HistoricalChristian.Faith

The two mules of earth: an altar of holy soil and the sanctity of the Land

Type: reception/interpretive argument (off-timeline) · Assessment: sound as the plain reading — Naaman’s request for Israelite earth is an act of sacred-land piety, soil on which to raise an altar and sacrifice to the LORD alone on holy ground, and the Bible’s seminal narrative witness to the holiness of the Land; overstated only in the maximal genealogical form, that the request originated the later Jewish and Christian customs of venerating and transporting Holy-Land soil — those customs are independently rooted, and Naaman is the standing parallel the tradition adduces, not the demonstrable cause. The prior question of whether the soil demotes Naaman from a convert to a henotheist is settled on the conversion-or-henotheism page (the henotheism reading is weak); this page takes the piety reading as given and asks what the earth is for and what it seeded.

The claim

Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules’ burden of earth? for thy servant will henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the LORD.

— 2 Kings 5:17 (KJV).¹ The healed general asks Elisha for a strange souvenir: as much Israelite soil as a pair of mules can carry. The text does not say what he means to do with it, but it does say why he wants it — so that “henceforth” he may sacrifice to no other god “but unto the LORD.” The reading weighed here takes the request at its word: it is an act of sacred-land piety. Naaman, going home to Damascus, wants a piece of the LORD’s own ground to worship the LORD on — and the request stands as the Old Testament’s most vivid narrative expression of the sanctity of the Land, the sensibility later voiced in the Jewish practice of burial in (or with) the earth of Israel and in the Christian veneration and transport of Holy-Land soil.

What the reading is

Two things are bundled in it, and it helps to keep them apart. The first is exegetical: what did Naaman intend the earth for? The oldest and most widespread answer is that he meant to build an altar of it — or to spread it as a floor of holy ground — and sacrifice to the LORD upon it. The instinct is thoroughly biblical: the very first altar law commands “an altar of earth thou shalt make unto me, and shalt sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings… in all places where I record my name” (Exodus 20:24). Naaman, a raw convert, reaches for exactly such an altar, and, unable to worship on Israel’s ground in Aram, carries a portion of that ground with him. The second is reception-historical: the request became a standing figure of the holiness of the Land — read by Ephrem as a faith that shamed Israel, allegorized by Bede as the Christian’s communion in the Lord’s body, and cited down the centuries as the scriptural type of the impulse to carry holy earth abroad. The advocated interpretation, in its strong form, joins the two: Naaman’s two mules of earth is not a lapse into territorial superstition but the seed of sacred-land theology — the fountainhead of a piety that runs through the diaspora grave and the Campo Santo.

The evidence for

The altar reading is the natural one. The commentators who differ on almost everything else about the verse converge here: Naaman wants the soil for worship. The Pulpit Commentary takes him to wish “to worship the God of Israel, so far as possible, on the soil of Israel, Jehovah’s own land,” and so “to build his altar to Jehovah on a foundation of this earth, or construct the altar itself therewith”; Keil and Delitzsch, likewise, that he would “offer sacrifice to Jehovah upon an altar built of this earth.” Whether he meant to raise an altar of it or to strew it as consecrated ground beneath one, the point is the same and it is not superstition but devotion: he will worship the LORD, and he will do it on the LORD’s own earth. The instinct answers precisely to Exodus 20:24 — an altar of earth, in the place where God records His name — and it fits the exclusivity vow in the very same breath: sacrifice to no other god, “but unto the LORD.”²

The earliest reading is already sacred-land piety, not territorial theology. Ephrem the Syrian, the earliest commentator on the verse, will not read the dust as a crutch for a small god at all. Naaman “asked for some dust from the promised land in order to cause the shame of Israel… so that they might be ashamed that a stranger believed that even the dust of their land was filled with God, while the Hebrews did not even believe that God dwells in the prophets.” On Ephrem’s reading the soil is a relic of gratitude and a rebuke to Israel’s unbelief — the earth is holy because it is God’s land, and Naaman’s reverence for it outstrips Israel’s own.³ The Christian tradition kept reading it this way and pressed it further: Bede, gathering the Fathers for the medieval West, allegorizes Naaman’s “portion of the Holy Land” as the baptized Christian’s communion in the body of the Lord — the holy earth becomes a figure of the holiest thing the Church carries.⁴

