Netherlands, Sea and Sand

An Analysis of the Biblical Blessing to Zebulon in the Original Hebrew (18 December, 2013, 15 Tevet, 5774)

Contents:
1. Introduction
2. The Dutch Word Dyke Derives from Hebrew
3. Zebulon, the Netherlands and Sand in the Prophecy of Moses
4. Selected Sources Concerning the Netherlands, Sand, and the Sea
The Reclamation of Land in the Netherlands Through Dikes and Polders by Matt Rosenberg
"Van Loon's Geography. The Story of the World", chapter 20, The Netherlands. The Swamp on the Banks of the North Sea that Became an Empire, by Hendrik Willem Van Loon, NY, 1940.
Soil Classification, Netherlands by Alfred E. Hartemink
Agriculture and sustainable development in the Netherlands
Wikipedia. Flood control in the Netherlands
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1. Introduction
We found Zebulon in the Netherlands where they really literally do live on the shores of the sea with at least two thirds of the population dwelling on reclaimed sea-land.
We also found the Sabulingoi (People of Zebulon) in the Netherlands area alongside other groups whose names resemble those of the Sons of Zebulon.
Several other important points helps build a body of conclusive evidence proving that the tribe of Zebulon is to be found amongst the population of the Netherlands.
For a list, with links, of our articles concerning the Netherlands and Zebulon, see:
Netherlands
http://hebrewnations.com/articles/tribes/netherlands.html

The blessings concerning Zebulon are:

Genesis 49:
13 Zebulun shall settle on the shores of the sea;
he shall be a haven for ships,
and his border shall be at Sidon.

Deuteronomy 33:
18 And of Zebulun he said:
Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out;
and Issachar, in your tents.
19 They call peoples to the mountain;
there they offer the right sacrifices;
for they suck the affluence of the seas
and the hidden treasures of the sand.

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2. The Dutch Word Dyke derives from Hebrew
Two words one frequently comes across when reading about the Netherlands are polder and dyke.
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A polder means reclaimed sea land. It is of unknown origin and is defined as:
An area of low-lying land, especially in the Netherlands, that has been reclaimed from a body of water and is protected by dikes.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/polder
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A dyke means some type of barrier against the sea.
dyke
dyke, dike /da k/ n
http://www.wordreference.com/definition/dyke
an embankment constructed to prevent flooding, keep out the sea, etc
a ditch or watercourse
a bank made of earth excavated for and placed alongside a ditch
Scot a wall, esp a dry-stone wall
a barrier or obstruction
a vertical or near-vertical wall-like body of igneous rock intruded into cracks in older rock
Austral NZ informal a lavatory
(as modifier): a dyke roll
vb (transitive) to protect, enclose, or drain (land) with a dyke
Etymology: 13th Century: modification of Old English dic ditch; compare Old Norse d ki ditch
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A similar word, dayik, is found at least six times in the Hebrew Bible, e.g.
2-Kings 25:1
Ezekiel 21:27, 26:8
Jeremiah 52:4

Mattheson Clark quotes S. R. Hirsch as deriving the word "Dayik" from the Hebrew "DOK", meaning crush and as defining a Dayik as a high mound of crushed stones. This in turn would be related to the Hebrew "DaK" meaning thin.
Dayik from the Hebrew is translated as siege works, siege wall, ramp. This is because wherever we find it mentioned the word is used in the context of a siege.
In practice however it would seem to imply no more than an artificial mound, or barrier.
This would also seem to be its primary meaning in English and Dutch.
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3. Zebulon, the Netherlands and Sand in the Prophecy of Moses

Concerning Zebulon and Issachar Moses prophesied:

Deuteronomy 33:
18 And of Zebulun he said:
Rejoice, Zebulun, in your going out;
and Issachar, in your tents.
19 They call peoples to the mountain;
there they offer the right sacrifices;
for they suck the affluence of the seas
and the hidden treasures of the sand.

