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What once was ancient Elim,*
more than a mirage on a
hot desert floor,
was a fleeting promise of
a great light
at the end of a long dark
tunnel,
appearing for one shining
moment
to provide a hope
beyond the grind of this
life
under the unsympathetic
eyes
of the evil Prince of the
Earth:
seventy palms of towering
shady green,
fed by twelve springs of
the purest water,
even flowing with milk and
honey,
reduced to trees ill-growing
and creeping
for want of water, with
no moisture
sufficient to grow them,
none breaking ground or
running over,
leaving only a few moist
places,
not springs, only enough
drops
to make mud.
From the ancient wadi now,
the best we can do is cling
to the biblical memory of
Elim,
a glimpse of heaven to be.
*according
to Josephus, in The Antiquit-
ies of the Jews , written
in the mid-90s
of the first century, the
condition of
the oasis of Elim described
in Exodus of
the Old Testament: there
as a grove of
palm trees, but they were
ill-grown and
creeping trees, by want
of water, for the
country about was all parched,
and no
moisture sufficient to water
them, and
make them hopeful and useful,
now only
only a few moist places
rather than
springs, which not breaking
out of the
ground, nor running over,
could not suf-
ficiently water the trees.
And when they
dug into the sand, they
met with no
water; and if they took
a few drops of
it into their hands, they
found it to be
useless, on account of its
mud. The trees
were too weak to bear fruit,
for want of
being sufficiently cherished
and enliv-
ened by the water.
From the last verses in Exodus
15, Elim,
thought to be in the wadis
of modem Saudi
Arabia, means "El"-God and
"im"-sticks
out. What "stuck out" for
the then nomad-
ic Israelites was God's
promise of a
grand oasis at journey’s
end...if they
obeyed. |
