Mikeitz & Vayeishev: Yoseif’s Theology, Part 1

At age 17, Yoseif (“Joseph” in English) is a spoiled brat. He tattles on his ten older brothers, and he tells them two dreams that predict they will all bow down to him someday. His brothers hate him so much that they want to kill him. As soon as they are all far from home, they grab Yoseif, strip off the fancy tunic their father gave him, and throw him into a pit. Then they sell him as a slave to a caravan bound for Egypt.

Vayeishev: Success

No doubt this is a sobering experience for Yoseif; in Egypt he is far more diplomatic. As last week’s Torah portion, Vayeishev (Genesis 37:1-40:23), continues, we learn that Yoseif is also intelligent, and has what a modern person might call good luck. The Torah puts it another way:

And Y-H-V-H was with Yoseif, and he became a successful man … and everything that he did, God made successful in his hand. (Genesis/Bereishit 39:2-3)

Potifar, the Egyptian official who buys him, notices Yoseif ‘s achievements, and makes Yoseif his steward and personal attendant. What Potifar’s wife notices about the young Hebrew man is his exceptional good looks.

Joseph Flees Potiphar’s Wife, by Julius Schnorr von Carlsfeld, 19th century

And she said: “Lie down with me!” But he refused, and he said to his master’s wife: “Hey, my master … has not withheld anything from me except for you, his wife. Wouldn’t this be a great evil? And I would be doing wrong before Elohim!” /(Genesis 39:7-9) 

Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) = gods, a god, God.

This is the first time in the Torah that Yoseif mentions God. He uses a term that could apply to any god, although he would know the name Y-H-V-H, the personal name of the God of his father, Yaakov (“Joseph”). Perhaps Yoseif does not want to reveal that name to a foreigner. Or perhaps he uses a generic term so that Potifar’s wife will know what he is talking about.

Despite Yoseif’s refusal, Potifar’s wife keeps importuning him, and as soon as they happen to be alone in the house, she grabs him. Yoseif flees, leaving his garment in her hands. Spitefully, she accuses him of attacking her, and he is sent to jail.

In the dungeon, God blesses Yoseif with success again, and the prison overseer puts him in charge of all his tasks.

The overseer of the roundhouse did not need to look after anything at all in his hands, because Y-H-V-H was with him [Yoseif], and whatever he did, Y-H-V-H made successful. (Genesis 39:23)

One morning Yoseif asks two of the prisoners, Pharaoh’s chief cup-bearer and Pharaoh’s chief baker, why they are looking especially glum.

And they said: “A dream we have dreamed, and there is no interpreter for it!” And Yoseif said to them: “Aren’t interpretations from Elohim? Recount it, please, to me.”  (Genesis 40:8) 

All dreams in the Hebrew Bible are considered messages from God. Some dream symbols have obvious interpretations; Yoseif’s brothers had no doubt that his dream of eleven wheat sheaves bowing down to him meant that his eleven brothers would someday bow to him as if he were a king. But more difficult dreams require professional interpreters. Being in jail, Pharaoh’s two officials have no access to professionals.

According to Ramban, Joseph is not claiming either that he is a professional interpreter or that God answers his questions; he is merely saying “If it is obscure to you, tell it to me; perhaps He will be pleased to reveal His secret to me.’”1

Joseph in Prison, by James Tissot, circa 1900

The two prisoners tell Yoseif their dreams, which seem like two variations of the same dream.

At this point, we might expect God to speak to Yoseif and tell him what their dreams mean. After all, hearing God speak runs in his family. God spoke to his father, Yaakov, and to his grandfather Lavan, in their dreams.2 And God spoke in the middle of the day to Yoseif’s other grandfather, Yitzchak (“Isaac”), and to his great-grandparents Avraham and Sarah.3

But God never speaks to Yoseif. Instead, dream interpretations occur to him on the spot. He assigns the two dreams of the prisoners different meanings, saying that in three days Pharaoh will pardon the chief cupbearer, but execute the chief baker. That is exactly what happens.

Mikeitz: Pharaoh

In this week’s Torah portion, Mikeitz (Genesis 41:1-44:17), Pharaoh4 has two dreams. When none of his magicians can interpret the dreams, Pharaoh’s chief cup-bearer speaks up and tells him about the young Hebrew dream interpreter in the prison. At once Pharaoh sends for Yoseif.

And Pharaoh said to Yoseif: “… I have heard about you, saying you [need only] hear a dream to interpret it.” And Yoseif answered Pharaoh, saying: “It is not in me! Elohim will answer, for Pharaoh’s welfare.” (Genesis 41:15-16)

Yoseif is still claiming that only God can interpret a difficult dream. Now he assumes that God will reveal the interpretations of two more dreams to him. He also assumes that the interpretations he gets from God will lead to Pharaoh’s welfare.

Joseph Interprets Pharaoh’s Dreams, by Gustave Dore, 19th century

Pharaoh tells Yoseif the two dreams. Again the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dreams occurs to Yoseif immediately. He announces:

“What the Elohim will do, he has told Pharaoh.” (Genesis 41:25)

Both dreams, Yoseif explains, are warning Pharaoh that there will be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of “very heavy” famine.

“And about the repetition of the dream to Pharaoh two times: [it means] that the matter is established by the Elohim, and the Elohim is hastening to do it.” (Genesis 41:32)

Although God does not control everything—the prophecies that God dictates to prophets in the Hebrew Bible only predict what will happen to people if they do not change their course of action—God does control the weather.

