When the Israelites arrived at Eilim after their grueling desert journey, they found an oasis that defied all natural proportion. Twelve springs of water bubbled up from the earth, and seventy palm trees grew around them (Exodus 15:27). By any normal reckoning, this was a modest watering hole, enough to sustain a small grove and little else.
But the Mekhilta DeRabbi Yishmael points out something remarkable about these numbers. Twelve springs were barely enough to keep seventy palm trees alive. That was the natural capacity of the place. Yet when Israel arrived, six hundred thousand people encamped there, a population that dwarfed the tiny oasis by orders of magnitude. And not only did the water suffice for all of them, it was enough for one day, and then twice over, and then three times over.
The rabbis saw this as proof that Eilim was specially favored by God above all other stopping points in the wilderness. The miracle was not that new springs appeared or that rain fell from heaven. The miracle was that the same twelve springs that could barely water seventy trees somehow sustained an entire nation with water to spare. The place itself expanded to meet the need.
This reading transforms a minor geographic note in (Exodus 15:27) into a testament to divine generosity. God does not always send new miracles. Sometimes He makes the small things already present stretch far beyond their natural limits, so that what should serve seventy serves six hundred thousand instead.