The King Nobody Wanted | Page 7

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.... Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: They shall prosper that love thee.'"
There were so many visitors in Jerusalem that they could not all find a place to stay in the city. Some of them stayed in the villages near by, and others slept in tents out in the open air. At an ordinary time of the year, there would be only about thirty thousand people living in Jerusalem. But at the Passover there might be twice that, or even more.
Even the Roman governor was in Jerusalem at Passover time. He lived in another city, but he always came to Jerusalem for the great feast. It was not that he cared about the Passover. It was because he was afraid that with such great crowds in Jerusalem there might be trouble unless his Roman soldiers were on guard. It would be especially bad if anyone showed up claiming to be the Messiah. All the people might make him king, and rebel against Rome, and great numbers would be killed.
With such crowds in the city, it was hard for the people from Nazareth to get through the narrow streets. All