In Genesis 37:24, we are told that there was “no water in” the pit where Joseph was thrown. This must be taken in light of the whole story of Genesis.
God places Adam in the garden of Eden and instructs him to cultivate and shape the world into glory. The rivers which “divided” and flowed throughout the world marked out the various lands which the human family was to cultivate by the water of life and the Holy Spirit. (There is a great deal underlying this reading of Genesis 1-3, but it is too complex to repeat here.) The process of sprinkling the world with holiness, shaping it into new glorious, and consecrating them to God in thanksgiving is summed up in the process of producing tribute. One waters the world, brings up its grains (these are the plants which had not “sprouted” ears in Genesis 2:5), uses sword and fire (note flaming sword) to divide them and bake them into bread, consecrating that bread to God. In the symbolism of the Bible, this consecration, the tribute offering (which included wine when the land was inherited by Joshua) was the liturgical expression of the tithe, the offering to God of Israel’s increase for the glorification of the temple. This process of moving outwards, developing the world, and moving inwards to rejoice in thanksgiving through tribute from that glorified world depended on the continued reality of the divine presence.
It is God who sustains all things in living existence. Man, as the image of God, is graciously shaped so that he is placed in the midst of the divine dynamism. God gives of Himself outwards in creation as He gathers things to Himself in perfection, and He does so according to the very same perfect activity. Man is created as the image of God so that God realizes His ongoing creative work through the co-operative participation of the human family. Man, brought into conjunction with the will of God, has true freedom in selecting among the many-varied goods which can be realized in any given place and time. With the creation brought to fuller glory by the free co-operation of man as instrument, the creation is brought to perfection as this very same human family brings to the Heavenly Father the Eucharist as a sign of thanksgiving for all those things which have been received and molded by man. This is why the tithe is specifically collected upon the basis of the consecrated Bread and Wine.
The water which springs up at the fountain of Mt. Eden’s peak is the sign and expression of the dwelling of the divine presence with creation. But with the gates of Eden newly locked after the fall, this entire process, the very pattern of existence, has been interrupted. When Noah’s family emerges upon the mountains of Ararat, there is no more Eden where the Presence dwells, locked or not. The creation burst forth to wash the world clean of man, and in the aftermath of the flood, hope seems to be drying out. Abraham is promised a land of milk and honey, yet the land keeps enduring famines. Instead of being full of plenty, Abraham has to go to Egypt and then Philistia to survive. Springs of water appear here and there- when God promises to remember Hagar, when God gives Isaac his wife, and when Isaac digs three wells in Gerar, driven out from two of them.