It was on this occasion of his first Passover that our Saviour drove out the sheep and oxen and upset the tables of the exchangers, as recorded in John 2:15, using the material with which the animals were bound for a whip or scourge.
3. From the very evident divine power which the Saviour exhibited at this Passover, a member of the Sanhedrin, Nicodemus, sought an interview with him at night, John 3, at which time Christ made the announcement of his special mission to this world in those remarkable words: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life,” John 3:14, 15.
4. The Passover being ended, Jesus left Jerusalem, but seems to have remained in Judæa near the Jordan, perhaps on the plain at the north end of the Dead Sea. John was baptizing in the same region. It must have been somewhere on these plains that Herod Antipas met the Baptist and received the reproof of which we have spoken before.This Herod[164] was the ruler of Galilee and Peræa, and was at first married to the daughter of Aretas, king of Arabia Petræa, but forsook her for Herodias, thewife of his half-brother (see preceding table). This brought on a war with Aretas on the confines of his territory on the south, and it is probable that on his way to meet Aretas Herod received the reproof from the Baptist and condemned the latter to imprisonment in his castle at Machærus.
MACHÆRUS AND PERÆA.
5. This castle was seven miles east of the Dead Sea, and the ruins remain at a place about 25 miles south of the north end of the sea. It is 3,800 feet above its level and 2,507 feet above the Mediterranean. Josephus says that John the Baptist was imprisoned here, and here he must have been beheaded. The region of Peræa extended from this place to Pella, near the Jordan, about 60 miles north, and Herod Antipas was at that time ruler of all Galilee and Peræa, which included the castle Machærus.
ENON AND SALIM.
6. During the Saviour’s stay in Judæa, after the Passover just spoken of, it appears that he remained for a time near the Jordan while his disciples baptized. The two preachers were therefore not far distant from each other, and the disciples of John, evidently with a spirit of rivalry, communicated the fact that greater crowds attended the ministry of Jesus.
This brought out the testimony of John to the greater glory and future progress of the gospel ofJesus. John was at this time at “Enon near Salim,” and the sites of these two places have not yet been settled.
Enon is the Greek form of the Aramaic word for “springs,” and Salim is the word for “peace,” and both of these words are frequently found in varying forms in several places.
It has been thought that the little village now called Salim, not far east of Shechem, was the site of the Scripture Salim, and that Enon was to be identified with a little ruin called Ainun, nearly eight miles northeast. But apart from the fact that these places are not near each other, they are entirely too near the very heart of the Samaritan district, Salim being only four miles east of Shechem.