Forget the Bible Codes. This Nevuah – far surpasses anything else. It makes Reb Shlomo Carlebach’s line, “The holy prophet Isaiah” – come to life.
Israeli media no longer shows government ads about saving water. And what follows is why.
But first an introduction:
Globes is an Israeli media company that focuses on business in Eretz Yisroel. They recently missed a huge point. In a recent article, they focuses on Israel possibly supplying Syria with water. But they really blew it on this one.
The Arava region, which is divided into the Central and Southern regions, is the desert valley that extends from the Dead Sea to Eilat, along Israel’s border with Jordan. The thirty-fifth chapter of Sefer Yishayahu contains one of the most vivid prophetic visions in all of Nach.
It deals with the Arava region.
In it, the Ribbono Shel Olam transforms this barren wilderness into a place of flowing waters and abundant growth. “Ki nivke’u bamidbar mayim, u’nechalim ba’aravah”—”For water has broken out in the desert and streams in the plain” (Yishayahu 35:6). For centuries, these words were read as poetry of the distant future, a description of what Hashem would accomplish in the days of Moshiach.
Yet, today are privileged to witness something extraordinary. The Land of Israel—sixty percent desert, receiving barely 25 millimeters of rain annually in its southern reaches—now, according to the latest reports, produces roughly twenty percent more water than it actually needs. While Iran warns of evacuating parts of Tehran due to water shortages, Eretz Yisroel now flourishes.
This is a story of Hashem preparing His land for the return of His people, using human hands as instruments of His will. The engineers and scientists who built Israel’s water infrastructure were agents of a prophetic plan set in motion thousands of years ago.
The Navi’s Vision: Hashem’s Promise to His Land
The chapter opens with the land itself responding to Divine initiative: “Yeshusum midbar v’tziyah, v’sagel aravah v’sifrach kachavatzales”—”Desert and wasteland shall rejoice over them, and the plain shall rejoice and shall blossom like a rose” (35:1). Note the language: the desert shall rejoice.
The Metzudas Dovid explains that the chavatzeles—the lily blossoming in the arid waste—represents the impossible made possible through Divine power alone.
The next pasuk makes the source explicit: “Heimah yir’u kevod Hashem, hadar Elokeinu”—”They shall see the glory of the L-rd, the beauty of Hashem.” The transformation of the desert is something that has never happened before in all human history
Psukim three and four turn to the human response: “Chazku yadayim rafos… Imru l’nimharei lev, ‘Chizku, al tira’u; hinei Elokeichem nakam yavo, gemul Elokim, hu yavo v’yoshiachem'”—”Strengthen weak hands… Say to the hasty of heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear; behold Hashem, with vengeance He shall come, the recompense of Hashem, He shall come and save you.'” The Malbim notes that the message is addressed to those whose faith has grown weak during the long exile, who have begun to doubt whether Hashem would ever fulfill His promises. To them the Navi says: Look! Behold Hashem! He is coming to save you!
Then comes the climactic pasuk six: “Ki nivke’u bamidbar mayim, u’nechalim ba’aravah”—”For water has broken out in the desert and streams in the plain.” The verb nivke’u is passive—the waters “have been broken out,” they have been caused to burst forth. By Whom? By Hashem. Only He can command the desert to yield what it does not possess.
Let’s consider the improbabilities. A nation is back after two thousand years of exile—itself an event unprecedented in human history, foretold by the Neviim but never before witnessed.
This nation returns to a land that has become desolate during its absence. The land itself waited – refusing to yield its fruit to foreign occupiers just as the Torah promised: “V’hashamosi ani es ha’aretz”—”And I will make the land desolate” (Vayikra 26:32). The Ramban famously notes that this curse contains within it a hidden blessing: the land would remain barren until its rightful inhabitants returned.
Now the people return, and they face an impossible situation. Their land has almost no water. The only major freshwater source, the Kinneret, sits 699 feet below sea level in the north. The agricultural potential lies in the Negev, hundreds of miles to the south. The population is growing. Enemies surround them. Without water, there is no future.
And yet—against all logic, against all probability—Eretz Yisroel becomes the only country in the Middle East with a water surplus. How?
The kofrim of the world will point to engineering: the National Water Carrier, the desalination plants, the wastewater recycling systems. And indeed, these are marvels of human creativity. But we must ask deeper questions. Why did Hashem grant such wisdom to this particular people, in this particular land, at this particular time?
Why did He arrange circumstances so that the technology of desalination would mature precisely when Klal Yisroel needed it most?
The Gemorah (Megillah 6b) teaches that when Hashem wishes to accomplish something, He prepares the means in advance. The refuah comes before the makkah.
Even before Eretz Yisroel faced its water crisis in the early 2000s, the basic science of reverse osmosis had been developed. Before the population tripled, the engineering capacity to build massive desalination plants had emerged. Hashem, in His infinite wisdom, had been preparing the solution for decades before the problem became acute.
Seeing Through the Veil of Nature
The Ramban (Shmos 13:16) teaches that one of the highest levels of understanding is recognizing Hashem’s hand within natural processes.
Consider what happens in a desalination plant. Seawater. Bitter. Undrinkable. The water of the Mediteranian is drawn through wells drilled beneath the seabed. It passes through membranes with tiny, tiny pores – one-hundredth the size of a virus. Salt and impurities are stripped away. What emerges is mayim chayim, living water, pure enough to drink.
