the shouting. Jerusalem,
the city of David! King David built that city, a thousand years ago. The
enemies of God had come and burned it to the ground, but the Jews
built it up again. They were sure that it could never be destroyed. It
would always be there, for ever and ever. Someday the Messiah would
come, and all the peoples and nations of the world would come to see
Jerusalem, as these poor folk from Galilee were doing now.
[Illustration]
The travelers began to march again, but faster this time; forgotten were
the weary miles behind. They marched, and as they marched they sang.
They sang one of the psalms that the boys had learned at school.
Everyone took up the song:
"'I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the
Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem....