The people who wrote the Bible came from a specific place-the land of ancient Canaan. There’s nothing like being in Israel to understand the role this land had in forming their worldview. One of the single most important needs in Israel is water. In an agrarian/pastoral (shepherding) society like Israel’s, rain means life, and the lack of it meant drought or famine and perhaps, death. God put His Old Testament people in this special land because it would mean they would have to rely on Him by faith to survive. All this to say that rain was very much viewed as a sign that God was blessing his people because they had upheld their end of the covenant. We see this reflected in the Bible all over the place. One such passage is Deut. 11:11-17:
“It shall come about, if you listen obediently to my commandments which I am commanding you today, to love YHWH your God and to serve Him with all your heart and all your soul, that He will give the rain for your land in its season, the early and late rain, that you may gather in your grain and your new wine and your oil….”
This passage divides the rainy season in half-there are the early rains in the autumn during which crops would be planted and the late rains in the spring which are crucial for the crops to grow before harvest. It never rains during the summer months, so garbage, sewage, grime, etc. gather in the streets and valleys of the land until the early rains come to wash them away. As part of your Bible study, it will be helpful to begin to notice the images in the Bible that point back to geography of Israel, including its weather patterns and the way they view water. Look for the water imagery-it’s everywhere! Last week, I had the privilege of seeing the first clouds of the rainy season move over Jerusalem, and the next day, I saw my first rain in Southern Israel. The videos below capture both of these events.
Of course, the passage above also emphasizes that Israel is to honor its half of the Mosaic Covenant by obeying YHWH their God. If not, He reserved the right to take certain measures to discipline them:
“Beware that your hearts are not deceived and that you do not turn away and serve other gods and worship them. Or the anger of YHWH will be kindled against you, and He will shut up the heavens so that there will be no rain and the ground will not yield its fruit; and you will perish quickly from the good land which YHWH is giving you (vss. 16-17).”
Like a good father, God does not punish His people, but when we sin against Him, He will discipline us until we move back toward Him. For Israel, their discipline involved taking away the very thing they needed to survive-their water. God may take away something equally as important to you or to me. The discipline of God is echoed later in texts like Prov. 3:11-12 and is picked up later by the New Testament authors (Heb. 12:4-11; Rev. 3:19). It is no coincidence that, like Israel, the seasons of God’s discipline in our lives are also the driest and least vibrant. Sometimes He needs to bring us to the end of ourselves before we will repent and come back to Him. But remember, He does this for you because He loves you:
“My son, do not reject the discipline of YHWH, or loathe His reproof, for whom YHWH loves He reproves, even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights."
-Proverbs 3:11-12
This video is a shot of some early rain clouds coming westward over the city of Jerusalem.
This video was filmed from the back of a bus and shows the early rain running down the valley’s in the Judean Wilderness. All the water you see here will eventually run down into the Dead Sea.
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