Blessings from Heaven Above to Earth Below: Celebrating the Internal Karstic Conduits of Mount Hermon

Bright Hermon, with the dayspring on thy brow, and silver streamlets

leaping round thy feet,— Shout forth thy ceaseless praise!

                                                  —Horatius Bonar, 1881, Hymns of Faith and Hope

You would hardly think that observing the hippopotamus in Africa near the southern extent of the Great Rift Valley would somehow be connected to Mount Hermon in Israel at the north end of this great tectonic rift in the earth’s crust. But soon you will see! So, here they were. Wild hippos sporting in a remote  Kenyan river. And I, an avid zoologist, was sitting on a nearby rock, beholding eight of these great amphibious mammals fearlessly testing each other with threatening jaws gaping to 180 degrees. In roiling waters, they dynamically displayed their wondrous strength, power, and massive size—a gripping drama!

Nothing should have distracted my fervent gaze at this boisterous hippo melee. But a rainbow lizard, about thirteen inches long, with a vibrant orange head and neck, sparkling deep blue trunk, and bright sky-blue legs and tail sped toward me to land on a warm rock immediately to my left. It dazzled me with its colorful brilliance and alertness as it selected a spot as its basking place. I shifted my attention to it as I beheld its postural adjustments that placed it in the most favorable relationship to the warm rock and sunlight in ways that would help maintain its preferred body temperature of 32°–35° C (91°–95° F). Beautiful!¹

Thinking myself to be alone with these animals, I was startled by a hand placed on my right shoulder. Turning, I looked toward a uniformed Kenyan ranger. In soft tones he said, “Do you see what is lying on the riverbank between you and the hippos?” Turning my eyes toward the river below, I suddenly realized I had overlooked a thirteen-foot Nile crocodile along the riverbank as I focused on the hippo melee. I knew this fearsome reptile to be one of the most dangerous species of crocodile. There were no barriers between it and me. Said the ranger, “You are lucky! It ate very well yesterday.”

I slowly rose from my place, the lizard scurried off, and I backed off as the great crocodile continued basking in the sunlight. I followed a hippo trail into the surrounding grassland, where at dusk the hippos would soon be grazing. I marveled at its being like a two-rut country road—one trail with two parallel tracks: one for the left feet and one for the right. Massive beasts up to 8,000 pounds. Marvelous creatures. Impressive!

So why was I beholding hippos here? Well, because I was inspired by God’s remarkable speech to Job (Job 40:15–24)—a memorable theophany that begins, “Behold Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox.”

God’s speech gives a detailed description of this creature—anatomically, behaviorally, and ecologically—much as an authoritative scientific field guide. And, impressively, it is a theophany—a speech by God, describing this creature through the eye of its Maker.² It is a compelling invitation to name this creature—much as Adam was invited to give appropriate names to animals brought to him by their Maker (Genesis 2:19).

A few years before, I had visited the National Zoo to discover whether hippos “feeds on grass like an ox” in their Washington, DC enclosure. And yes, at dusk, one lifted its massive head and shoulders over the edge of a four-foot vertical retaining wall and awkwardly grazed on Kentucky bluegrass that grew in the lawn above. But here in Kenya, in its natural habitat, I was checking out this amphibious beast to confirm its fearlessness and sense of security in a roiling river, expressed in Job 40:23: “When the river rages, he is not alarmed; he is secure, though the Jordan should surge against his mouth.”

That’s right. “Almost all commentators identify Behemoth, correctly, as the hippopotamus” says Hebrew biblical scholar Michael Fox. The Hebrew word for Behemoth “was probably chosen to designate the hippopotamus in the absence of a proper term for the creature in Hebrew. It would mean something like ‘super-beast.’”³

I walked that hippo trail, enlarging my mental image of where I was on Earth. I was here in the East African Rift Valley, and more expansively, in the Great Rift Valley that extends from Mozambique, south of me, across East Africa, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Dead Sea and Jordan River Valley to Mount Hermon. It is a mountain cluster whose peak rises 9,200 feet—a gigantic upward fold in the landscape some thirty-five miles long and fifteen miles wide. The snow-capped heights of this highest mount in the region intercept moisture-laden sea winds forced up its western slopes to condense as snow, rain, and dew—bringing one to two meters of precipitation and condensation that had evaporated from the Mediterranean Sea.⁴

Importantly, water vapor in the Mediterranean’s sea winds absorbs atmospheric carbon dioxide, making it mildly acidic Precipitating as snow or rain, and condensing as dew, it enters the mount’s internal architecture through pinnacled limestone (see photo) and other permeable surfaces and flows downward through karstic conduits—to burst out below as springs and rivers.