Next Yoseif unselfconsciously gives Pharaoh some advice.

“And now, may Pharaoh be shown a discerning and wise man, and may he set him over the land of Egypt.” (Genesis 41: 33)

Yoseif goes on to explain how this man must appoint overseers to stockpile grain during the seven good years, and guard the stockpiles as a reserve for the seven years of famine. Since he does not mention God when he tells Pharaoh the wisest course of action, we can assume Yoseif figures it out himself.

And Pharaoh said to his servants: “Could we find [another one] like this man, who has the spirit of an elohim in him?” (Genesis 41:38)

Pharaoh is not saying that Yoseif is possessed, but rather that he receives divine inspiration.

And Pharaoh said to Yoseif: “After an elohim has made you know all this, there is no one who is as discerning and wise as you. You yourself will be over my house! … See, I place you over all the land of Egypt!” (Genesis 41:39-41)

And he gives Yoseif his signet ring. Pharaoh remains the monarch, but Yoseif, at age 30, is now the ruler of Egypt.

Eight years later, after the famine has struck “the whole surface of the earth”,9 Yaakov sends his ten older sons from Canaan to Egypt to buy grain.

And Yoseif’s brothers came, and they bowed down to him, nostrils to the earth. (Genesis 42:6)

They do not recognize Yoseif, who is now shaved and dressed like an Egyptian, and converses with them through an interpreter without revealing that he knows Hebrew. But Yoseif recognizes them. He falsely accuses them of being spies, probably so that they will talk about their family. When Yoseif finds out that Yaakov kept his twelfth and youngest son, Binyamin (“Benjamin”), at home, he instantly hatches a plan to get his little brother down to Egypt. Yoseif and Binyamin are the only sons of Yaakov’s favorite wife, Rachel, and Yoseif may be afraid that his older brothers want to get rid of Binyamin, just as they got rid of him 21 years before.

He imprisons all ten of his older brothers for three days, then tells them that he will keep one of them as a hostage until they return with their youngest brother. At that point he hears their private conversation in Hebrew, in which they agree this must be a punishment (presumably from God) for ignoring Yoseif’s pleas from the pit long ago.5  (See my post Mikeitz: A Fair Test, Part 1.)

A year later, Yaakov finally lets Binyamin go to Egypt with his brothers, because the whole extended family is Canaan is starving. When Yoseif sees the grown man who was a child when Yoseif was sold as a slave, he says:

“Is this your littlest brother, of whom you spoke to me?” And he said: “May Elohim be gracious to you, my son!” (Genesis 43:29)

Yoseif himself plans to be gracious to Binyamin. But he also values God’s blessings.

So far, Yoseif is consistently using the generic term elohim to refer to God. He believes that God controls the weather, and also affects the lives of at least some individuals, including himself. He hopes that God will also improve Binyamin’s life. Yoseif recoils from the thought of committing an offense against God. He believes that dreams come from God, and seems to believe that when he interprets dreams correctly, God is inspiring him. Yoseif’s thoughts about God seem simple, and unlikely to upset anyone.

But in next week’s Torah portion, Vayigash, Yoseif goes out on a theological limb.

  1. Ramban (13th century Rabbi Moses ben Nachman), translation in www.sefaria.org.
  2. God speaks in dreams to Yaakov in Genesis 28:12-15 and to Lavan in Genesis 31:24.
  3. God speaks during the day, directly, to Yitzchak in Genesis 26:2-5 (and at night in 26:24), to Sarah in Genesis 18:15, and to Avraham in Genesis 12:1-3, 12:7, 13:14-17, 15:1-9, 17:1-21, 18:20-33, 21:12-13, and 22:16-18 (and in dreams in Genesis 15:12-29 and 22:1-2).
  4. The title “Pharaoh” in English is Paroh (פַּרֺה) in Hebrew. The bible uses it for every pharaoh, without an article.
  5. Genesis 42:21-22.

Vayeishev: Envy

A note on names: This blog has never been consistent about how biblical names are spelled. For years I used the standard English spelling (which borrows from early German biblical translations) for the most familiar characters and place-names, and transliterations of the Hebrew for all other names. In my last two posts, however, I transliterated every proper name (following it with the English version in parentheses the first time).

TThis week I realized that sometimes the English version of a name is close enough, especially if the only difference is a vowel sound, or if one of its letters is pronounced differently in Mizrahi Hebrew than in Ashkenazi Hebrew. However, I am not going back to using the English version of all the familiar names in the Hebrew Bible. When the English version sounds markedly different from the Hebrew—as in “Jacob” instead of “Yaakov”—I am going to use the Hebrew version (with the English version after the first reference, so everyone can keep track). Here goes!

One person has absolute power over a country or company. Another person has more wealth and status than you do, but is not the ruler. Which one do you fear or admire? Which one do you envy?

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeishev (Genesis 37:1-40:23), begins:

Joseph the Shepherd, by Marc Chagall

And Yaakov settled in the land of his father’s sojournings, the land of Canaan. These are the histories of Yaakov: Yoseif, at age 17, was tending the flock with his brothers, and he was a naar with the sons of Bilhah and the sons of Zilpah, his father’s women …  (Genesis 37:1-2a)

(Yaakov (יַעֲקֺב) is “Jacob” in English; his alternate name is Yisraeil (יִשְׂרָאֵל), “Israel” in English.  Yoseif (יוֹסֵף) is “Joseph”, Yaakov’s eleventh son.)

naar (נַעַר) = boy, young unmarried man, male servant, male slave.

