The rabbis of the Talmud were connoisseurs of soil. They compared regions by fertility the way others compare wines. The best land in the world, they said, is Egypt, for it is written in Genesis, "like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt" (Genesis 13:10). And the best part of Egypt is Zoan, the royal city where pharaohs kept their palaces. Isaiah calls it the seat of the princes (Isaiah 30:4).
Yet the rabbis turned the comparison upside down. In all the land of Israel, they said, there is no worse soil than Hevron, Hebron, for Hebron is a burial ground. Graves do not usually make a place prosper. And still Hebron is seven times more fertile than Zoan. How do we know? Scripture says, "Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt" (Numbers 13:22). The Hebrew verb for "built," they noted, can also mean "to produce." So read the verse again: Hebron produces sevenfold compared to Zoan.
That is Hebron, the worst of Israel. What about the good soil of Israel? There the increase is five hundred times. And in a year of special blessing, it can climb further. Isaac sowed in the land during famine, "and received in the same year an hundredfold, and the Lord blessed him" (Genesis 26:12). The Talmud preserves this reading in tractate Ketubot (112a).
The argument stretches the plain sense of the verses, but the point underneath is serious. The rabbis refused to let Egypt remain the measuring stick. However lush the Nile, the land where the patriarchs walked and prayed and were buried out-yields it. Holiness makes earth more productive than any river.