"This water" he told me, "runs out to the eastern region, and flows into
the Arabah; and when it comes into the sea, into the sea of foul waters
[i. e., the Dead Sea], the water will become wholesome. Every living
creature that swarms will be able to live wherever this stream goes; the
fish will be very abundant once these waters have reached there. It will
be wholesome, and everything will live wherever this stream goes.
Fishermen shall stand beside it all the way from En-gedi to En-eglaim;
it shall be a place for drying nets; and the fish will be of various
kinds [and] most plentiful, like the fish of the Great Sea. "
Ezekiel's prophecy (Ezekiel 47: 8-10) for revival and purification of
the Dead Sea waters This new book on "Halophilic Microorganisms and
their Environments" is the fifth volume in the COLE series (Cellular
Origin and Life in Extreme Habitats (see: http: //www. wkap.
nl/prod/s/COLE). In the previous books we covered aspects of enigmatic
microorganisms, microbial diversity, astrobiology, and symbiosis, so
this book on halophilic microbes adds a fitting link to the rest of
series' books. Since ancient times hypersaline habitats have been
considered extreme environments, and some were thought not to sustain
life at all. Yet, every organism requires salt for its existence. Salty
places have been compared to an environment of extinction (e. g., the
Dead Sea).