Elizabeth at Home

In writing the words of Advent Journeys I came to thoroughly enjoy taking walks with the Biblical characters themselves. One of the couples I enjoyed visiting with the most was Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist. By tradition this couple lives in Beth Hakkerem (then Jer. 6:1; Neh. 3:14), or Ein Karem (today).

Over this wall we see the valley through which Joseph traveled

I first met this couple on Joseph’s trip (which occurs in the book on Week 2, but I wrote it first) as Mary came to visit her cousin when she finds out she is pregnant. As Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem, they visit Zechariah and Elizabeth along the way. Ein Karem is one of the Levitical cities located about five miles from Jerusalem.

The map of Joseph & Mary's route on right

Ein Karem is on the west side of a mountain which separates it from Jerusalem proper. In order to get there from Jerusalem on our travels in Israel, we took the light rail to the top of Mt. Herzl, and then transferred to a bus which took us down a long descent into the village. From the village we could see the ancient travel paths through a valley from the north and a valley which extended west, then south and finally to the east on the other side of the mountain. The terrain around the village is mountainous.

In front of Church of the Visitation in Ein Karem

The village today is small (considering its location as a suburb of Jerusalem), with a population of about 2,000 people. In the days of Zechariah and Elizabeth, there would have been less than 200 people.

Today it is said Ein Karem hosts about three million visitors per year. They come to see the village where John the Baptist grew up. They visit the spring where Elizabeth came out to greet Mary. They enter the Church of the Visitation, the Church of St. John the Baptist, the monastery of Les Soeurs de Notre-Dam de Sion, and the Moscobia Convent. The churches are very beautiful, and the small village descending from the spring into the valley speaks of the rural setting of John the Baptist’s nativity.

Mary's Well in Ein Karem

After ascending to the Church of the Visitation we stopped in a grocery to buy soft drinks and watch the pilgrims parading through the streets from one church to another. But through the crowds we could enjoy the quietness of what this village was in the days of Zechariah and Elizabeth, Mary and Joseph, and the two boys who every once in a while played on the dirt roads and in the spring.