stillsmallvoice
February 12th 2004, 10:19 AM
Hi all!
This past Saturday we (Jews all over the world) read Exodus 13:17-17:16 and Judges 4:4-5:31.
The reading from Judges is one of my favorites, for lots of reasons. Deborah's Song is, I think, among the most poetically beautiful & evocative passages in the entire Tanakh. I love the imagery of Judges 5:20.
They fought from heaven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.
The very next verse, 5:21, describes how the Kishon River swept Sisea's army away:
The brook Kishon swept them away, that ancient brook, the brook Kishon.
The Kishon brook/river/stream (http://www.kishon.org.il/english.htm) rises near Jenin and drains over 1,100 square kilometers before emptying into Haifa Bay, between Haifa and the new/biblical city of Acre. It used to be quite beautiful (see http://www.kishon.org.il/time.htm). I say "used to" because, sadly, since the late 1930's, much of its lower reaches are polluted (http://www.kishon.org.il/pollution.htm) to death (literally!), due to a large industrial area (which Saddam the Wicked lobbed a few SCUDs at in 1991) near its mouth. There, the Kishon is more of a filthy sewer than a river/brook/stream.
I find this so sad, that here, we have taken this Land that God gave us ("a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills..." Deuteronomy 8:7) and poisoned parts of it and turned them into obscenities, into blights. Surely God will call us to account for this! Was it for this that He entrusted this Land to our care?
There is one other passage in the Tanakh, in which death and the Kishon are associated, I Kings 18:40.
And Elijah said unto them: 'Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.' And they took them; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.
(The association of the Kishon with death persists in the New Testament as well. A large part of its drainage basin includes the Esdraelon Valley, site of Revelation 16:16's Armageddon.)
And unfortunately, the Kishon is no less deadly today than it was to Sisera's army & the priests of Baal. There is a long-running controversy in Israel about a group of Navy frogmen & commandos who charge that they got cancer from being forced to train in the contaminated Kishon (see
http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=ArticlePage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El2219&enZone=Security&enVersion=0&); several of these ex-frogmen/commandos have since died. Hopefully, the efforts of the Environment Ministry's Kishon River Authority (see the links above) will bear fruit and the Kishon will no longer be associated with death and will once again become the living river that it was in the near past.
Be well!
ssv :hi:
This past Saturday we (Jews all over the world) read Exodus 13:17-17:16 and Judges 4:4-5:31.
The reading from Judges is one of my favorites, for lots of reasons. Deborah's Song is, I think, among the most poetically beautiful & evocative passages in the entire Tanakh. I love the imagery of Judges 5:20.
They fought from heaven, the stars in their courses fought against Sisera.
The very next verse, 5:21, describes how the Kishon River swept Sisea's army away:
The brook Kishon swept them away, that ancient brook, the brook Kishon.
The Kishon brook/river/stream (http://www.kishon.org.il/english.htm) rises near Jenin and drains over 1,100 square kilometers before emptying into Haifa Bay, between Haifa and the new/biblical city of Acre. It used to be quite beautiful (see http://www.kishon.org.il/time.htm). I say "used to" because, sadly, since the late 1930's, much of its lower reaches are polluted (http://www.kishon.org.il/pollution.htm) to death (literally!), due to a large industrial area (which Saddam the Wicked lobbed a few SCUDs at in 1991) near its mouth. There, the Kishon is more of a filthy sewer than a river/brook/stream.
I find this so sad, that here, we have taken this Land that God gave us ("a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths, springing forth in valleys and hills..." Deuteronomy 8:7) and poisoned parts of it and turned them into obscenities, into blights. Surely God will call us to account for this! Was it for this that He entrusted this Land to our care?
There is one other passage in the Tanakh, in which death and the Kishon are associated, I Kings 18:40.
And Elijah said unto them: 'Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.' And they took them; and Elijah brought them down to the brook Kishon, and slew them there.
(The association of the Kishon with death persists in the New Testament as well. A large part of its drainage basin includes the Esdraelon Valley, site of Revelation 16:16's Armageddon.)
And unfortunately, the Kishon is no less deadly today than it was to Sisera's army & the priests of Baal. There is a long-running controversy in Israel about a group of Navy frogmen & commandos who charge that they got cancer from being forced to train in the contaminated Kishon (see
http://web.israelinsider.com/bin/en.jsp?enPage=ArticlePage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enDispWho=Article%5El2219&enZone=Security&enVersion=0&); several of these ex-frogmen/commandos have since died. Hopefully, the efforts of the Environment Ministry's Kishon River Authority (see the links above) will bear fruit and the Kishon will no longer be associated with death and will once again become the living river that it was in the near past.
Be well!
ssv :hi: