Sons of Issachar: October 14, 2026

Written By Justin Scaggs

"For thus says the LORD of hosts: Yet once more, in a little while, I will shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land. And I will shake all nations, so that the treasures of all nations shall come in, and I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts." Haggai 2:6-7, ESV

Three weeks since the last issue, so here's the shape of them. Sukkot on the Temple Mount set a record, and the police commander of Jerusalem said out loud that Jews are allowed to pray there now. An Omani first officer took an axe to his captain over Jordan with a hundred and seventy-four people behind him, and the Emirati prosecutors say he meant to fly the plane into the terminal at Ben Gurion. Arabia's airports and Aramco's headquarters were hit from Yemen, the Mecca pact was activated, and Pakistan's forces are in the kingdom. Iran tightened its hand on the strait, Britain named the Revolutionary Guard for a plot at the airfield the American bombers flew from, and the bombers went home. Israel marked three years since the seventh of October with no hostage left in Gaza, and this afternoon its chief of staff said the potential for escalation has grown on every front, thirteen days before an election. And the Noah's Ark drillers, who said on the thirtieth that the wood was a hypothesis they're testing, put out a release the next day saying their radar man finds the ridge isn't geological. The lab results that could say either way are still months off. We'll wait for those.

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1. The Mount after the feast: a record, a police commander's rule, and a gate still shut on the Sabbath

Sukkot ended with a record on the Mount. By the count Arutz Sheva published, eight thousand six hundred and ninety Jewish ascents were made across the feast's intermediate days. The Temple Mount Administration put two thousand five hundred and fifty-nine of them on the last Wednesday alone, when the police held the afternoon gate open longer to fit them in. Beyadenu's own tally was higher, nine thousand one hundred and seventy-two against seven thousand four hundred and seventy-four last year. On the first intermediate day the police removed five men for saying the blessing over the four species and reciting Kaddish. On the Tuesday a twenty-three-year-old was taken to the Kishle station for carrying his palm branch and citron through the gate. Ben-Gvir went up on the Monday and said Israel is the master of the Temple Mount. The head of the Temple Mount yeshiva said, we are seeing redemption with our own eyes. The Emirates condemned the minister's walk two days after hosting the prime minister. Down at the Wall the priests blessed the crowd twice on the Monday, and the Jerusalem Post said more than fifty thousand came. We've been watching the plaza's cameras this season, but they ran only at night for the selichot, so we have no picture of that morning. A blessing is said over everyone at once, so this isn't the cumulative count we questioned at Yom Kippur. Fifty thousand is the very top of what the plaza and the streets around it can hold. Plausible, and we can neither confirm it nor knock it down. Before the feast the commander of Jerusalem's police, Avshalom Peled, told Ynet what the rule actually is now. Today we allow Jews to pray there, he said, on the eastern side under escort, with prayer sheets, prostration, and a little singing. A pilot that let fifteen men carry full prayer books in didn't create any noise, so it stayed. Prayer shawls, tefillin, and Torah scrolls are still barred. We are not at that stage, he said. On the Sabbath he was plain. Opening the Mount on Saturdays is beyond my authority, it would be a precedent, and only the political leadership can decide it. Three justices of the High Court heard the petition to open it on Sabbaths at the end of September. We've found no ruling, and the gate stayed shut on the Sabbath of Simchat Torah.

Why it's on the page. On last year's Day of Atonement fifty Jews were detained or barred for carrying prayer sheets. This fall the police commander describes prayer, prostration, and prayer books as the rule, and names the three things still barred as a stage not yet reached. The word stage is his. Daniel's last week turns on a sacrifice being stopped, which needs a sacrifice started, which needs a hill where Jews may pray and a government willing to let them. The hill has the prayer now. What it doesn't have is the Sabbath, and the one man who says he can't give it points at the politicians, and the politicians face an election in thirteen days. Direction, not fulfillment. But direction with a schedule attached.

Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? The psalm asks it of the hill they're ascending by the thousand, and answers with clean hands and a pure heart, not with a permit from the district commander. That isn't a word against them. It's a word for all of us, because none of us has those hands either, and the one who did went up that hill and was carried down it. Pray for the men who went up eight thousand times this feast, that the gate they want opened would be the one he opened. Pray for Commander Peled, who has to keep a peace nobody has written down. And pray for three justices who have a question on their desk that the Sabbath keeps asking.

"Who shall ascend the hill of the LORD? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully." Psalm 24:3-4, ESV

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2. The Accords tested from inside, and three nations at Jerusalem's door

On the last day of September an Emirati airliner from Dubai to Tel Aviv, with a hundred and seventy-four people aboard and nearly all of them Israelis, fell fourteen thousand feet over Jordan. The Omani first officer had attacked the captain, an Indian named Smit Machchhar, and by the Emirati prosecutors' account he meant to fly the plane into the passenger terminal at Ben Gurion. The weapon was the cockpit's emergency axe. The wounded captain got the door open, passengers and a crew member pinned the man down, and pilots riding in the back landed the plane at Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. The Emirati attorney general's findings came out on the ninth. He was twenty-nine, had flown to Tel Aviv twice before to learn the route, says he acted alone, and had passed every check, including a certificate of good conduct. Reports from his student years in Melbourne say he visited radical mosques, and the Associated Press reported he'd been barred from flying in Oman over extremist views. None of that is official, and the Saudis, who hold him, have announced no charge. Israel's defense minister called it a jihadist attack. Israel's foreign ministry told its ambassadors it was an attack on Israelis, on the Emirates, and on the Abraham Accords.

Then the quarrel. Flydubai fired a large number of employees, asked to come back, and was told no by Israel's transport minister until Israel sees the whole file. The airline has suspended its Israel flights through October. Israel wants its own scanners and Shin Bet agents at Dubai's airport. By Channel 12's account the Emiratis answered, we won't do what you want, you're hurting our honor, and said they won't hand Israel the full investigation. Israeli airlines got a security arrangement and have been flying people home since the fifth. All this came in the weeks after the prime minister flew secretly to Abu Dhabi to talk about Iran with the Emirati president. A Libyan government plane, a Moroccan Hercules, a Qatari military plane, and an Emirati plane from Riyadh were on the tarmac that day. And it came after the Emirati delegation sat still in New York while most of the Arab delegations walked out on his speech. That was the speech where he told the ones still seated that any other moral cowards should leave now, called the charge of genocide the greatest lie of the century, and said that if Israel hadn't struck Iran's nuclear sites, we'd all be dead. Why it's on the page: the Accords took Abraham's name, and Genesis says the families of the earth are sorted by how they treat his seed. In three weeks one Gulf monarchy hosted Israel's prime minister, condemned his minister over the Mount, had one of its cockpits turned against a plane of Israelis, and then refused to show Israel the file. The Accords are being tested from inside, by honor as much as by hatred. Not broken. Tested. And three other nations moved at Jerusalem's door in the same two weeks. Britain's consulate in east Jerusalem, open for nearly two hundred years, stopped being a consulate on the eighth. Israel pulled its sign down, sent twenty diplomats home, and left seven in the building as a mission with a very limited scope, after Britain sanctioned settlements and trained Palestinian police. London says Israel has no legal right to do it and that east Jerusalem is occupied. On the ninth Washington sanctioned the International Criminal Court itself, not just its judges, hours after the Nobel committee gave the peace prize to a former ICC judge. The court's warrants for Israel's prime minister are part of the reason. And this morning Colombia opened its embassy in Jerusalem, the tenth country to put one there, reversing the break its last president made. By evening Egypt had called it a blatant violation and the Arab League had asked Colombia to reverse it. Three nations, three directions, one city.

I will bless those who bless you. The promise was made to a man who died owning one field, and every nation since has been sorted by it whether it knew or not. Pray for Captain Machchhar, who opened a cockpit door with an axe wound in his head. Pray for the man in a Saudi cell, whatever moved him, and for his family in Oman. Pray for a hundred and seventy-four people who will never buckle a seat belt the same way. And pray for the prince in Abu Dhabi, that the God of Abraham, whose people keep landing on his runways, would make himself known to him, and that honor wouldn't break what hatred couldn't.