We get a clue right at the beginning of the portion: the histories of Yaakov are all about Yoseif.

Job status

In the culture portrayed in the Torah, a man’s firstborn son gets an extra inheritance and extra responsibilities. Wives have more status than concubines, and the first wife has more status than the second. Reuben is the firstborn son of Yaakov and his first wife, Leah, so he should be at the top of the pecking order among the twelve brothers. Yoseif is merely Yaakov’s eleventh son, born to his second wife, Rachel.

Rachel, the woman Yaakov loved the most, died giving birth to Binyamin (“Benjamin”), her second son and Yaakov’s twelfth.1 Now Yaakov dotes on Rachel’s older son, Yoseif.

Yaakov also has two concubines, Bilhah and Zilpah. Once Yoseif is old enough to become a shepherd, like his brothers, he goes out with the four sons of the concubines, rather than with the six sons of Leah. According to Rashbam, “he spent most of his time in the company of those four children who were far closer to him in age.”2

Perhaps Yoseif is called a naar because he is an informal servant to his slightly older brothers. But the midrash3 says that he primps like a boy, even curling his hair and using kohl eyeliner. Other commentators explain that he is a tattletale because he is immature and does not know any better.

… And Yoseif brought dibatam to their father. (Genesis 37:2b)

dibatam (דִּבָּתָם) = slander about them, their slander, their bad reputation.

One way to rise in status is to denigrate your rivals, pushing them down the ladder. It only works if the boss at the top of the ladder believes you, but this is not a problem for Yoseif. Yaakov trusts everything he says, and later dispatches him to a distant pastureland to check on how his brothers are doing and report back.4

On the other hand, Yoseif may not be deliberately pushing his older brothers down the ladder. Maybe he denigrates them when he chats with his father simply because he does not understand them, and he has not yet learned the value of tact and discretion.

Conspicuous consumption

Jacob Blesses Joseph and Gives Him the Coat by Owen Jones, 1865

And Yisraeil loved Yoseif most out of all his sons, because he was a son of his old age, and he made him a ketonet passim. (Genesis 37:3)

ketonet (כְּתֺנֶת) = a long tunic/shirt/loose dress worn by both men and women. It was belted with a sash.5

passim (פַּסִּים) = ?  Translations include “multicolored” (as in the King James “coat of many colors”), “ornamented”, and “long-sleeved”.

The only other appearance of ketonet passim in the Hebrew Bible is in 2 Samuel 13:18-19, which notes that every unmarried daughter of King David wore one. Yoseif is only an assistant shepherd, but Yaakov gives him a royal garment.

He can afford it. Although Yaakov is a nomad, he has more wealth than many Canaanite kings. He returned to Canaan with servants, huge herds of cattle and flocks of goats and sheep, and the Rolls-Royces of the Ancient Near East: camels, so many that he could give his estranged brother 30 female camels with their colts and still have enough left as mounts for his two wives, two concubines, and twelve children.6

Yaakov is as rich as a king, but he has a ketonet passim made only for his favorite child. And Yoseif’s ten older brothers envy him—not just for his clothing, but for their father’s love.

They do not envy their father, who owns everything and issues all the orders. That is the unquestioned role of the oldest male in the family. Sometimes in the Hebrew Bible a younger son usurps the place of the firstborn son, but no one challenges the authority of the patriarch. So like Cain, who reacts to God’s unfair favoritism by attacking his brother Hevel (“Abel”) rather than God, the ten older brothers react to their father’s unfair favoritism by attacking Yoseif rather than their father. (See my post Vayeishev: Favoritism.)

At first their attacks are only verbal. 

And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers. And they hated him, and they could not speak to him peacefully. (Genesis 37:4)

Prophetic dreams

Then their little brother tells them two exciting dreams he has had. In the first dream, his brothers are binding sheaves, and all of their sheaves bow down to his sheaf.

Joseph’s Dream of Sheaves, by Owen Jones, 1865

And his brothers said to him: “Will you actually be king over us? Or will you actually rule over us?” And they hated him even more, because of his dreams and because of his words. (Genesis 37:8)

They do not mind their father ruling over them, but Yoseif is supposed to be their equal, or slightly less.

All dreams in the Hebrew Bible are divine communications about the future, never psychological symbols from one’s own unconscious, so Yoseif’s older brothers probably do not blame him for having a grandiose dream. But since they believe that a dream foretells an event that is likely to come true, they envy and resent him even more.

In Yoseif’s next dream the sun, the moon, and eleven stars are bowing down to him.

And he recounted it to his father and his brothers, and his father rebuked him, and said to him: “What is this dream that you dreamed? Will we actually come, I and your mother and your brothers, to bow down to the ground to you?” (Genesis 37:10)

Yaakov assigns the obvious meaning to the symbolism of the dream, even though Yoseif’s mother, symbolized by the moon, is no longer alive.

Vayekanu, his brothers, of him. And his father kept the matter in mind. (Genesis 37:11)

vayekanu (וַיְקַנְאוּ) = and they were jealous, and they were envious, and they were zealous.