On flatter landscapes, similar but horizontal layers of carbonate rocks create horizontal caves. But here in upfolded landscapes—called anticlines—this slightly acidic water flows into openings in the eroded top of these up-folded layers. Other openings are formed as fractures and faults, all of which provide for flows internal to the mount that then flow downward—often made larger by dissolution, thus providing increasingly stronger flows internal to the mount. Water from above seeps and flows downward inside Mount Hermon to exit far below through caverns and springs into rivulets, rivers, wetlands, and lakes. From the “silver streamlets ‘round its feet’” Mount Hermon produces the three major tributaries of the Upper Jordan: the Dan River, Hasbani River, and Banias River.

You should know, good reader, that my seeking knowledge, not only of Behemoth, but its riverine habitat was inspired by a quotation of Psalm 111:2. It is famously inscribed above the entrance of the Cavendish Laboratory in England, proclaiming, “The works of the Lord are great, sought out by all them that have pleasure therein” (KJV). As this quote was appropriate for a lab where twenty-nine of its scientists have won the Nobel Prize, it also is for everyone who has pleasure in the works of the Lord.⁵ The eminent London minister, Charles H. Spurgeon knew this well, saying of Psalm 111:2, “Those who love their Maker delight in his handiwork, they perceive that there is more in them than appears upon the surface, and therefore they bend their minds to study and understand them” and “God’s works are worthy of our researches, they yield us instruction and pleasure wonderfully blended, and they grow upon us, appearing to be far greater, after investigation than before.”⁶ Particularly important is Spurgeon’s explanation of the importance of this “bending of minds” in such pursuit of knowledge:

The hidden wisdom of God is the most marvelous part of his works, and hence those who do not look below the surface miss the best part of what he would teach us. Because the works are great they cannot be seen all at once—but must be looked into with care, and this seeking out is of essential service to us by educating our faculties, and strengthening our spiritual eye gradually to bear the light of the divine glory.

It is well for us that all things cannot be seen at a glance, for the search into their mysteries is as useful to us as the knowledge which we thereby attain. The history of the Lord’s dealings with his people is especially a fit subject for the meditation of reverent minds who find therein a sweet solace, and a never failing source of delight.⁷

And so it was that I had sought knowledge of this great beast described so thoroughly to Job by its Maker. My privilege was first, to beheld Behemoth through the eye of its Maker in God’s speech to Job on the magnificence of this creature at home in the Jordan River—given in such

detail that it could be identified as Hippopotamus amphibius, the name given it by Carolus Linnaeus in 1758. Second, it was to behold this great beast personally in its riverine habitat in Kenya. It was there that I contemplated how both of these beholdings would be seen, together and in context, through the eye of their Creator, in their wider setting, not only in the northern and southern reaches of the Great Rift Valley, but in relation to H. amphibius whose biology requires both living in land and in water (amphi-bios). A great rift corridor and its collection of water as wetlands, rivers, and lakes—and its northern connection with evaporating Mediterranean water whisked from west to east, up the slopes of Mount Hermon, to break forth to the Jordan wetlands, rivers, and lakes. These works cannot be seen all at once, some remain hidden, they are studied by all who delight in them. With them send up your song of praise.

1. Behavioral thermoregulation in lizards and other reptiles is one of my research interests. See Calvin B. DeWitt, “Postural Mechanisms in the Behavioral Thermoregulation of a Desert Lizard, Dipsosaurus dorsalis,” Journal de Physiologie (Paris) 63, no. 3 (1971): 242–245 and Calvin B. DeWitt, “Precision of Thermoregulation and Its Relation to Environmental Factors in the Desert Iguana, Dipsosaurus dorsalis,” Physiological Zoology 40, no. 1 (1967): 49–66.
2. See Calvin B. DeWitt, “Behemoth and Batrachians in the Eye of God: Responsibility to Other Kinds inBiblical Perspective, in Christianity & Ecology: Seeking the Well-Being of Earth & Humans, eds. Dieter T. Hessel & Rosemary Radford Ruether (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), 291–316.
3. Michael V. Fox, “Behemoth and Leviathan,” Biblica 93, no. 2 (2012): 261. For evidence that the hippo was present in Israel, see Georg Haas “On the Occurrence of Hippopotamus in the Iron Age of the Coastal Area of Israel (Tell Qasîleh),” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research , Dec., 1953, No. 132 (Dec., 1953), pp. 30-34.
4. Avner Ayalon, Miryam Bar-Matthews, Amos Frumkin, and Alan Matthews, “Last Glacial Warm Events on Mount Hermon: The Southern Extension of the Alpine Karst Range of the East Mediterranean,” Quaternary Science Reviews 59, no. 3 (2013): 43–56.
5. A. B. Pippard, “The Cavendish Laboratory,” European Journal of Physics 8, no. 4 (1987): 235.
6. Charles H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1876), 209.
7. Charles H. Spurgeon, Treasury of David (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1876), 209-10.