At the end of his life and ministry, Moses warned the Israelites with a prophecy about what would happen to the land promised them should they rebel against God.
And the generation to come, your sons who rise up after you and the foreigner who comes from a distant land, shall see the plagues of the land and the diseases with which Yahweh has afflicted it, and they will say:
“All its land is brimstone and salt, a burning waste, unsown and nothing sprouting, and no grass grows in it, like the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, which Yahweh overthrew in His anger and in His wrath.”
And all the nations will say, “Why has Yahweh done thus to this land? Why this great burning anger?”
Then men will say, “Because they forsook the covenant of Yahweh, the God of their fathers, which He cut with them when He brought them out of the land of Egypt. And they went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they have not known and whom He had not apportioned to them. Therefore, the anger of Yahweh was kindled against that land, to bring upon it every curse which is written in this book; and Yahweh uprooted them from their land in anger and in fury and in great wrath, and He cast them into another land, as it is this day.” (Deuteronomy 29:22-28 LSB)
A Hopeless, Dreary, Heart-Broken Land…
Nearly 1800 years after the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and scattered the Jewish people in AD 70, famed author and journalist Mark Twain wrote the following about his personal experience visiting in 1867 the land of Israel, renamed Palestine by the Romans. He recorded his observations in his book The Innocents Abroad, published in 1869.
Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly desert fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowed and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective—distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.
[Concerning the Jezreel Valley] There is not a solitary village throughout its whole extent—not for thirty miles in either direction. There are two or three small clusters of Bedouin tents, but not a single permanent habitation. One may ride ten miles, hereabouts, and not see ten human beings.
Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Nazareth is forlorn… Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin… Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour’s presence… Renowned Jerusalem itself, the stateliest name in history, has lost all its ancient grandeur, and has become a pauper village. The note Sea of Galilee… and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala, Bethsaida and Chorazin, and the “desert places” round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour’s voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.
Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?
Surely there is no place we have wandered to that is able to give it such touching expression as this blistering, naked, treeless land.
To this region one of the prophecies is applied: “I will bring the land into desolation; and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it. And I will scatter you among the heathen, and I will draw out a sword after you; and your land shall be desolate and your cities waste.” [Leviticus 26:32-33]
No man can stand [in this deserted area] and say the prophecy has not be fulfilled.
Though hardly a devoted Christian, Mark Twain couldn’t help but marvel at the fulfillment of the prophecy concerning the desolation of the land of Israel due to Israel’s idolatry. In doing so, Twain became the very man from “a generation to come” who would bear witness to the consummation of Moses’ amazing prophecy.
… Has Become Like the Garden of Eden
But, God also promised that Israel’s land would not remain barren and lifeless. Once He began to regather the Jewish people from the four corners of the earth back into their promised land, the soil was fated to become fruitful once more.
Now as for you, son of man, prophesy to the mountains of Israel and say, “O mountains of Israel, hear the word of Yahweh. Thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘Because the enemy has spoken against you, “Aha!” and, “The everlasting heights have become our possession,” therefore prophesy and say, “Thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘For good reason they have made you desolate and bruised you from every side, that you would become a possession of the rest of the nations, and you have been taken up in the speech of their tongue and the rumors of the people.’ “
Therefore prophesy concerning the land of Israel and say to the mountains and to the hills, to the ravines and to the valleys, “Thus says the Lord Yahweh, ‘Behold, I have spoken in My jealousy and in My wrath because you have borne the dishonor of the nations.’ Therefore thus says Lord Yahweh, ‘I have sworn that surely the nations which are around you will themselves bear their dishonor.’ But you, O mountains of Israel, you will put forth your branches and bear your fruit for My people Israel; for they will soon come. For, behold, I am for you, and I will turn to you, and you will be cultivated and sown. I will multiply men on you, all the house of Israel, all of it; and the cities will be inhabited, and the waste places will be rebuilt. I will multiply on you man and beast; and they will multiply and be fruitful; and I will cause you to be inhabited as you were formerly and will treat you better than at the first. Thus you will know that I am Yahweh.
And [everyone who passes by] will say, ‘This desolate land has become like the garden of Eden; and the waste, desolate, and ruined cities are fortified and inhabited.’ Then the nations that remain all around you will know that I, Yahweh, have rebuilt the ruined places and planted that which was desolate; I, Yahweh, have spoken and will do it. (Ezekiel 36:1-3, 6-11, 35-36)
Today, we are that generation that bears witness to the rebirth and rebudding of Israel and her land, and the fulfilment of Ezekiel’s prophecy.
(Note: For more articles about the miracle that is Israel reborn, download the Lamplighter magazine!)