We have covered the point about dwelling on the shores of the sea (Genesis 39:13) in other articles.
At present we shall consider the sand.

In the article ZEBULUN -- HOLLAND by Bert Otten A STUDY OF TEN PROPHETIC CLUES
http://hebrewnations.com/articles/tribes/netherlands/zebhol.html

we are told:

# The Netherlands has only sandy beaches, from the islands in the north (province of Friesland) to the islands in the south (province of Zealand). The beaches are bordered by sand dunes, sometimes 50m high and at some places 4km wide. Before the great land reclamations started, half of the country was close to the sea. There is an abundance of place names with 'aan Zee' (on-Sea), 'zand' (sand) and 'duinen' (dunes): Katwijk aan Zee, Noordwijk aan Zee, Bergen aan Zee, Egmond aan Zee, Castricum aan Zee, Wijk aan Zee, Bloemendaal aan Zee, Hagen aan Zee, Julianadorp aan Zee, Schoorl aan Zee, #

Bert Otten goes on to tell us (6th Clue: Zebulun, treasures hid in the sand)
"of the flatfish which hides in the sand which has been important to Dutch fishing".

"... many parts of the Netherlands are huge layers of sand and gravel. Especially along the Meuse are many sand deeps and gravel deeps, lakes which have come into existence by dredging the layers of sand and gravel.

Holland is the biggest flower and bulb exporter in the world. Behind the sand dunes there are 'geestgronden'. These 'geestgronden' exist of sand from the dunes, mixed with clay. This mixture is very useful for the growing of bulbs. So even our tulip fields are linked to the abundance of the sea andtreasures hid in the sand, as the North Sea brought both the clay and the sand.

Another fulfilment is to be found in Shell. Wikipedia: Royal Dutch Shell, commonly known as Shell, is an Anglo-Dutch multinational oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the second largest company in the world in terms of revenue. Gas and oil are formed in former seas and can be defined as 'treasures hid in the sand'.

In the 60's a huge field of gas was found in Slochteren (north of the Netherlands, Issachar area). Wikipedia: Slochteren is in the center of the giant Groningen gas field, discovered in 1959, ensuring the position of the Netherlands as a major energy exporting country. The estimated gas reserves in 2009 was 2700 billion m. (95,350 billion cubic foot). Another example of Zebulun and Issachar sucking the treasures hid in the sand, deep in the sandstone of former seas.

Deuteronomy 33:19 concerning Zebulon spoke of #.. the hidden treasures of the sand.#
In Hebrew this is "tsafuni temuni chol" literally the secret hidden [things] of sand.
The root "tsafun" implies secret, hidden, closed away.
The Hebrew word we translated as "hidden" is temuni". This also connotes "closed off".
#.. the hidden treasures of the sand (Hebrew: "tsafuni temuni chol") # may also be rendered as saying "hidden and closed away by the sand".

40% of the soul of the Netherlands is sand.
In simple crude Layman's terms we may consider the Netherlands as largely an expanse of sand. Through this sand flow three large rivers and numerous small ones. They bring valuable silt from further east. Just off the coast sand barriers or dunes developed. These dunes were an impediment to the free flow of water so that in times of flood a backflow and subsequent additional flooding would result. On the dunes and on the plains when they were not flooded people would settle. They learnt to erect dykes, build canals and drainage works and to use windmills to pump out water and to cooperate with each other and undertake bigger and bigger interlinked pojects etc. The dykes today are barriers of sand covered with clay and stabilized by selected vegetation cover.

The Dutch have created expanses of land reclaimed from the sea in which most of their people dwell.
They literally do live on the shores of the sea.
They benefit from the sand that they have closed off from the sea. They also use the sand to barricade and protect themselves from the sea.
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4. Selected Sources Concerning the Netherlands, Sand, and the Sea
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Polders and Dikes of the Netherlands
The Reclamation of Land in the Netherlands Through Dikes and Polders
By Matt Rosenberg
http://geography.about.com/od/specificplacesofinterest/a/dykes.htm
Extracts:

In 1986, the Netherlands proclaimed the new 12th province of Flevoland but they didn't carve out the province from already existing land nor did they annex the territory of their neighbors - Germany and Belgium. The Netherlands actually grew.

