A Spring in the Valley
"Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools. They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion."
— Psalm 84:5-7
The walk behind these lines was a legal duty: every Israelite man had to present himself before the Lord three times a year. The oldest wording of that command names no city, only the site the Lord himself would choose. The same law carried a promise attached to it, that nobody would covet their land while the men were away, which tells you what people were afraid of when they locked up and left. Other accounts show whole households on the road, women and children walking too. How far it was depended on where you lived: a few hours for someone close by, days of walking for a family from the north. Where this reads "hearts set on pilgrimage", the Hebrew has a plain noun for roads, and it means the built kind, earth heaped up and marked out rather than a track worn in by feet. The dry valley named halfway through, Baka, has never been fixed to any known place; its name is read either from a word for weeping or from a shrub that grows where there is no water. The last of the three feasts came at the end of a rainless summer, with the first rains of the year still ahead. And Jerusalem stands high in the hill country, so whichever road you took, the climbing came at the end of it. Whoever has come through the valley of weeping can leave a spring in it for those who come after.