MIRACLES OF KNOWLEDGE (II KINGS 2:21-22; EXODUS 17:5-7; NUMBERS 20)

 The whole subject of miracles is a complicated one. From a layman's point of view, biblical miracles are often defined as God's overturning or at least temporarily suspending the physical laws of the universe. This gives rise among skeptics to the contradictory idea of God overturning the very laws He set in place, and so they deny the reality of any miraculous occurrences in the Bible or go to great lengths to explain them away as purely natural events that were simply misunderstood by the ignorant people of the time. This is much too large a subject to cover in one short post, but I would like to highlight a few instances where there may be a small glimmer of truth in the above reasoning. 

First of all, you must know that that I was a practicing scientific researcher for decades and that I am a devout Bible-believing Christian as well. With that in mind, I would like to examine one particular category of miracles which could be called Miraculous Knowledge. The miracles in this particular group do not necessarily need to be understood as violations of natural laws, as those are popularly understood. Instead, in each case, God revealed knowledge to a human being that wouldn't have been known to him otherwise. Interestingly, all of them involve water in one way or another.

Waters of Marah sweetened (Exodus 15:22-25)

"They went three days into the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter...And the people complained against Moses, saying, 'What shall we drink?' He cried out to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet."

According to Arabs living in the area, a variety of local brier can absorb the salt in brackish water.

Palestinian sources say that oleander can do the same thing. Another source says that Arabs use the barberry bush to cover up the unpleasant taste of bitter water. My own suggestion is that the wood or tree may have been a stump charred by lightning. Activated charcoal is used today in water purification to absorb toxic organic impurities.

A similar suggestion was made back in 1950 in a book on ion-exchange resins and quoted in a 1995 Industrial Engineering Chemical Research article. If the branch was rotted, the cellulose of the tree would be a highly effective ion-exchange medium to remove multivalent cations from the water. Alternatively it is possible that the tree contained fungus, which we now know can do the same thing.

In any case, the miraculous element here is God revealing that a particular piece of wood would work.

By the way, this miracle should remind the reader of the two other water miracles performed by Moses involving a wooden staff: the first plague and the parting of the Re(e)d Sea. Both of those are less likely to have been miracles of knowledge.

Waters healed with salt (II Kings 2:21-22)

The men of the city (Jericho) said to Elisha, “The city's location is a good one, as my lord can see, but the water is bad and the land miscarries.” He said, “Bring me a new flask, and put salt in it”; and they brought it to him. Then he went out to the water source and threw the salt into it, and said, “Thus says YHWH, 'I have healed these waters, Death and miscarriage shall issue from there no longer.'” So the water has remained healed until this day, in accordance with Elisha's word which he spoke.

Those who don't take this account seriously as a literal event usually fall back on explanations such as:

a. salt is a symbol of purification, 

b. it represents God's holiness, 

c. the story symbolizes God lifting the earlier curse on the city of Jericho, or 

d. it is an example of the superstitious belief that “like attracts like” so that the salt in the flask would attract any salt in the water and magically remove it from the water. 

But a possible scientific explanation is that the contamination was due to schistosomiasis, a blood fluke parasite living in a particular species of water snail. It causes high infant mortality. The snails can't tolerate salty or brackish water, and so one dose of salt killed them off.

Water from the rock at Rephidim (Exodus 17:5-7) 

The Hebrew word for rock can indicate a cliff or mountainside. Near Rephidim there is actually a large cliff with a spring cutting through it today. There have been a number of stories in relatively recent times of people in the Sinai who are acquainted with its geology uncovering streams by digging around rocks or breaking through the crust in the face of a cliff. The miracle is in the fact that in each case God showed Moses exactly where the water would be located. One difference between these two accounts is perhaps instructive. On the Exodus occasion, God instructs Moses to strike the rock, but later (Numbers 20) He says that he is to merely command the rock to give water. In that manner, God is insuring that the event can in no way be attributed to natural causes. But rather than let that miraculous demonstration take place, Moses again strikes the rock and gives the impression that he and Aaron have caused it to happen.

 In all the above cases, it can be argued that the true miracle (and it is miraculous) is that God supernaturally revealed to human beings truths that they had little or no way of knowing on their own. And even in these cases, I would say that the laws of nature were "overturned." I say this because according to a strictly naturalistic view of the universe, even our own thoughts and actions are merely outgrowths of our genetic make-up and environmental influences.