"I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Genesis 12:3, ESV

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3. Arabia under fire: a week of airports, and the Mecca pact answers

The war the Houthis have fought with Saudi Arabia since the truce collapsed in July came north in stages. On the twenty-fourth of September they fired at Riyadh and at the Aramco terminal at Yanbu, and the coalition shot down six ballistic missiles aimed at Taif and Yanbu while civil defense warned Mecca. Pakistan's defense minister said whatever means Pakistan has are available to the Saudis. This month it came to the kingdom's airports. On the sixth and seventh, missiles and drones killed two women at Abha and a man at Riyadh's King Khalid airport. On the eighth two strikes on King Khalid killed three Saudis, one of them a Saudia captain, and damaged a parked Airbus. On the tenth a ballistic missile hit a crowded terminal and killed at least twelve, among them an American, and wounded three hundred. On the eleventh Terminal 4 burned again and a Pakistani resident died, and Dammam's airport was hit. Overnight on the thirteenth missiles and drones went at Aramco's headquarters in Dhahran. The coalition says it shot down three missiles and two drones, falling fragments wounded four people and damaged fifteen homes, and Aramco told its staff to work from home. Riyadh's airport is shut until the seventeenth. The Houthis have told civilians to stay away from every airport and oil site in the kingdom. It was the deadliest week in Saudi Arabia in more than a decade.

The kingdom's answer came through the pact it signed in Mecca in August. On the fifth Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey activated it, and Pakistan's army spokesman told CNN, the forces of Pakistan are already there, and the rest is classified. The New York Times reported Pakistani jets striking the Houthis. Islamabad called the story fabricated and said its troops won't cross into Yemen. France is putting soldiers and radars at Yanbu, and Britain's tanker aircraft has flown fourteen missions for the Saudi jets. The Saudis are hitting Yemen by the dozens of strikes a day. And the President, asked whether America would join, said, we may, we're going to look at it. Then he said the Houthis are misbehaving very badly and had told Washington they'd rather not fight it, and he sent two more Patriot batteries. Why it's on the page: Isaiah has an oracle for Arabia, and it's about caravans fleeing the drawn sword and the press of battle. Ezekiel has Sheba and Dedan standing apart from the northern army, asking what it has come for. This month the peninsula was pressed from Iran's side, and it answered by binding itself to Pakistan and Turkey rather than to Washington, which is still looking at it. That's a realignment of Ishmael's house, and it happened in a week. Direction, not fulfillment.

To the thirsty bring water. Meet the fugitive with bread. That was the Lord's word to the people of Tema when the sword came through Arabia. Pray for the dead of Riyadh, who came from six countries and had tickets home. Pray for a Saudia captain's family. Pray for the Pakistani soldiers sent to stand under the missiles of men who share their faith. Pray for Yemen, where the fighting that produced this has driven hundreds of thousands from their homes and nobody is counting the dead. And pray for the kingdom that holds Mecca, that the God of Abraham would be found by Ishmael's sons too.

"The oracle concerning Arabia. In the thickets in Arabia you will lodge, O caravans of Dedanites. To the thirsty bring water; meet the fugitive with bread, O inhabitants of the land of Tema. For they have fled from the swords, from the drawn sword, from the bent bow, and from the press of battle." Isaiah 21:13-15, ESV

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4. Iran: the strait tightened, the bombers sent home, and a ram that does as it pleases

The seven-day map Iran laid on the table at the end of September was rejected the next day, answered the week after, and has gone nowhere since. When Israeli television reported in between that the President was weighing sanctions relief, he wrote in capital letters that he had offered them nothing. On the fourth the speaker of Iran's parliament said Washington had sent proposals through a mediator, and that the era of dictating unilateral demands is over. The strait won't open until Iran's seven conditions are met, he said, and Iran would both fight and negotiate. Iran now wants the collapsed June memorandum back and American backing for a shipping arrangement it made with Oman. The Vice President said Iran must make a meaningful cut in enrichment, which is softer than zero. On the eighth the President wrote that the discussions are productive and that America will not be attacking Iran at any time before the midterms on the third. Iran's atomic chief answered that Tehran won't give up enrichment or its stockpile. The same day the Treasury blacklisted seventeen more of Iran's shadow tankers and said it's starving the regime of the money it uses for war. Nobody expects a deal before Israel votes on the twenty-seventh or America on the third. Meanwhile the strait got worse. Twelve ships were attacked in the first week of October, the most in any week of the war, and fifteen more since, two of them yesterday. A container ship sank south of the strait today, by a mine says the Guard, by a projectile says Singapore. Iran's navy announced new units east of the strait to watch traffic. An official told Reuters the new tactics are meant to shape the American midterms. The Guard's security chief said, the strait is under Iran's control, and we manage it. Central Command says it has turned around a hundred and thirty-five ships, destroyed ten of Iran's tankers, and escorted nineteen million barrels out in a single day. Oil is a hundred and six dollars. The Saudis, with their Red Sea pipeline knocked out by drones from Iraq, have been loading crude at Ras Tanura and sending it out through the strait Iran says it controls, a few tankers at a time.

