Israel spent the past several days caught between two forms of natural disturbance. A heatwave scorched the country over Shabbat, and an earthquake centered in Egypt rattled homes from Beersheba to Jerusalem two days later.
The Earthquake
Early Monday morning, an earthquake struck roughly 40 kilometers north of Suez, Egypt, at a depth of about 10 kilometers. Readings varied by monitoring agency, a common occurrence in the first hours after a quake. Egypt’s National Research Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics initially measured it at 5.2, then revised it upward to 5.5-5.6. Germany’s GFZ measured it at 5.4, the US Geological Survey at 5.0, and an alert sent to Android devices in Israel reported 5.9.
The tremor woke residents across Cairo and reached as far as El-Arish, near the Gaza border. In Israel, people reported feeling it in Beersheba, near Jerusalem, and around the Dead Sea, with emergency alerts triggering on some phones. Tremors were also registered across the border in Jordan. Egypt’s health minister, Khaled Abdel Ghaffar, ordered emergency response plans nationwide to be activated and directed ambulance crews to be at maximum readiness. Three families were evacuated from a building showing signs of collapse in Cairo’s Rod al-Farag neighborhood, and the Egyptian Red Crescent responded to a collapsed balcony near the epicenter in Suez. Egypt’s health ministry reported a single injury nationwide, and the Research Institute said it had no reports of casualties or property damage beyond that.
Strong earthquakes remain rare in Egypt. The country’s deadliest in modern memory struck in October 1992, a 5.8-magnitude quake centered near Cairo that killed more than 500 people and displaced thousands. Israel’s Home Front Command said Monday’s quake originated in the Sinai Peninsula and that there were no indications of further seismic activity to come.
This past April, residents across northern Israel, including the Krayot area, Acre, Nahariya, and communities throughout the Upper and Western Galilee, reported strong tremors shaking furniture and walls for several seconds. That quake registered at magnitude 4.5, centered in southern Lebanon between Tyre and Sidon, close to the Israeli border.
The Heatwave
The earthquake followed close on the heels of a punishing heatwave that settled over the country beginning Shabbat. By Saturday, temperatures peaked at 45.2°C (113.4°F) at Gilgal in the Jordan Valley of Judea and Samaria, with Sodom and Kfar Nahum, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, both reaching 43.6°C (110.5°F). By Sunday morning, temperatures in Sodom had already climbed to 35.5°C (95.9°F) by 9 a.m., with forecasts calling for the low 40s Celsius (105° to 112°F) by afternoon.
The Israel Meteorological Service issued an extreme heat warning covering the Jordan Valley and the entire eastern flank of the country from Eilat to Metula, along with parts of the Galilee and Golan Heights. The rest of the country remained under more moderate warnings, with temperatures generally staying below 35°C. Even at its peak, the heatwave fell several degrees short of Israel’s seasonal records, which have topped 49°C (120°F). Temperatures were expected to ease back toward seasonal norms by Tuesday. The heat arrived as parts of Europe and East Asia recorded their own extreme temperatures this summer, part of a broader pattern scientists attribute to human-driven climate change.
Earthquakes and the Footsteps of the Messiah
Jewish sources treat earthquakes as more than a geological event, and this is a theme worth returning to, given how often the region has felt the ground move this year alone.
The clearest scriptural link between earthquakes and the End of Days comes from Zechariah, describing the day the Messiah’s feet stand on the Mount of Olives itself: And his feet shall stand in that day upon the mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the west, and there shall be a very great valley. (Zechariah 14:4)
Ezekiel places a comparable earthquake at the climax of the Gog and Magog war, the final confrontation the prophets associate with the redemption: For in My jealousy and in the fire of My wrath have I spoken: Surely in that day there shall be a great shaking in the land of Israel. (Ezekiel 38:19) Haggai ties a shaking of the nations directly to the glory of a future Temple: For thus saith the LORD of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; and I will shake all nations. (Haggai 2:6-7)
The Talmud in Berakhot also addresses earthquakes directly, in a passage discussing the blessing recited upon feeling one. The Sages debated what actually causes the ground to shake, and among the explanations offered, Rav Katina taught that an earthquake occurs when God remembers His children suffering in exile among the nations and lets two tears fall into the great sea; the sound of that alone shakes the earth. Other Sages in the same passage offered different causes, but the through-line across nearly all of them ties the earth’s shaking directly to God’s relationship with Israel’s suffering and eventual redemption, not to blind geological chance.
That framing is precisely why earthquakes appear on the traditional lists of ikvot meshicha, the footsteps of the Messiah, the disturbances the Sages taught would mark the era immediately preceding redemption. A single earthquake, on its own, proves nothing. But a year that has already felt a tremor near the Lebanese border in April and a second one reaching from Sinai into the heart of the country in August, layered on top of a heatwave scorching the same land at temperatures pushing toward historic extremes, is the kind of pattern this tradition asks its readers to notice rather than dismiss as routine weather and geology. The ground itself, in this reading, is not separate from the story unfolding above it.