The Dutch and their ancestors have been working to hold back and reclaim land from the North Sea for over 2000 years. Over 2000 years ago, the Frisians who first settled the Netherlands began to build terpen, the first dikes to hold back the water.

In 1287 the terpen and dikes that held back the North Sea failed, and water flooded the country. A new bay, called Zuiderzee (South Sea) was created over former farmland. For the next few centuries, the Dutch worked to slowly push back the water of the Zuiderzee, building dikes and creating polders (the term used to described any piece of land reclaimed from water). Once dikes are built, canals and pumps are used to drain the land and to keep it dry. From the 1200s, windmills had been used to pump excess water off the fertile soil; today most of the windmills have been replaced with electricity- and diesel-driven pumps.

Then, storms and floods of 1916 provided the impetus for the Dutch to start a major project to reclaim the Zuiderzee. From 1927 to 1932, a 30.5 km (19 mile) long dike called Afsluitdijk (the Closing Dike) was built, turning the Zuiderzee into the IJsselmeer, a freshwater lake. (Much of the Netherlands is essentially a delta for the Rhine and other rivers.)

Further protective dikes and works were built, reclaiming the land of the IJsselmeer. The new land led to the creation of a the new province of Flevoland from what had been sea and water for centuries. The collective North Sea Protective Works is one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Today, approximately 27 percent of the Netherlands is actually below sea level. This area is home to over 60 percent of the country's population of 15.8 million people. The Netherlands, which is approximately the size of the U.S. states Connecticut and Massachusetts combined, has an approximate average elevation of 11 meters (36 feet). The Netherlands ties Lemmefjord, Denmark for claim to the lowest point in Western Europe - Prince Alexander Polder lies at 23 feet (7 meters) below sea level.
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"Van Loon's Geography. The Story of the World" by Hendrik Willem Van Loon, NY, 1940.

Van loon tells us that the Rhine, Meuse, and Scheldt Rivers run into the North Sea in the Netherlands area. Along the coast of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark runs a slender row of sand dunes that are interrupted by the above three rivers as well as streams and rivulets.

# these three rivers...every spring they altered their course and created islands where no islands had ever been before and swept away vast tracts of land ... Upon one memorable occasion in the thirteenth century seventy villages and almost a hundred thousand people disappeared from view in the course of a single night.
.. a mysterious change , either in the temperature of the water or the salt percentage of the Baltic... the fish known as the herring moved from the Baltic into the North Sea... Dutch towns now began to supply southern Europe with that dried fish which then took the place of our canned goods of today. Out of the herring fisheries came the grain trade, and out of the grain trade grew the commerce of the spice islands of India...

...one quarter of the kingdom's territory is really is no land at all... but merely a piece of the bottom of the sea reclaimed from the fishes and seals by endless labor and kept dry by artificial means and perpetual watchfulness. Since the year 1450 thousands of square miles of land have been added to the country by the draining of marshes and by turning lakes into "polders".

Van Loon explains that Polders are constructed by building a dike or wall around the lake then cutting a deep canal outside the wall. windmills on top of the dike pump the water out. Ditches are dug through the polder and excess water is periodically drained away.
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Soil Classification, Netherlands
by Alfred E. Hartemink
https://www.academia.edu/5043424/Soil_Classification_Netherlands