On the second the President sent a second carrier group and two thousand Marines, which will put twenty thousand Americans in the region by the end of the month. He has said the strikes could resume after the midterms, that with Iran, I don't think you could ever have peace, that the decision would come the easy way or the hard way, and on Tuesday in Alaska, wait until you see what we do to Iran, they're waiting. This afternoon Israel's prime minister told Army Radio that a strike on Iran in the coming days is not convenient for us, and that Israel's enemies want to attack in these days and there are indications of it. On the last day of September the coalition that has fought in Iraq since 2014 ended its mission and left, Britain's troops with it, so the ground next door to Iran has fewer Western soldiers on it than at any time in twelve years. In Britain five men were arrested with cans of gasoline outside the airfield the B-1s fly to Iran from. The bombers were flown home on the fourth. On the twelfth Britain's prime minister told the Commons the plot was almost certainly directed by the Revolutionary Guard, sanctioned two Iranians, and summoned the ambassador, and thirty-two governments signed a statement backing him. Tehran called it a clumsy false flag. Seven men are on bail and none is charged. At home the regime hanged five men in one week for the January protests. Amnesty counts thirty-four for that uprising alone. Why it's on the page: Daniel saw a ram charging west, north, and south, and no beast could stand before it, and it did as it pleased and became great. This month Iran pushed west at Arabia's airports, north at an English airfield, and south through Yemen, and the strait it holds got tighter while the men who could stop it campaigned. The ram has its day in the vision. It isn't the last animal in the chapter.

Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other, declaring the end from the beginning. The men in Tehran who said the strait is theirs, and the men in Washington who said wait and see, are both speaking lines in a story whose ending was declared before either capital was built. Pray for the crews of the ships, who have no vote in any of this. Pray for the sailors on their way to the Gulf and the airmen flown home from England. Pray for the families of five hanged men and the scores Amnesty says are next. Pray for Lida Alexani, a grandmother of fifty-eight who was summoned on the ninth to begin thirteen years for deviant proselytising, which means a house church, while her husband Joseph serves sixteen in Evin. Pray for Mahboubeh Shahbani in Vakilabad prison, sentenced to death for carrying wounded protesters on her motorcycle, who asked from a prison phone that someone do something. And pray for the church in Iran, which has outlived shahs and will outlive this.

"I saw the ram charging westward and northward and southward. No beast could stand before him, and there was no one who could rescue from his power. He did as he pleased and became great." Daniel 8:4, ESV

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5. Israel's borders in the third year: no hostage left in Gaza, and a warning thirteen days out

Israel marked three years since the seventh of October with no hostage, living or dead, left in Gaza, the first such anniversary. At the Nova site the families stood together at twenty-nine minutes past six. The prime minister said Israel had turned the tables and that four thousand of the six thousand who crossed that morning are dead. None of them have immunity, he said, and Hamas may try something before the election and would get an overwhelming answer. The Gaza ceasefire turned a year old on the tenth. Its second phase, withdrawal for disarmament, hasn't started. Israel holds about sixty percent of the Strip against the plan's fifty, the committee meant to run Gaza sits in Cairo because Israel hasn't let it in, and about two hundred and thirty aid trucks a day go in against the six hundred promised. Israel's strikes go on at two or three a day, and the Gaza count puts the dead since the ceasefire at about fifteen hundred. On the twenty-ninth of September one of them killed Izz al-Din al-Beik, who had commanded Hamas's northern brigade since November 2023, and another killed the man who ran the money exchange that fed the armed wing. On Wednesday one killed a woman in Rimal whose small daughter was pulled from the fire. The same morning Walla reported that American officials and the Board of Peace are preparing to survey Gaza for sites where Hamas men could hand in weapons, while Israeli officers say Hamas is rebuilding and the Strip is closer to escalation than to an arrangement. Three weeks earlier one of the board's own officials told the Times of Israel that Israel's growing support for moving Palestinians out of Gaza makes the board's job harder and is impractical besides, since no country will take people it believes can't go home. In Lebanon the prime minister sat with the Secretary of State in Washington on the twenty-eighth of September, asked for a clear timeline for Israel's withdrawal and a way to verify it, and went home without a date. That morning the army finished its work in Mansouri near the coast and said it had destroyed more than six hundred Hezbollah sites and eight tunnels there. On the twelfth the European Union voted a three-year mission to train the army. The United Nations force leaves on the last day of December, nobody has agreed what replaces it, and the talks with Israel have stalled with no date set. In Syria the shelling of the Quneitra countryside and the house searches in Daraa went on, and at the end of September a valve blew on the gas line feeding Syria's power plants, sabotage by Damascus's account and a theft gone wrong by a local oil man's. At home the polls have the two blocs tied at fifty-two seats each. This afternoon the chief of staff said the potential for escalation has grown. The army has reinforced every front and put a division into the West Bank, he said, and it's ready to go over to the offensive against anyone who tries. Thirteen days to the vote.

