“As in the days when you came out of Egypt, I will show them my wonders.”

Micah 7:15

River turns blood-red in Iran just in time for Passover

April 18, 2024

By ADAM ELIYAHU BERKOWITZ

Reprinted from Israel 365 News

While Iran is suffering from an extended drought, its prayers for rain were answered in the most Biblical manner as a video appeared on social media showing torrential rainfall flowing bright red.

Iran’s Meteorological Organization is not known for its prophetic inclinations. However, last month, it issued a “red warning” for flooding in five western provinces as a new wave of heavy rains approaches just ahead of Nowruz, the Persian New Year. Iran is suffering a drought, and overall rainfall for the year is 28 percent below the long-term average.

Rain did indeed fall in copious amounts, but videos on social media showed torrents of water flowing blood red on the island of Hormuz. While the phenomenon is not unknown, the event’s timing caused many to comment.

Link to the video for anyone unable to open it by clicking on the image.

Just a few days ago, Iran launched a massive attack, targeting Israel with over 350 drones, ICBMs, and cruise missiles. Miraculously, the attack was largely ineffective.

And Jews worldwide will be reading about a blood-red river next Monday night at the Passover Seder. This was described in the book of Exodus:

Moshe and Aharon did just as Hashem commanded: he lifted up the rod and struck the water in the Nile in the sight of Pharaoh and his courtiers, and all the water in the Nile was turned into blood Exodus 7:20

The image of a blood-red river has strong connotations for the Biblically-minded but is also significant to Muslims. In Islam, there are five plagues, i.e. floods, locusts, lice, toads, and turning of drinking water into blood, while in the Bible there are ten plagues i.e. water into blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, diseased livestock boils, storms of fire, locusts, darkness and death of the firstborn. According to the Koran, the plagues were brought by Moses (Musa), one of the five most prominent prophets in Islam.

According to Jewish tradition and based on a verse in Micah, the ten plagues will reappear before the Messiah.

I will show him wondrous deeds As in the days when You sallied forth from the land of Egypt. Micah 7:15

Jewish sources predict that all of the plagues will reappear in the final Redemption but in even more powerful forms. It is written in Midrash Tanchuma, homiletic teachings collected around the fifth century, that “just as God struck the Egyptians with 10 plagues, so too He will strike the enemies of the Jewish people at the time of the Redemption.”

Nahmanides, a prominent 12th-century Torah scholar from Spain, wrote in his commentary on the plagues that the primary reason God punished the Egyptians was not for enslaving the Israelite people, but for dismissing God and his influence in their lives.

This concept was explained by Rabbi Bahya ben Asher, a 13th-century Spanish commentator, who wrote, “In Egypt, God used only part of His strength. When the final redemption comes, God will show much, much more of His power.”