One 18th-century commentary, Or HaChayim, explained: “When the brothers had heard this second dream they backtracked from accusing Joseph of wanting to be a ruler over all of them; they agreed that Joseph could not have aspired to rule over his own father. The very fact that he had such a dream, however, indicated that he had received a message from heaven. They were jealous of Joseph having received that communication.”7

Yaakov knows that his older sons resent Yoseif, but it does not occur to him that they hate their little brother so much that they would consider murdering him. According to Sforno, Yaakov “remembered it because he thought that the dream reflected what would in fact occur. In fact, his father was looking forward to the fulfillment of Joseph’s dream.”8

But Yoseif’s older brothers do not want a callow tattletale who does not even know how to handle sheep to rule over them like a king. At first, the only way they can think of to prevent Yoseif’s dream from coming true is to kill him. So when he travels all the way to Datan to check up on them, they seize him and throw him into an empty cistern. While they are eating lunch, ignoring Yoseif’s cries from the pit, they see a caravan bound for Egypt. Then they change their minds, and decide to get rid of him by selling him to the traders as a slave.

Twenty years later, the ten brothers travel to Egypt to buy grain. They do not recognize that Pharaoh’s viceroy is Yoseif.9 He is not a king, but he has power, and they bow down to him.

The ten older sons of Yaakov are all shepherds, and good at their business. Their father spent his whole life as a shepherd and livestock dealer. Naturally when Yoseif becomes an apprentice shepherd, the ten brothers expect him to be the kind of man they are (even if their father does fawn over him too much).

But Yoseif is different from his brothers. They excel at practical, hands-on work. He is an abstract thinker, good at planning and analysis. Today someone with Yoseif’s style of thinking would get a graduate degree and a high-status office job, becoming a member of what we now call the “elites”.

The brothers would not want his job even if they could get it. They like working outdoors, walking through fields under the open sky. But they resent his status, since he is neither their father nor their king. They are all sons of the same man. So why should Yoseif look down on them, wear a fancy suit, and get a high-status job? They envy and resent him so much that they want to destroy him.

“Elites” of the United States, beware!

  1. Genesis 35:16-26.
  2. Rabbi Shmuel ben Meir, a.k.a. Rashbam, 12th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  3. Midrash is a type of commentary that adds backstories and/or mystical meanings to the original text.
  4. Genesis 37:13-14.
  5. Isaiah 22:21.
  6. Genesis 30:43, 31:17-18, 32:14-15. At that point, Yaakov has 11 sons and one daughter, Dinah.
  7. Rabbi Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar (1696-1743), translation in www.sefaria.org.
  8. Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, 16th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
  9. Because of his ability to plan ahead and organize, Yoseif becomes Potifar’s steward in Genesis 39:1-5, the prison supervisor in Genesis 39:22-23, and Pharaoh’s vizier in Genesis 41:25-44.

Vayishlach: He Kissed Him

All ten times when a kiss occurs in the book of Genesis/Bereishit, a man is kissing one of his family members (but not his wife). The person kissed may embrace the kisser, and sometimes they both weep, but the Torah does not say that he or she kisses him back.

It is not unusual in the Hebrew Bible for someone to kiss a family member at a significant reunion (such as when Aharon kisses his brother Moshe after a long separation in Exodus 4:27), or at a formal final separation (such as when Naomi kisses her two daughters-in-law goodbye before she leaves Moab in Ruth 1:9).

The Meeting of Jacob and Esau, by James Tissot, circa 1900

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach (Genesis 32:4-36:43), twin brothers Yaakov (“Jacob” in English) and Eisav (“Esau” in English) meet again after 20 years apart. Eisav kisses Yaakov, and both brothers weep.

Then Eisav ran to meet him, and he embraced him, and he fell on his neck, vayishakeihu, and they wept. (Genesis 33:4)

vayishakeihu (וַיִּשָּׁקֵהוּ) = and he kissed him; or “and he was putting on armor”. (A form of nashak (נָשַׁק), the root of two different verbs that are homonyms. The root meaning “kiss” is the one that makes sense in context, since Eisav has just embraced his brother and fallen on his neck. Someone falls on someone else’s neck three times in Genesis, always at a tearful reunion between two male relatives.1 I imagine an embrace so close that the heads of the two men are pressed together and their cheeks touch.)

Yet even though it is a reunion between brothers, Yaakov does not expect the kiss.

Yaakov fled from Canaan 20 years earlier because Eisav, enraged because Yaakov had cheated him out of both an inheritance and a blessing,2 was planning to murder him as soon as their father died. During the years since then, Eisav left Canaan and founded his own kingdom, Edom, southeast of Canaan. And Yaakov acquired significant wealth in livestock while he lived in Charan, northeast of Canaan. Now that both men have been blessed with wealth, they no longer need an inheritance from their father.

Maybe Eisav no longer wants to kill his brother. But Yaakov is not so sure of that when he finally leaves Charan and heads back toward Canaan.

When he reaches the Yabok River with his large family, servants, herds, and flocks, Yaakov sends a message to Edom. His messenger returns with the news that Eisav is coming north to meet him, with 400 men—the standard size for a troop of soldiers. So Yaakov sends several generous gifts of livestock ahead to Eisav on the road, along with appeasing messages. (See my posts Vayishlach: A Partial Reconciliation and Vayishlach: Message Failure.) Finally Eisav and his men reach the Yabok River.

