In 2 Kings 5 we find the story of Naaman (NAY-uh-muhn), a Syrian general who was suffering from leprosy. In the Hebrew Bible leprosy is used for various diseases affecting the skin, so there’s no way to know for sure just what his ailment was.

He heard from an Israelite maidservant that there was a prophet in Israel who could cure him, so Naaman got permission from his king to travel to Israel to seek a cure.

In Israel he eventually made his way to the prophet Elisha, who advised him to wash himself seven times in the Jordan River. After some hesitation and finally on being goaded by his own servants, Naaman did as he was told, and to his amazement, he was cured.

He vowed to continue to worship the Israelite god Yahweh once he returned to his own land, so he asked to be given as much earth as two mules could carry to take back with him.

Now why would he want to take back a wagon full of soil?

Because in those days (somewhere between 892 and 832 BCE, as that’s when Elisha did his propheting) Yahweh was still a local Israelite god, and in order for Naaman to continue to worship Yahweh in Damascus, he needed to build a little island of Israelite earth over which Yahweh would have power.

In other words the supreme monotheistic god, creator of the universe, had not been invented yet; Yahweh, like all the other imaginary gods of its time, was still just a local tribal god, in this case the god, and not yet even the only god, of the northern kingdom of Israel and the southern kingdom of Judah. That’s certainly what Elisha thought, as he didn’t stop Naaman from taking the Israelite earth.

It’s right there in the Bible.