I saw a tweet the other day that made me laugh out loud — the kind of deep, satisfying laugh you let out not because something’s funny, but because it’s true. AJ Edelman posted:
“Everyone’s so shocked that Israel planned this [Preemptive strike on Iran’s assets] out for years… Bro, we literally killed time for like 40 years in the desert this one time. We invented the long game.”
Somehow, in the middle of reading about exploding refineries in Tehran and smuggled drone parts hidden in shipping containers, that line helped me process everything. Because really, what we’re seeing unfold right now isn’t just military brilliance or high-tech wizardry — it’s faith. It’s patience. It’s destiny on a delayed fuse.
Israel didn’t just strike Iran out of nowhere. The Mossad had been preparing this moment for years — smuggling hundreds of explosive-laden drones into Iranian territory, training teams in third countries, planting operatives next to missile launchers, neutralizing air defenses before a single IDF jet was even airborne. This wasn’t a flash of strength. It was a slow burn.
If you really want to understand the context of this story though, look no further than Numbers 13 with story of the spies.
In the Portion we read this coming Shabbat, found in the Book of numbers, Moses sends twelve spies into the Land of Canaan. Ten return with fear. Two return with fire. The ten say,
But Caleb silences the people and says:
The Hebrew is emphatic: “Aloh na’aleh v’yarashnu otah, ki yachol nuchal lah.” That double language — surely ascend, surely do it — is not poetry. It’s psychological warfare. Caleb is fighting the narrative of fear. He’s planting something different in the hearts of the people: not denial, but defiant belief.
Fast forward 3,000 years, and that’s the exact mentality you need to be a Mossad agent sent to infiltrate Iran. To smuggle drone parts across borders, to set up near missile sites in Tehran and wait — not for days, but for years — until the order comes. That’s not bravado. That’s Biblical.
The modern-day spies didn’t return with grapes from the Valley of Eshkol. They returned with intelligence dossiers and broken missile parts. But the spirit — the guts — are the same.
Here’s the thing that makes all of this — the war, the retaliation, the miracles — easier to understand, even if not easier to bear: We’ve done this before. And we’ll do it again.
This isn’t new for us. Our ancestors waited 40 years in the desert, not because they loved sand and manna, but because the generation had to be refined. Purified. Readied. The wait wasn’t wasted. It was the foundation of everything that came after.
The war with Iran didn’t begin last week. It didn’t begin when those jets took off. It began the first time an Israeli intelligence officer looked at a map and asked, “What if we plant the weapons inside their walls?” And then waited.
“The plans of the diligent lead surely to advantage, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” (Proverbs 21:5)
We are not hasty. We are not impulsive. We play the long game because God taught us how.
The rabbis teach us that chevlei Mashiach — the birth pains of the Messiah — will be bloody, hard, and terrifying. Wars, confusion, betrayal from within. But the metaphor matters: these are birth pains, not death throes.
What we’re watching is painful, yes. But it is purposeful.
The Mossad’s operation is not just a military victory — it’s a window into how redemption unfolds: in stages, in stealth, through human action partnered with divine timing. The fact that the jets flew with almost no resistance isn’t just strategy. It was divine orchestration.
The ten spies saw giants and froze. The two spies saw giants and walked forward anyway. The Mossad agents who entered Iran didn’t pretend there weren’t giants and weren’t afraid of the Goliaths before them. They just knew that giants fall.
The modern state of Israel was born with that same spirit. Not naivete. Not recklessness. But a deep-rooted belief that the land is good, the fight is worth it, and we are not grasshoppers.
You can’t build a state, survive seven wars, take in millions of immigrants, revive a dead language, and make the desert bloom — unless you’ve already decided: “We can surely do it.”
There will be more missiles. More pain. More funerals. We are not naïve about that. But we also know something deeper: this is not chaos. This is history on schedule. This is what it looks like when prophecy meets geopolitics.
We don’t always get to be part of the story. But this time, we are.
And if you’re looking for the spiritual framework to understand the operation in Iran, look no further than the Book of Numbers. The same land. The same giants. The same choice: Fear or faith.
Because when you’ve wandered the desert for forty years and still held on — you don’t just learn how to wait.
You learn what you’re waiting for.
We’re not in the middle of the forty years anymore.
We’re at the end.