Yaakov raised his eyes and he saw—hey!—Eisav coming, and 400 men with him! (Genesis 33:1)

He organizes his wives and children so that his favorites are in the rear, where they will be the most likely to escape if Eisav’s men attack.

And he himself crossed over in front of them, and he bowed down to the earth seven times, until he came close to his brother. Then Eisav ran to meet him, and he embraced him, and he fell on his neck, vayishakeihu, and they wept. (Genesis 33:3-4)

What does Eisav’s kiss mean?

Extra dots

In Torah scrolls (which preserve every detail of how the words of Genesis through Deuteronomy have been written in scrolls since 500 C.E. or earlier) the word vayishakeihu looks like this:

By the 10th century C.E., the Masoretic system of “pointing” (nikudot)—putting various dots and short lines above, below, and inside Hebrew letters—had been universally adopted. These “points” add vowels, modify pronunciation, and indicate a few other distinctions that the letters alone do not reveal.3 Nikudot are still used for the complete Hebrew Bible when it is printed in book form, as well as some other Hebrew texts (but rarely in Modern Hebrew works).

In the Masoretic text, the word vayishakeihu in Genesis 33:4 appears with all the usual nikudot as well as the more ancient dots, sometimes called “extraordinary pointing”, above every letter:

This is the only place in the Hebrew Bible where any form of the verb nashak is written withdots that are not vowel points above the letters.

In fact, only fifteen verses in the whole Hebrew Bible contain a word with an extra dot above one or more letters.4 This “extraordinary pointing” was originally added by scribes who pre-dated the Masoretes, going back at least as far as the writers of the Dead Sea Scrolls (115-408 C.E.). The most common theory is that scribes used these dots indicate a problem with a word.

When I examined the verses with extraordinary pointing, I found three possible quibbles about grammar, two cases in which a repeated word might seem superfluous, and one weirdly spelled hapax legomenon. Seven other verses with extra dots use ordinary words with correct spelling and grammar, and no alternative meanings. Medieval midrash writers really stretched to come up with fanciful explanations for extraordinary pointing in these verses.5

That leaves two words with extra dots that may have a problem regarding the meaning of the word: lulei (לוּלֵא) in Psalm 27:13, and vayishakeihu (וַיִּשָּׁקֵהוּ) in Genesis 33:4.

I will save Psalm 27:13 for a future post. Now let’s look again at Eisav’s kiss.

Is Eisav’s kiss a problem?

Then Eisav ran to meet him, and he embraced him, and he fell on his neck, vayishakeihu, and they wept. (Genesis 33:4)

Perhaps some ancient scribes doubted that Eisav would kiss Yaakov, so they put extra dots over vayishakeihu to indicate that maybe the word should be erased from the verse altogether.

 Alternatively, they might have put in the extra dots to indicate that vayishakeihu (וַיִּשָּׁקֵהוּ) is a misspelling, and the word should be vayishacheihu (וַיִּשָּׁכֵהוּ) = and he bit him; or “and he borrowed at interest”. (From nashakh (נָשַׁך), the root of two other verbs that are homonyms. It is at least possible for Eisav to bite his brother while they are embracing. No commentator would suggest that in between embracing Yaakov and bursting into tears, Eisav took time out to borrow money.)

Jewish commentary is divided among three opinions about Eisav’s kiss: that it is an expression of love or compassion; that it happens, but it is cold and grudging; and that it is really a bite.

Bereishit Rabbah, an early collection of midrash, includes two of these opinions:

“Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar said: … it teaches that at that moment he was overcome with mercy and he kissed him with all his heart. Rabbi Yannai said to him: If so, why is it dotted over it? Rather, it teaches that he did not come to kiss him, but rather to bite him, and Jacob’s neck was transformed into marble and the teeth of that wicked one were blunted. Why does the verse state: ‘And they wept’? It is, rather, that this one wept over his neck, and that one wept over his teeth.”6

Bachya ben Asher was one of the classic commentators who wrote that Eisav did kiss Yaakov, but it was not a loving kiss. “Here the reason they placed these dots was to let us know that this kiss was not whole-hearted. It was a kiss which originated in anger.”7

Eisav’s character

I think that the scribes who originally placed the extra dots over vayishkeihu accepted the symbolism that became widespread among rabbinic commentators around the 5th century C.E.: that Yaakov represents the Jews, and Eisav represents Rome and the Christians.8 These opposing symbols led to commentary painting Yaakov as all good, and Eisav as all evil.

The Torah itself uses wordplay to make Eisav a symbol for a long-standing enemy of the Israelites: the kingdom of Edom.9 Yet the stories about Eisav and Yaakov in Genesis are more nuanced. Before this week’s Torah portion, Yaakov has the admirable traits of intelligence, self-control, and adaptability; but he cheats his brother twice, first out of a selfish desire for more of the inheritance, then to please his domineering mother. Eisav is impulsive, over-emotional, and easily duped; but he goes to some trouble to cook treats for his blind father, and he does not make threats regarding his brother until after the second time Yaakov cheats him.

Twenty years after Yaakov fled to Charan, he is no longer concerned about inheriting from his father or pleasing his mother. He wants nothing from his brother except safe passage to Canaan for himself and his own people.

And Eisav? The way the Torah portrays him, I doubt he could maintain his rage over the stolen blessing for more than a week. He throws his energies into founding a new kingdom instead. I bet he is thrilled by the idea that he will be at the head of 400 men when he meets his sneaky, uppity brother again.

