Wadi

Biblical Text

A wadi is a valley watercourse that carries water only during the rainy winter months and lies dry during the dry season. The word is Arabic and does not itself appear in Korean Bibles. Bible dictionaries and commentaries, however, use it to describe the landform denoted by the Hebrew word nahal. The New Korean Revised Version renders nahal as "brook," "valley," "river," or similar terms, depending on the context.

Representative passages that refer to wadis include the following:

• 1 Kings 17:3-7: Elijah hid by the brook Cherith, but the brook dried up because no rain fell.
• Numbers 13:23-24: The spies cut down a cluster of grapes in the valley of Eshcol (see Twelve Spies).
• Judges 5:21: According to the Song of Deborah, the river Kishon swept away Sisera's army.
• Judges 16:4: Samson loved Delilah, who lived in the valley of Sorek.
• 2 Samuel 15:23 and John 18:1: David and Jesus each crossed the brook Kidron.

Geographical and Climatic Background

Palestine, the Negev to its south, and the region east of the Jordan receive almost no rain in summer. When the winter rains come, water rises suddenly in the dry valleys, forming torrents that soon subside. Wadis were therefore both precious sources of water and channels for dangerous floods, and when dry they also served as roads. Large wadis sometimes formed territorial boundaries: the Arnon is named as the border of Moab (Numbers 21:13), and the river of Egypt as the southern border of the Promised Land (Numbers 34:5). In John 18:1, the Greek word used for the brook Kidron, cheimarros, means "winter-flowing water."

Significance Throughout Scripture

A brook that dries up serves as an image of unreliability. In Job 6:15-17, Job compares his friends to streams that vanish in the heat. In contrast, Amos 5:24 calls for justice to flow like a stream that never runs dry. Conversely, the filling of a dry streambed becomes a picture of restoration. Psalm 126:4 likens the return of the captives to "the streams in the south," and Isaiah 35:6 and Joel 3:18 portray the day of restoration as water flowing through a parched land. In the New Testament, many commentators interpret the "floods" in the parable of the House Built on the Rock (Matthew 7:24-27) as the torrents of a wadi.

Interpretation and Points of Discussion

• The text describes the location of the brook Cherith only as "before Jordan" (1 Kings 17:3). Scholars therefore differ on whether it lay east or west of the Jordan.
• The text attributes the drying of the brook solely to drought. Reading it as God's signal directing Elijah to the Widow of Zarephath is not a direct statement of the text but a homiletical application.

In the Korean Church

The account of Elijah at the dried-up brook Cherith is a frequent sermon text. On pilgrimages to the Holy Land in Israel, guides sometimes explain biblical passages while participants view wadi terrain firsthand.