The sensibility is real and widely paralleled. That the soil of a holy place carries sanctity, and may be carried, is not a private fancy of Naaman’s but a recurring impulse. James Montgomery’s critical commentary collects the ancient analogues to the request: a Persian synagogue reportedly built of earth brought from Jerusalem, and the tradition that Helena imported holy soil from the Holy Land to Rome.⁵ In Judaism the same conviction hardened into a custom that endures: those who die in the diaspora are, where possible, buried in the Land, and where that is impossible a clod of the earth of Israel is laid in the coffin, “so that in some way it is as if they are buried in Israel’s earth.”⁶ In Latin Christianity the same impulse raised a cemetery: the Campo Santo (“holy field”) at Pisa is named for the shipload of sacred earth said to have been brought from Golgotha in Jerusalem, so that the Pisan dead might lie in Holy-Land soil.⁷ Naaman’s two mules of earth is the biblical locus classicus of the whole family — the first man in Scripture to carry the holy ground home.

Adversarial assessment

The altar/holy-ground reading holds. As the plain sense of the verse it is secure: the soil is for worship, on the model of the earthen altar of Exodus 20, and the earliest and best readers (Ephrem, the Fathers, the classic commentators) take it as an act of piety toward the LORD and His land, not as a theory of divine real-estate. The only genuine rival — that the request betrays a territorial, henotheistic theology — is not a rival to this reading but the same datum read against Naaman’s faith, and it is adjudicated (and found weak in its maximal form) on the conversion-or-henotheism page; that a residue of “untaught” theology clings to an otherwise pious request is granted there and need not be re-argued here. One honest limit belongs to the exegesis itself: Scripture does not say whether Naaman built an altar of the earth or strewed it as a floor of holy ground, so the precise mechanism is probable, not certain — but the sacred-soil intent is not in doubt either way.

Where the reading overreaches: origins. What will not stand is the maximal, genealogical form — that Naaman’s request originated the later customs, that the diaspora grave and the Campo Santo are its lineal descendants. The evidence points the other way, to independent roots. The Jewish burial custom is grounded not in 2 Kings 5 but in a Torah exegesis of its own: the Babylonian Talmud teaches that “anyone who is buried in Eretz Yisrael is considered as though he is buried beneath the altar,” drawn by a verbal link (Hebrew adamah) between the earthen altar of “an altar of earth shalt thou make” (Exodus 20) and “his land shall atone for his people” (Deuteronomy 32:43) — a self-standing scriptural warrant that never invokes Naaman.⁸ The Campo Santo, likewise, is a crusader relic-legend with a wholly Christian pedigree — earth from Golgotha (or, in a rival telling, the Akeldama) fetched by an archbishop of Pisa from the Third Crusade — and modern scholarship finds even that legend surfacing only in the later fourteenth century, more than a century after the cemetery’s foundation, with no thread back to the Syrian general at all.⁹ The right description is not descent but parallel: Naaman’s request and these customs are independent expressions of one deep sensibility — that the ground of God’s self-disclosure is holy and may be carried — and the tradition rightly cites him as the vivid biblical type of it. To call him its cause is to promote a prooftext into a pedigree.

Assessment

Sound as the reading of the verse, overstated only where it claims to be a family tree. Naaman’s two mules of earth is an act of sacred-land piety: soil on which to worship the LORD alone, on the pattern of the earthen altar of Exodus 20:24, read from Ephrem onward not as a territorial superstition but as a reverence for God’s land that shamed Israel’s unbelief. As such it is the Old Testament’s seminal narrative witness to the holiness of the Land, and the tradition is right to make it the standing figure of the impulse to carry holy earth home — the diaspora clod of Israel’s soil, Helena’s imported dust, the “holy field” of Pisa, Bede’s allegory of the Christian’s communion. What it is not is the historical origin of those customs: the Jewish practice rests on its own Torah exegesis (Exodus 20 with Deuteronomy 32:43, Ketubot 111a) and the Campo Santo on a late crusader relic-legend, neither of which needs or names Naaman. He is the biblical locus classicus of the sensibility, not its fountainhead — the first to carry the holy ground home, but not the reason the rest did.

« Back to the Naaman timeline

Sources