Why it's on the page. Moses says the Most High fixed the borders of the peoples when he divided mankind. Three of Israel's borders are held by Israeli troops on the far side of the line, and the fourth is a strip of Gaza with a yellow line drawn through it. The men responsible for all four are asking the voters to keep them there. Whether the lines move after the twenty-seventh or not, the hand that drew them hasn't.

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases. His mercies are new every morning. The Nova families said that with their bodies at twenty-nine past six, standing where it happened, because a morning came again. Pray for them. Pray for a little girl in Rimal who will remember a fire. Pray for the Lebanese soldiers about to be handed a border with no peacekeeper on it. Pray for the reservists sent back into the West Bank this week. And pray for a nation choosing a government under a warning, that it would choose with clear eyes and that the warning would come to nothing.

"When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God." Deuteronomy 32:8, ESV

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Watch and Pray

Let us pray for the Mount after the feast: for the thousands who went up, for a young man held for a palm branch, and for the guards of the Waqf. For the police commander who says plainly what he allows and what he can't, and for three justices with a Sabbath on their desk. Ask that the gates would lift up their heads for the King of glory, and that those who ascend would meet him.

"Lift up your heads, O gates! And be lifted up, O ancient doors, that the King of glory may come in. Who is this King of glory? The LORD, strong and mighty, the LORD, mighty in battle!" Psalm 24:7-8, ESV

Let us pray for the Accords in their testing: for Captain Smit Machchhar, for the man who attacked him and for his family in Oman, and for the hundred and seventy-four. For two governments arguing over scanners and honor, and for the Emirati president who gathers Israel's enemies and Israel's prime minister under one roof to talk about Iran. Ask that the families of those nations would remember and turn to him, since kingship is his.

"All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations shall worship before you. For kingship belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations." Psalm 22:27-28, ESV

Let us pray for Arabia under fire: for the families of the dead at Riyadh's airport, for the wounded, for Aramco's staff sent home, and for the air defense crews on both coasts. For Pakistani and French soldiers in a land not theirs, and for the people of Yemen on both sides of the line. Ask that the flocks of Kedar and the rams of Nebaioth would one day come up with acceptance on his altar.

"A multitude of camels shall cover you, the young camels of Midian and Ephah; all those from Sheba shall come. They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall bring good news, the praises of the LORD. All the flocks of Kedar shall be gathered to you; the rams of Nebaioth shall minister to you; they shall come up with acceptance on my altar, and I will beautify my beautiful house." Isaiah 60:6-7, ESV

Let us pray for Iran and the strait: for the seamen struck at night, for the negotiators carrying paper nobody will sign, for twenty thousand Americans in the Gulf by month's end, and for the seven on bail in England and whoever sent them. For the families in Mashhad, Shahr-e Kord, and Esfahan who buried sons this month, for Lida Alexani and Joseph Shahbazian, and for the believers in Iran. Ask the one who declares the end from the beginning to accomplish his purpose there and to spare the people under it.

"remember the former things of old; for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose," Isaiah 46:9-10, ESV

Let us pray for Israel's borders in the third year: for the Nova families, for the child in Rimal, for the Lebanese army and the peacekeepers packing up, for the villages of Quneitra, for the reservists in the West Bank, and for a country voting under a warning. And for the church this month. For Pastor Wang Yi of Early Rain, whose congregation says his family has seen him fewer than five times in eight years and can't find out whether he's sick. For Preacher An Yankui, taken from his home in Taiyuan. And for Plateau State, where Fulani gunmen killed twelve Christians in Barkin Ladi at the end of September and six more in Riyom and Bokkos on the first weekend of October. Ask for mercies new every morning for all of them.

"The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness." Lamentations 3:22-23, ESV

Maranatha,

— Sims Corner Church

Justin Scaggs https://simscornerchurch.com
Next

Sons of Issachar: September 23th, 2026