When former leaders and longtime companions spread an “evil report” about their own country on the world stage, they touch on a profound biblical prohibition: the poison of evil speech, which strikes like an arrow and continues to burn like hidden embers.
Whoever slanders the Land of Israel from within hands ammunition to its enemies. The answer to this bitterness is not found in political debates, but in the silence of the desert, in the shade of those trees that are never merely scenery in the Bible.
From Abraham’s terebinths to Elijah’s broom tree, biblical botany teaches us that true leadership does not consist of judging the weaknesses of the people, but of enduring the heat and blessing one’s own inheritance.
Elijah flees into the desert because the people of Israel have driven him almost to despair. In his eyes, they have all become idol worshippers. He sees himself as the only righteous one who still matters at all.
But then he sleeps under the rotem (רֹתֶם), a broom tree. An angel comes to him and provides...
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