Who designed the laws of physics that make reverse osmosis possible? Who created the molecular structures that allow certain membranes to pass water while blocking salt? Who embedded into the very fabric of creation the possibility of transforming the sea into a freshwater reservoir?
The Chovos HaLevavos, in Shaar HaBechinah, urges us to contemplate the wisdom evident in creation and recognize that every natural phenomenon points to Hashem. The desalination membrane, with its pores of precisely 0.0001 microns, testifies to the infinite wisdom of Hashem who established the laws governing all matter and energy. The scientists who discovered these laws did not invent them; they uncovered what Hashem had hidden, waiting to be revealed at the right time.
The Fulfillment Unfolds
Walk through the Negev today and behold what Hashem has wrought. Where once only jackals roamed—the tannim of verse seven—there are now fields. Tomatoes. Peppers. Dates.
The moshavim and kibbutzim of the Arava cultivate crops in the heart of the desert, irrigated by water that has traveled through an infrastructure of Divine orchestration.
“V’hayah sharav l’agam, v’tzima’on l’mabue’ei mayim”—”And the dry place shall become a pool, and the thirsty place shall become springs of water” (Yishayahu 35:7).
Is this not exactly what has occurred? The sharav, the scorching desert heat, has been answered with pools and reservoirs. The tzima’on, the desperate thirst of the land, has been replaced by springs of desalinated water flowing through a network of pipes and channels.
Regions that were absolutely barren in 1959 – read ZERO – now produce some sixty percent of Israel’s fruit and vegetable exports. The aravah—the very word the Navi uses—blossoms kachavatzales. This is a visible, tangible reality, the word of Hashem made manifest before our very eyes.
And now, the waters flow backward. The National Water Carrier, built in the 1960s to bring Kinneret water southward, has been reversed. Desalinated Mediterranean water now flows northward, uphill, to replenish the Kinneret itself. The lake that sustained Jewish communities for millennia – is now being filled by waters from the great sea—waters that have been purified and lifted and channeled through a system that no one in 1948 could have ever imagined.
This is unprecedented yad Hashem. No nation in all of world history has ever done this.
No country has ever piped desalinated seawater into a natural freshwater lake at a national scale. Eretz Yisroel is the very first. And we must ask: Why this land, to which Hashem swore an eternal covenant with Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov? Why this nation, which He chose from among all peoples to be His am segulah?
The answer is written clearly in Yishayahu 35.
The Error of Attribution
The Chofetz Chaim is reported to have warned that in the period before Moshiach, there would be wondrous technological advances, and many would attribute everything to human genius, failing to perceive the guiding hand of Hakadosh Baruch Hu. This, he said, would be a great test of faith.
We live in that time. It is easy—too easy—to read about pumping stations and reverse osmosis membranes and energy recovery devices and conclude that human beings have solved the water crisis through their own cleverness. The secular mind sees engineers; it does not see the Ribbono Shel Olam working through those engineers.
But consider: the same human race exists in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and throughout the Middle East. those nations face catastrophic water shortages while Israel flourishes. Why?
The Torah provides the answer. “Ki Hashem Elokecha meivi’acha el eretz tovah, eretz nachalei mayim, ayanot u’tehomos yotzim babika u’vahar”—”For Hashem your G-d is bringing you to a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that spring out of valleys and hills” (Devarim 8:7). The land was always meant to be a land of water—but only for the people to whom it was promised, and only when Hashem willed it.
But there is a caveat. When we survey Israel’s water abundance, we must not say “Kochi v’otzem yadi”—my power and the might of my hand—achieved this. We must remember Hashem, who gave the engineers their wisdom, who arranged the circumstances for their success, who prepared the land and the sea and the technology and the moment for His purposes.
The Lesson for Our Generation
Yishayahu 35 concludes with a vision of the redeemed returning to Zion: “U’fe’duyei Hashem yeshuvun, u’va’u Tziyon b’rinah, v’simchas olam al rosham; sason v’simcha yasigu, v’nasu yagon va’anachah”—”And the ransomed of Hashem shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away” (35:10).
We have witnessed ikvasa d’meshicha. Millions of Jews have come home to Zion from the four corners of the earth. We have seen the desert bloom. We have now seen waters break forth in the wilderness and streams flow in the aravah. We have seen the “dry place become a pool and the thirsty place become springs of water.”
What remains? To recognize the Author of these wonders. To see through the veil of natural causation to the Divine hand that guides all things. To strengthen weak hands and make firm tottering knees, to tell those of hasty heart: “Be strong, do not fear; behold your God!”
The Ohr HaChaim HaKadosh (Shmos 6:2-3) writes that in the days approaching the final redemption, Hashem will multiply signs and wonders, but they will be disguised within the natural order so that only those with eyes of faith will perceive them.
The faithless will see irrigation technology; the faithful will see ki nivke’u bamidbar mayim. The skeptic will see desalination chemistry; the believer will see v’hayah sharav l’agam.
We are living in prophetic times. The words spoken by Yeshayahu HaNavi twenty-seven centuries ago are coming to pass before our eyes. The question is not whether the prophecy is being fulfilled—any honest observer can see that it is. The question is whether we will see only human achievement, or whether we will behold kevod Hashem, hadar Elokeinu—the glory of the Lord, the beauty of our God.
May Hashem open our eyes to perceive His wonders, and may we merit to see the coming of Moshiach, speedily in our days. Amain!
The author can be reached at yairhoffman2@gmail.com
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