Joppa
Joppa – modern Jaffa, on the southern edge of Tel Aviv – was Judea’s ancient window on the sea: the port where Solomon’s cedar rafts landed (2 Chronicles 2:16) and where Jonah boarded a ship to flee “away from the presence of the LORD” (Jonah 1:3). The echo matters, because Joppa is where another reluctant prophet got his orders to go to the Gentiles.
Peter came to Joppa after raising Tabitha (Dorcas), the beloved seamstress whose charity had clothed the town’s widows – “Tabitha, arise,” and he presented her alive (Acts 9:36-43). Lodging with Simon the tanner in a house by the sea, Peter went up on the roof to pray at noon and saw the sheet let down from heaven, full of unclean animals: “Rise, Peter; kill and eat… What God has made clean, do not call common” (Acts 10:9-16). Three times, and then the knock at the door: messengers from a Gentile centurion in Caesarea, thirty miles up the coast. From Jonah’s old port, Peter went – and the door of faith opened to the nations.
In the New Testament
- Tabitha raised at Joppa (Acts 9:36-43)
- Peter’s rooftop vision at Simon the tanner’s house (Acts 10:9-23; 11:4-18)
- Jonah’s flight from the same port, in the background (Jonah 1:3)