Kerioth Hezron

First mentioned in Joshua 15:25 as one of the cities allotted to Judah, Kerioth Hezron is also one of the possible sites for the home of Judas Iscariot (or Judas "man of Kerioth"). Known as Tel Qeriyot today, the southern Judean town sets on the northern edge of the Negev desert located four and a half miles northeast of Tel Arad.

Tel Qeriyot does not look like the typical flat-topped archaeological mesa for which I'm accustomed to scanning the horizon. As a matter of fact, when we pulled off on the side of the road next to a small rise, smaller than even the hills that surrounded it, I thought to myself, "This is going to be another one of those sites where we have to hunt through knee high thistles to find two stones stacked together". Was I ever surprised when I reached the top of the slope. There must have been more than two acres of ruins. We found remains of buildings, cisterns, and a Byzantine church. I found the church amusing. Like Voltaire's house becoming a place where Bibles were printed after his death, a church built where the "son of perdition" once lived was quite ironic. God really does have a sense of humor.

The place was also riddled with caves. This may sound strange, but I guess the thing that interested me the most were the stone mangers we found in several of those caves. When you go to Bethlehem today to see the stable/cave where Christ was born, it is buried under a church originally built in the third century by Helena, Constantine's mother. The cave is encrusted with catholic altars, iconography, candles, and incense burners. Even the manger they claim the baby Jesus slept in is caged off to the public. To picture what the place must have been like for Mary and Joseph, you would really have to swallow hard and use your imagination.

Here at Kerioth Hezron, at the home of the one who sought to end the life of the Son of God, I was experiencing a glimpse of what the surroundings must have been like as Christ stepped into this world to begin His earthly journey to bring peace to mankind. Unlike the warm, glowing wooden barns of Christmas greeting cards, the stable was a damp, dark, cold, uninviting hole in the ground. Neither Judas, Bethlehem, nor the world had any place for it's King. What about you?