Of course he wants to be ready if Yaakov tries to pull any tricks on him. But when his brother showers him with gifts and compliments instead, Eisav is flattered. And when he sees Yaakov bowing down to him the way a subject bows to a king, his heart melts completely. Suddenly he loves Yaakov the way he probably did when they were children—when Yaakov, who was born only a minute after his twin, seemed  much younger because he was smaller, less physically mature,10 and handicapped by the lower status of the second-born son.

Then Eisav ran to meet him, and he embraced him, and he fell on his neck, and he kissed him, and they wept. (Genesis 33:4)

  1. Genesis 33:4, 45:14, and 46:29.
  2. Genesis 25:29-34; Genesis 27:1-33. See my post Toledot: To Bless Someone.
  3. Many printed texts of the Hebrew Bible also include the trope marks invented by 10th-century Tiberian Masoretes to indicate how the words should be chanted. Here I exclude the trope for clarity.
  4. Genesis 16:5, 18:9, 19:33, 33:4, and 37:12; Numbers 3:39, 9:10, 21:30, and 29:15; Deuteronomy 29:28; 2 Samuel 19:20; Isaiah 44:9; Ezekiel 41:20 and 46:22; and Psalm 27:13.
  5. Midrash is a type of commentary that adds backstories and/or mystical meanings to the original text.
  6. Bereishit Rabbah 78:9, circa 300-500 C.E., translation in www.sefaria.org.
  7. Rabbeinu Bachya ben Asher, 1255–1340 C.E., www.sefaria.org.
  8. See Malka Z. Simkovitch, “Esau the Ancestor of Rome”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/esau-the-ancestor-of-rome.
  9. Genesis 25:26 (in which Eisav is born red—admoni, reminiscent of Edom, and hairy—sei-ar, like Mount Sei-ir in Edom); and Genesis 36:8 (which says “Eisav, he is Edom”).
  10. Eisav is born hairy (Genesis 25:26). When the twins are at least 40 years old, Yaakov reminds his mother: “My brother Eisav is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.” (Genesis 27:11)

Vayeitzei: Two Stones

And Yaakov walked away from Beirsheva and went toward Charan. (Genesis/Bereishit 28:10)

So begins this week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei (“And he went out”, Genesis 28:10-32:3). Yaakov (“Jacob” in English) has to leave home because his twin brother Eisav (“Esau” in English) has been threatening to kill him as soon as their ailing father dies.1

The family is dysfunctional. Eisav resents Yaakov for cheating him twice.2 Their parents, Yitzchak (“Isaac” in English) and Rivkah (“Rebecca” in English), play favorites, as last week’s Torah portion, Toledot, reports:

When the boys grew up, Eisav became a man who knew how to hunt, a man of the outdoors; and Yaakov was a quiet man staying indoors. And Yitzchak loved Eisav, because of [the taste of] game in his mouth; but Rivkah loved Yaakov. (Genesis 25:27-28)

Furthermore, Rivkah and Yitzchak are not frank with one another. Yitzchak does not tell his wife what he plans to do in terms of deathbed blessings for his sons. Rivkah manipulates Yaakov into deceiving his blind father and steal the blessing he plans to give Eisav. (See my post Toledot: Rebecca Gets It Wrong.) Everyone in the family assumes that Yitzchak has the power to pass on the blessing he received from God.

After Eisav threatens to kill Yaakov, Rivkah urges her favorite son to flee to Charan, where her brother lives, until Eisav’s anger has faded. Then she announces to her husband that she could not bear it if Yaakov, like Eisav, took a Canaanite wife. She does not need to say more; Yitzchak himself has never left Canaan, but he knows of one place outside the land: Charan, where his father Avraham and his wife Rivkah came from. So he orders Yitzchak to go there. 

“… and take yourself a wife from there, from the daughters of Lavan, your mother’s brother” (Genesis 28:2).

Yaakov departs at once. He is over 40 years old, and this is the first time in his life he leaves his immediate family, and the land of Canaan.

Erecting a stone

On the way to Charan he encounters God in a transformative dream. (See my post Vayeitzei: The Place.)

And Yaakov woke up from his sleep, and he said: “Truly there is God in this place, and I, I did not know!” And he was awestruck, and he said: “How awesome is this place! This is none other than a house of God, and this is the gate of the heavens!” And Yaakov got up early in the morning, and he took the stone that he had set by his head, and he set it up as a matzeivah, and he poured oil on top of it. (Genesis 28:16-18)

matzeivah(מַצֵּבָה) = a tall upright stone used for a religious purpose, as a grave marker, or as a memorial to an important event.

Erecting a tall stone and anointing it with olive oil was an accepted way of acknowledging a god in the Ancient Near East. Although Yaakov is smaller than his huge twin Eisav, he is strong enough to manhandle a long slab of stone.

Then Yaakov vows that if God takes care of him until he returns,

“… then Y-H-V-H will be my god. And this stone, which I have set up as a matzeivah, will become a house of God, and from everything that you give to me, I will tithe a tenth for you.” (Genesis 28:21-22).

The matzeivah remains at the spot as a witness to Yaakov’s experience and a marker for fulfilling his vow when he returns.

