No nation is so connected to its land and yet so separated from it at the same time, as is, and has been, Israel. Land is very important. Nations fight over land, for without land, nations cannot live; since without a territory the boundaries of nationality cannot exist. But the nation of Israel wasn't born in its Land. Instead, Israel was Animated in its Land. G-d Told Abraham to leave his home and make his way to Israel, for the Land that He Had Showed him was Promised to him and to his descendants for all generations. But Israel was already inhabited when Abraham set up camp. And Jacob never grew into place, for Israel was raised as slaves. Once Israel had grown within the womb of egypt, G-d set out to Redeem it, and thus Delivered His people to the Promised Land.
Exodus 3:8
I Have Come Down to Rescue them from egypt's power. I Will Bring them out of that land, to a good, spacious Land, to a Land flowing with milk and honey...
Deuteronomy 8:7-10
For your G-d is Bringing you to a good Land--a Land with streams of water, of springs and underground water coming forth in valley and mountain. It is a Land of wheat, barley, grapes, figs, and pomegranates; a Land of olives, oil, and honey; a Land where you shall not eat your bread in rations--you will lack nothing there; a Land whose stones are iron and from whose mountains you will mine copper. You will eat and you will be satisfied, and bless Hashem, your G-d, for the good Land that He Has Given you.
"Discovering the Biblical World" H.T. Frank (hammond publ. 1975)
In Biblical times the Upper Galilee was heavily forested... The Southern plateau of Samaria is mountainous and...into the Biblical period, the steep hills and valleys were heavily forested. As trees were felled and land gradually laid open, the area became famous for its crops. The soil of southern Samaria, among the most fertile in the Land, produced beautiful harvests of grains in the valleys, and the denuded, terraced hillsides became renowned for their olives... The fertility of [Judea's] soil, particularly at its highest elevation around the ancient capital, Hebron, is so striking that the Bible speaks of it as "the Land of milk and honey." The reference is not to cows and bees, but to the nectar of grapes and to other crops which flourished in abundance... Twenty miles south of Mt. Carmel the narrow coastal lands of Dor open into the wider Plain of Sharon. In Biblical times...there were thick forests of stout oaks... By the [beginning of the common era] Herod the great had built his wonderful artificial harbor at Caesarea. The area became an economic asset and was famous, as it still is, for its orange groves.
Josephus The Jewish Wars (first century) Book III 3:2 (penguin publ. p. 192)
About the fertility of Israel
For the whole area is excellent for crops or pasturage and rich in trees of every kind, so that by its fertility it invites even those least inclined to work on the land. In fact, every inch of it has been cultivated by the inhabitants and not a parcel goes to waste. It is thickly covered with towns, and thanks to the natural abundance of the soil, the many villages are so densely populated that the smallest of them has more than 15,000 inhabitants.
So fertile was the Land of Israel, so fertile is it this very day, and so fertile will it be forever more; but this wasn't always so. Israel is Blessed in its Land, but Israel has long been cursed in exile and its Land too had been as cursed as were its inhabitants. The condition of the Land is like a mirror of Israel. So connected are the two, that the people are like the spirits while the Land is their flesh. A rotting spirit is manifested within a rotting body. When Israel had banished itself from G-d, it turned as dry and empty as a desert. The people became a desolation, devoid of the Source of their strength and livelihood, and so the Land became a wasteland, no longer bearing its fruit. Just as the people have been hopelessly lost, and no one could redeem them and make them their own, so has the Land of milk and honey dried up, and no nation could make it their own, for the Land has swallowed its hosts.
Leviticus 26:32-33
So devastated Will I leave the Land that your enemies who live there will be astonished... Your Land will remain desolate, and your cities in ruins.
Deuteronomy 29:21-22
Future generations--your own descendants who will arise after you, as well as the foreigners who will come from distant lands--shall see the calamities of this Land and the ills with which G-d has Struck it. Sulfur and salt has burned all its soil. Nothing can be planted and nothing can grow--not even a blade of grass...
Jeremiah 9:10
And I will turn Jerusalem into a heap of ruins, a haunt of jackals. I will make the cities of Judah into a desolation without inhabitant.
Ezekiel 33:28-29
And I shall make the Land a desolate waste, so that its proud strength will cease, and the mountains of Israel shall be desolate; no one will cross them. Then they will know that I Am G-d when I make the Land a desolate waste because of all the abominable things they have done.
Mark Twain in the Land of Israel in 1867 Mark Twain "The Innocents Abroad or the New Pilgrim's Progress"
Volume II, p.216-359 (harper and brothers 1922)
We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given wholly to weeds--a silent, mournful expanse... A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We reached Tabor safely... We never saw a human being on the whole route. We pressed on toward the goal of our crusade, renowned Jerusalem. The further we went the hotter the sun got and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became... There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country. No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem... Jerusalem is mournful, dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heartbroken Land... Israel sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies... Israel is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the Curse of the Deity beautify a land? Israel is no more of this work-day world.
Alfons de Lamartine, "Recollections of the East" Volume I, p. 238 (London 1845)
Outside the walls of Jerusalem, however, we saw no living being, heard no living voice. We encountered that desolation and that deadly silence which we would have expected to find at the ruined gates of Pompeii... A total eternal dread spell envelopes the city, the highways and the villages...the burial grounds of an entire people.
Professor Sir John Willian Dosson
'Modern Science in Bible Lands"
p. 449-450 (London 1888)
Until today no people has succeeded in establishing national dominion in the Land of Israel... No national unity or spirit of nationalism has acquired any hold there. The mixed multitude of itinerant tribes that managed to settle there did so on lease, as temporary residents. It seems that they await the return of the permanent residents of the Land.
Nachmanides in the Land of Israel in 1260
He arrived in Jerusalem and found the city in ruins with only four Jews living there. Here's what he wrote to his son:
What shall I tell you about the Land? There are so many forsaken places, and the desolation is great. It comes down to this: the more sacred the place, the more it has suffered--Jerusalem is most desolate, Judea more so than the Galil. Yet in all its desolation it is an exceedingly good Land.
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