Between the mountains of Israel and the mountains of Jordan lies the lowest place on the earth—the Dead Sea. It is an arid wilderness, haunted by ibexes, birds, and snakes. Caves dot the mountainsides. It is the place where the Jews, in their final revolt against the Romans in AD 73, saw that all hope was lost and decided to kill their families and then themselves on a high plateau called Masada.
In this desert, David found refuge from Saul. Hiding in one of the many caves near the spring of En Gedi, David had his chance to kill the king and claim the throne as his own. Cutting one corner of the king’s robe, David later repented and said, “Far be it from me because of the Lord that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord’s anointed, to stretch out my hand against him, since he is the Lord’s anointed” (1 Samuel 24:6).
David could not take the throne by force though he was tormented in the wilderness . . . abandoned. As he poured out his soul before God, sitting in that dark and stifling cave, he wrote, “For there is no one who regards me; / There is no escape for me; / No one cares for my soul” (Psalm 142: 4). The wilderness of En Gedi is dead—except for the life-giving waters of the spring. The sea there is dead. It is a dusty, hot, parched, and rocky land. It is the picture of David’s life during his refuge there. So he cries out to God, “You are my refuge, / My portion in the land of the living . . . / Bring my soul out of prison” (142:5, 7).
David would eventually become king and write one of the greatest statements about the Word of God, Psalm 119. For David, God’s Word had always been a source of comfort and strength, even in the wilderness. Centuries after David, others came to this very same wilderness to preserve the Word of God.
During the days of Jesus, a small Jewish settlement existed near the Dead Sea. There along its blistering shores this band of men, the Essenes, laboriously copied the Old Testament onto parchment made of sheepskins. Then they hid them in the nearby caves at Qumran. The discovery of these copies, the Dead Sea Scrolls, in 1947 changed our view of the Old Testament forever. Two significant truths came from this discovery. First, it proved that the entire book of Isaiah was written by one man. And second, it reinforced our confidence in the integrity of the copies of Scripture that we possess today. The scrolls are now housed in a beautiful museum shaped like the pottery jars in which they were found—the Shrine of the Book.
Dedicated and godly men like David and the Essenes were the instruments God used to record and preserve His Word, even in a wilderness by the Dead Sea. Isaiah’s words, preserved in a place where little grows, are an apt reminder: “Surely the grass withers. . . . / But the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:8).
