No Shortage of Water

Moses sounds like a travel agent. . . After leading his people across the desert to the threshold of the Promised Land, he gives them a glowing description of the land before them.

The LORD is bringing you into a good land--a land with streams and pools of water, with springs flowing in the valleys and hills. Deuteronomy 8:7

It is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it. Deuteronomy 11:11-12

After forty years in the dry desert this sounded like paradise - rain-water, ground-water and surface water in abundance, streams and pools and springs - a farmer’s paradise for sure - and a hydro-geologist’s dream.


The hills of Lebanon and upper Galilee get lots of rain which the earth absorbs and channels into underground aquifers. Some of this surfaces 20-40 miles south in the Jezreel Valley – the famed Valley of Meggido. In an ancient battle in this region, Israel’s invaders were humiliated when their chariots got mired in the soggy bog land.  See the Book of Judges 4-5.

When modern Jews began re-settling that area in the late 1800’s it was non-arable marshland due to deforestation, soil erosion and neglect. The settlers drained the swampland, constructed terraces, cleared rocky fields, reforested the hills to reverse soil erosion, and washed salty land. They developed a network of canals, harnessed the water for irrigation and made it a fruitful breadbasket.

This development is a great example of responsible earth-care. It illustrates our human calling as stewards of creation, partnering with God for the full flourishing of society and the environment. This is what all creation groans for – when it will be ‘liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s new creation’ as St Paul puts it in Romans 8:21.

That glorious freedom also has political and personal dimensions which we’ll consider in the next post.