{"id":50292,"date":"2019-02-26T16:55:54","date_gmt":"2019-02-26T14:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=50292"},"modified":"2022-09-21T12:26:01","modified_gmt":"2022-09-21T09:26:01","slug":"the-land-that-makes-you-look-to-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-land-that-makes-you-look-to-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"The Land That Makes You Look To Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry-content\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[370,430,437,354],"acf":{"old_id":"50292","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":33923,"related_cahpter":"164","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"A spiritual, political, military and moral geography","content":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There is an intriguing footnote, within the Bible itself, as to why this land is different. In a masterstroke of delayed information, Moses tells the Israelites as they are almost within sight of the land that there is a qualification to the description he has given previously, that it is &#8216;a land flowing with milk and honey.&#8217; It is a good land, but with one caveat:<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. The land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of 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 from the beginning of the year to its end (Deut. 11: 10-12).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Israel is not the Nile delta or the Tigris-Euphrates valley. It is a land dependent on rain, and rain in that part of the world is not predictable. We knew this already: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob all have to leave the land temporarily because of drought and famine. We have merely lost sight of this during the narrative from Exodus to Deuteronomy in which our focus has been on Egypt and the desert. But the passage intimates a correlation between geography and spirituality. Israel is a place where people look up to heaven in search of rain, not down to earth and its natural water supply. It is a place where you have to pray, not one in which nature and its seasons are predictable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That is part of a larger narrative. Because the terrain of Israel is such that it cannot become the base of an empire, it will constantly be at threat from larger and stronger neighbouring powers. Israel will always find itself outnumbered. It will need to rely on exceptional courage from its soldiers, and unexpected tactics of war. That will take high national morale, which in turn will require from the people a sense of belonging to a just and inclusive society.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Commitment will be needed from every individual. They will need to feel that their cause is justified and that they are fighting for something worth preserving. So the entire configuration of the Torah&#8217;s social ethics, whose guardians were the prophets, is already implicit in the kind of geo-political entity Israel is and will be. It would always be a small and highly vulnerable country, set in a strategic location at the junction of three continents, Europe, Africa and Asia.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><\/p>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n<p><em>Future Tense, p.139<\/em><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":75644,"id":75644,"title":"ez45-israel grid","filename":"ez45-israel-grid.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/ez45-israel-grid.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/a-new-equitable-land-distribution\/ez45-israel-grid\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ez45-israel-grid","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":75643,"date":"2020-06-07 10:47:42","modified":"2022-09-21 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Land That Makes You Look To Heaven","main_caption_size":"1","sub_caption":"A spiritual, political, military and moral geography","preview_embedded":"","preview_image":{"ID":75644,"id":75644,"title":"ez45-israel grid","filename":"ez45-israel-grid.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/ez45-israel-grid.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/a-new-equitable-land-distribution\/ez45-israel-grid\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"ez45-israel-grid","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":75643,"date":"2020-06-07 10:47:42","modified":"2022-09-21 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