Extract:
The Netherlands is a low-lying country with the lowestpoint at nearly 7 m below mean sea level just north of Rotterdam. The highest point is 321 m above mean sealevel and located in the Southern part of the country. About half of the country is below sea level and would be inundated without dikes and dunes. It is also a wet country, and more than 90% of the soils have groundwater within 140 cm of the soil surface during winter. As a result, most Dutch soils are hydromorphic and require artificial drainage when taken in use. There is no consolidated rock and the parent material is alluvial (marine or fluviatile), or aeolian, glacial, or organic. About one-third of the country consists of embanked forelands from either the North Sea or the rivers Scheldt, Rhine, and Meuse; these polders have Holocene loamy and mostly clayey soils. About 40% of the Dutch soils have Pleistocene sands as parent material and 2% loess. Peat areas comprise about 25% of the Netherlands.
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Agriculture and sustainable development in the Netherlands
http://www.un.org/esa/agenda21/natlinfo/countr/nether/agriculture.pdf
2.1 Agriculture
Yields of the main crops (potatoes, sugar beet, vegetables, cereals and flowers) and from dairy production are among the highest in the world. In monetary terms, the Netherlands ranks second, behind the United States, as net exporter of agricultural products. In 2007 total agricultural exports (mainly dairy products, pig- and poultry meat, vegetables, flowers and ornamental plants) amounted to about E 58 billion per year -or some 17 % of the total Netherlands' export of goods and services. Some 10 % of the GDP is earned by the agro-sector, including processing, trade and services, and the sector employs a similar 10 % the total working population of the Netherlands.
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Flood control in the Netherlands
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_control_in_the_Netherlands
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Extracts:

About 2000 years ago, before the intervention of humans, most of the Netherlands was covered by extensive peat swamps. The coast was formed by a row of coastal dunes and natural embankments which kept the swamps from draining but also from being washed away by the sea. The only areas suitable for habitation were on the higher grounds in the east and south and on the dunes and natural embankments along the coast and the rivers. In several places the sea had broken through these natural defenses and created extensive floodplains in the north. The first permanent inhabitants of this area were probably attracted by the sea deposited clay soil which was much more fertile than the peat and sandy soil further inland. To protect themselves against floods they built their homes on artificial dwelling hills called terpen or wierden ... Between 500 BC and 700 AD there were probably several periods of habitation and abandonment as the sea level periodically rose and fell.

Dike construction in coastal areas

The first dikes were low embankments of only a metre or so in height surrounding fields to protect the crops against occasional flooding. Around the 9th century the sea was on the advance again and many terps had to be raised to keep them safe. Many single terps had by this time grown together as villages. These were now connected by the first dikes.
... By 1250 most dikes had been connected into a continuous sea defense.

... The construction method of dikes has changed over the centuries. Popular in the Middle Ages were 'wierdijken', earth dikes with a protective layer of seaweed.
... Another system used much and for a long time was that of a vertical screen of timbers backed by an earth bank. Technically these vertical constructions were less successful as vibration from crashing waves and washing out of the dike foundations weakened the dike.

Much damage was done to these wood constructions with the arrival of the shipworm... that ate its way through Dutch sea defenses around 1730. The change was made from wood to using stone for reinforcement. This was a great financial setback as there is no natural occurring rock in the Netherlands and it all had to be imported from abroad.

Current dikes are made with a core of sand, covered by a thick layer of clay to provide waterproofing and resistance against erosion. Dikes without a foreland have a layer of crushed rock below the waterline to slow wave action. Up to the high waterline the dike is often covered with carefully laid basalt stones or a layer of tarmac. The remainder is covered by grass and maintained by grazing sheep. Sheep keep the grass dense and compact the soil, in contrast to cattle.

Further drainage could only be accomplished after the development of the polder windmill in the 15th century. The winddriven waterpump has become one of the trademark tourist attraction of the Netherlands. The first drainage mills using a scoop wheel could raise water at most 1.5 meter. By combining mills the pumping height could be increased. Later mills were equipped with an Archimedes' screw which could raise water much higher. The polders, now often below sea level, were kept dry with mills pumping water from the polder ditches and canals to the boezem, a system of canals and lakes connecting the different polders and acting as a storage basin until the water could be let out to river or sea, either by a sluice gate at low tide or using further pumps. This system is still in use today, though drainage mills have been replaced by first steam and later diesel and electric pumping stations.