Avir at Ein Gedi getting very wet in the lower waterfall
Avir has just got out of the strong rush of water from the falls above. The water is quite cold and exhilarating, not always best for the feint-hearted who don’t appreciate swimming in cold water. His friends who have just emerged from a waterfall-bath themselves are enjoying the break and sitting under the overhanging trees adjacent to this lower waterfall.
This living landscape is where David hid from King Saul (1 Sam. 24:1-22) and King Solomon wrote about in his lovely poem Song of Songs. These are also other biblical stories connected to the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve on the shore of the Dead Sea, an oasis made all the more entrancing by its contrast with the surrounding desert. The sprightly animals that gave the site its biblical name, the “crags of the wild goats” (1 Sam. 24:2), rest at the cave entrances and walk the reserve.
The water gurgling through the tangled reeds and under shady acacias once nourished the beds of spices mentioned also in the Song of Solomon (1:14). The remains of a town and a synagogue with a mosaic floor tell the dramatic story of Ein Gedi’s people two-thousand years ago and in the following centuries.