The tribe of Asher received its inheritance in a strip of land along the northern coast of the Land of Israel, and the blessing that Moses gave them proved spectacularly true: "Let him dip his foot in oil" (Deuteronomy 33:24). The territory of Asher produced olive oil in quantities that staggered the imagination.
The olive groves of Asher were so abundant that oil flowed through the region the way water flows through other provinces. The inhabitants did not merely cook with oil or light their lamps with it — they bathed in it. They washed their bodies in pure olive oil as casually as other people washed in water. Oil was so plentiful, so cheap, so everywhere that using it for bathing was as unremarkable as splashing in a stream.
Word of this extraordinary abundance spread far beyond the borders of Israel. A Roman official named Polematos traveled to the territory of Asher to see the fabled olive groves for himself. What he found exceeded even the rumors. He purchased olive oil from a single household — one family among thousands — and the quantity was so vast that the transaction was worth no less than eighteen thousand zuzim. One family. One purchase. A fortune in oil.
The Rabbis told this story to illustrate how literally the blessings of the Torah were fulfilled. When God promised abundance to the tribes of Israel, He did not speak in metaphors. Asher was drowning in oil, and the nations of the world came to buy it by the shipload.