Rolling a stone

And Yaakov picked up his feet and went to the land of the Easterners. And he looked around, and hey! A well was in the field. And hey! There were three flocks of sheep lying down near it, because from that well they watered the flocks. And there was a large stone on the mouth of the well. For when all the flocks were gathered there, then they rolled the stone off from the mouth of the well, and watered the sheep, and brought the stone back to its place over the mouth of the well. (Genesis 28:1-3)

The shepherds could have chosen a lighter covering for their well, something made with wood that anyone could lift. But instead they use a stone that is so heavy, they have to cooperate to roll it off the well. This would prevent strangers or natives from drawing water unless a large group of men is there to enforce fair distribution of a limited resource.3 (Perhaps it takes all day for groundwater to seep in and refill the well.)    

Yaakov greets the shepherds of the three flocks that have arrived so far, finds out they are from Charan, and asks about Lavan, whom they report is doing well. They add:

“And hey! His daughter Racheil is coming with the flock!” (Genesis 29:6) 

As Racheil (“Rachel” in English) leads her flock over, Yaakov tells the men:

“Hey, the day is still long, it’s not time to gather in the livestock [for the night]. Water the sheep and go pasture them!” (Genesis 29:7)

Yaakov was in charge of the sheep in his father’s household, so he knows what should be done. But to me it seems bossy to tell men whom one has just met that they are wasting time. Perhaps Yaakov wants them to water their sheep and leave, so that he will have a moment alone with Racheil while she is watering her flock.

The shepherds tell Yaakov that they always wait until everyone is there to roll the stone off the mouth of the well.

He was still speaking with them when Racheil came with the sheep that were her father’s, for she was a shepherdess. And when Yaakov saw Racheil, a daughter of his mother’s brother Lavan, and the flock of his mother’s brother Lavan, then Yaakob stepped forward and rolled the stone off from the mouth of the well, and he watered the flock of his mother’s brother Lavan. (Genesis 29:10)

How does he have the strength to roll a stone so heavy that normally it can only be budged by many men working together? Tur HaArokh answered: “The new hope he had been given through his dream about the ladder had left its mark also on his body.”4

Another answer appears in Or HaChayim: “This teaches us that unless Jacob had had divine assistance he could not have moved that stone.”5

He might also have inherited strength and stamina from his mother. About 60 years earlier, when Rivkah was a teenager in Charan, she was at the well when a stranger arrived with a train of camels. She offered him a drink of water. Then she ran back and forth pouring heavy pitchers of water into the watering-trough until all ten of the stranger’s camels had drunk their fill. The stranger ( whom Avraham had sent to find a bride for his son Yitzchak) was awed by her athletic feat. (See my post Chayei Sarah: Seizing the Moment, Part 1.)

by Ephraim Moshe Lilien (1874-1925)

Rivkah’s son Yaakov also performs an athletic feat at the well, then waters Racheil’s sheep.

Then Yaakov kissed Racheil, and he lifted up his voice and wept. And he told Racheil that he was her father’s kinsman, and that he was Rivkah’s son. And she ran and told her father. And when Lavan heard tidings of Yaakov, his sister’s son, then he ran to meet him, and he embraced him and kissed him, and brought him into his house. (Genesis 29:11-13)

So far, so good. Yaakov, who never considered marriage while he was in Canaan, is smitten with Racheil. Now marrying into Lavan’s family is no longer just his parents’ idea. But although Lavan probably expects as large a bride-price as Avraham’s steward brought for Rivkah, Yaakov has unaccountably neglected to put any gold, silver, or jewelry in his pack. (See my post Vayeitzei: Guilty Conscience for one explanation.) So Yaakov offers to work for his uncle for seven years as the bride-price for marrying Racheil.

And Yaakov served seven years for Racheil, but they were like a few days in his eyes, because of his love for her. (Genesis 29:20)

Blocked by a stone

Traditional Jewish commentary often takes symbolism to extremes. Many classic commentaries identify the well near Charan with the temple in Jerusalem, and the three flocks of sheep with the three pilgrimage festivals there—even though Jerusalem and its festivals have nothing to do with Yaakov’s story. Others propose that the well represents knowledge of the Torah, and the stone is the evil inclination that blocks people from drinking it in. Compared to these far-fetched analogies, Robert Alter’s comment is refreshing:

“If, as seems entirely likely, the well in the foreign land is associated with fertility and the otherness of the female body to the bridegroom, it is especially fitting that this well should be blocked by a stone, as Rachel’s womb will be ‘shut up’ over long years of marriage.”6

But I am intrigued by a Chassidic commentary that identifies the well and the stone in terms that could be applied to Yaakov’s feelings by the end of the month during which he leaves home, encounters God, and falls in love—all for the first time.

Kedushat Levi compares the well to the human heart, which longs to connect with God, but is blocked as if by a stone. “The large stone is the evil urge … preventing the flow of God’s blessing. … He rolled the stone off the mouth of the well means that he removed the stumbling-block from the heart that flows with prophecy.”7

Arthur Green added: “… our evil urge, that which causes the human ego to assert its own will, blocks us from that vision. Our strongest force in defeating it is that of joy.  When we open our hearts and rejoice … we overcome that need for self-assertion. Then divine blessing can flow upon us, even opening our hearts to the prophetic witness that is our true natural state of being.”8

While Yaakov is in Canaan, his “evil urge” is his jealousy of Eisav. Eisav is slated to get the larger inheritance of the firstborn son because he was born one minute before his twin brother. Furthermore, Eisav’s knack for hunting and cooking game wins their father’s love. So Yaakov cheats Eisav twice. He cannot let go of his jealousy until he is forced to leave Canaan, the inheritance, and Yitzchak. As soon as he is on the road, the heavy stone of Yaakov’s jealousy rolls away, and his heart opens. He has a vision and hears God in a dream, and the stone that lay by his head becomes his matzeivah for God. He falls in love with Racheil, and he rolls the stone off the well. Instead of continuing to dedicate his life to jealousy, Yaakov chooses a life of joy.

