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And
he cried out to God and God instructed him (vayorehu) regarding a
certain tree which he cast into the water, and the water became drinkable.
There He gave him law and justice and there He tested them. Exodus
15:25 |
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Midrashim teach that curing
the waters of Marah by casting a tree into them was a miracle within a miracle.
Midrash Sechel Tov phrases it
thus:
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel says: “Come and see how different God’s ways
are from those of flesh and blood. Flesh and blood use sweet things to cure
bitter ones, while the Holy One, blessed be He, marvelously performed a miracle
within a miracle and used something bitter to sweeten the waters.”
Mechilta presents the opinion
of Rabbi Elazar haModa’i that it was olive wood which Moses cast into the water,
“since there is nothing more bitter than olives.”
Sechel Tov notes the parallel
of the prophet Elisha’s curing of the waters of Jericho by throwing salt into
them. [II Kings 2:19-23]
Those who do not believe in miracles
have suggested “scientific” explanations for curing the waters of Jericho
(until today, the spring is named for Elisha).
One suggestion is that the spring
had become the breeding grounds for the malaria-spreading anopheles mosquito.
When the salinity of water reaches 3.5%, the anopheles larvae cannot develop;
therefore pouring salt into the water ended the outbreak of malaria. However,
this suggestion is irrelevant to the Biblical account of the waters of Jericho,
for three reasons:
1] The Bible clearly
presents the complaint of the residents of Jericho as undrinkable water, not as
malaria (or any other disease) [v.19];
2] Salinity
of 3.5% is approximately thirty times the limit considered acceptable for
drinking water.
3] Elisha
specifically instructed that the contents of a single bowl of salt be thrown
into the water [verses 20-21]. Clearly, such a small quantity of salt could not
have raised the water's salinity to 3.5%. (The current salinity of the water of
Elisha's Spring is 30 parts per million, thus, according to the above
suggestion the salinity would have to be increased by more than a factor of
one-thousand!)
A
second suggestion is that the waters of Elisha’s Spring were infested with a
micro-organism, which the prophet knew would be killed by pouring salt into the
water.
Assuming, for the sake of argument,
that this latter suggestion is in fact the scientific explanation of the events
at Jericho’s spring, it does not in any way diminish the miraculous nature of
those events. That almost three millennia ago a prophet in Biblical Samaria had
knowledge of microbiology is no less miraculous than taking the Biblical description
at face value.
It is instructive to note the
comment of Naḥmanides (13th century), who was a physician:
It appears that the simple explanation (pshat) is that the wood
had the natural ability to cure the waters of Marah, of which quality God instructed
Moses.
Quite clearly, Naḥmanides did not
see accepting a “natural” explanation of a miraculous event as in any way
diminishing belief in God’s power or providence. On the contrary, our Sages
teach that God prefers to work through nature, rather than forcing nature to
change to accommodate His will.
The late Lubavitcher Rebbe takes the
point a step further and comments:
An open miracle is somewhat of a
disappointment for God. Once all is said and done, He got His way only by
ignoring the norms of our lower world, by breaking His own rules. If He
can perform miracles only by bullying Nature, He may as well concede that our
world is a place the Infinite Light does not belong.
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