One of my favorite places that we stopped at during our tour of Israel was the Spring of Harod. You may not immediately recognize the name of this place. However, if I were to refer to it as Gideon’s Spring you might have some idea of what happened here.
You may have figured it out that the Spring of Harod is where Gideon chose his 300 men to battle the Midianites. Here is the passage from the book of Judges.

Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod. And the camp of Midian was north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. The Lord said to Gideon, “The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, ‘My own hand has saved me.’ Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, ‘Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.'” Then 22,000 of the people returned, and 10,000 remained. And the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many. Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there, and anyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ shall go with you, and anyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “Every one who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, every one who kneels down to drink.” And the number of those who lapped, putting their hands to their mouths, was 300 men, but all the rest of the people knelt down to drink water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home.” So the people took provisions in their hands, and their trumpets. And he sent all the rest of Israel every man to his tent, but retained the 300 men. And the camp of Midian was below him in the valley. (Judges 7:1-8 ESV)

It was very interesting to see the place where Gideon made this selection. Since we visited the spring near the end of the dry season there was not much water running through the stream that exited the spring area. However, I could still visualize his men leaning down to take a drink while Joshua made his choices of who would fight with him.

I was able to get a few nice pictures of flowers that were growing around the spring area. Here is one of the pictures. You can see the small stream that flows from the spring behind these beautiful little purple flowers.

You can see that the water level in the stream is very low, but our guides told us that during and just after the rainy season that the stream is very full. If you look closely in the middle of this picture you can see a dragonfly resting on a rock in the stream. I thought that this would be the best picture that I would be able to catch of the dragonfly, but later I got very lucky and was able to get some wonderful pictures of it.From the research that I have done, I believe that this is a Crocothemis erythraea. This dragonfly species is also know as the Scarlet Darter, Scarlet Dragonfly or Broad Scarlet.

I really like the coloring of this dragonfly and also the beautiful wings. The way that the wings attach to the body of the dragonfly is also very interesting. I am so glad that I was able to get a closeup picture so that I could see the detail.

I hope you enjoy this beautiful male dragonfly. This species is an example where the male is much more colorful than the female.

Steven