I always questioned the popular saying “Wherever you go, there you are”—with all the same problems you had before. It is true that we cannot erase the old experiences that shaped our personalities. Yet a big change in our lives can lead to psychological growth. Some of our old complexes can become healed scars instead of bleeding wounds, and we can move on.

In the portion Vayeitzei, Yaakov begins this process with the liberation of leaving home—leaving behind his manipulative mother, his detached father, and the unfair law of inheritance. Immediately he has stunning new experiences: encountering God, and falling in love. He changes. During the rest of his story in Genesis, he remains weighed down by mistrust and selfishness. But at least his jealousy and rivalry have rolled away, making a good life possible.

I, too, had a manipulative mother and a detached father, and I suffered from other types of unfairness when I was growing up. My liberation began when I escaped to college, and over many years the heavy stone rolled off my well. I still carry scars, but now love and a good life are not only possible for me, but a reality.

  1. Genesis 27:41.
  2. Genesis 27:34-36, referring to Genesis 25:29-34 and Genesis 27:5-27.
  3. According to 19th-century Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the heavy covering means that the people who live there do not trust one another.
  4. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 – c. 1343), Tur HaArokh, translated in www.sefaria.org.
  5. Rabbi Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar, Or HaChayim, 18th century, translated in www.sefaria.org.
  6. Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible, Vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2019, p. 103.
  7. Levi Yitshak of Berdyczow (1740-1809), Kedushat Levi, translated by Arthur Green,in Speaking Torah, Vol. 1, edited by Arthur Green, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2013, pp. 126-127.
  8. Arthur Green, Speaking Torah, Vol. 1, p. 127.

Vayeira: Return to Silence

Below is the fourth and final post in my series on the relationship between Avraham (“Abraham” in English) with God. If you want to read one of my posts on this week’s Torah portion, you might try Toledot: Rebecca Gets It Wrong.

The book of Genesis/Bereishit portrays both Avraham and God as complex characters, and their relationship evolves slowly. It begins when God tells Avraham to leave his home and go to the land of Canaan, making the first of many promises that Avraham will have a whole nation of descendants who own that land.1 Avraham simply obeys. After that he makes his own decisions about where to live and what to do, while God repeats the promises about his descendants,2 and makes sure that his wife, Sarah, is returned to him after Avraham scams two kings.3

At the third repetition of the promise of descendants, Avraham begins asking God for guarantees. (See my post Lekh-Lekha: Conversation.) The God character responds first with a treaty ceremony,4 then with a two-way covenant in which God gives Canaan to Avraham and his descendants, and Avraham and his male descendants will be circumcised.5 (See my post Bereishit, Lekh-Lekha, and Vayeira: Talking Back.)

Later, God takes their relationship a step further by telling Avraham ahead of time about the plan to wipe out the valley of Sodom.6 Avraham responds by making a strong ethical argument for pardoning Sodom for the sake of the innocent people living there, and God agrees to do it if there are even ten. (See my post Vayeira: Persuasion).

The Sacrifice of Isaac, by Caravaggio, 1603

Many years after that, God tells Avraham to slaughter and burn his own son as an offering. And Avraham silently obeys. It seems as if both characters are seized by sudden madness. Why do they act this way?

Your only one, whom you love

The story, which Jews call the Akeidah (עַקֵידָה = “Binding”), begins:

And it was after these events, and God nisah Avraham, and said to him: “Avraham!” And he said: “Here I am.” (Genesis 22:1)

nisah (נִסָּה) = tested, evaluated, assayed.

From the beginning, we know the Akeidah is a test, but we do not know what result God is hoping for.

And [God] said: “Take, please, your son. Your only one, whom you love. Yitzchak. …” (Genesis 22:2)

Avraham has two sons. Hagar, his slave or concubine, bore him the elder one, Yishmael (“Ishmael “in English), and Sarah, Avraham’s wife, bore him the younger one, Yitzchak (“Isaac” in English). “Your only one” is a reminder that only Yitzchak is still part of Avraham’s household, and only Yitzchak is destined to have the descendants who inherit Canaan.  

Perhaps God also needs to remind Avraham that he loves Yitzchak. Earlier in the Torah Avraham goes to some trouble for his nephew Lot,7 and feels love and concern for his older son, Yishmael.8 But it does not mention Avraham showing any feelings or making efforts for Yitzchak.

Perhaps Avraham demonstrates no special attachment to Yitzchak because there is no occasion to rescue him or worry about him—until God orders him:

“Take your son … And go for yourself to the land of the Moriyah, and offer him up there as a burnt-offering on one of the hills, which I will say to you.” (Genesis 22:2)

Moriyah (מֺרִיָּה) = mori (מֺרִי) = my showing, my teacher + yah (יָה) = God; therefore Moriyah = God is showing me, God is my teacher.

The name of the land implies that God will be not only testing Avraham, but teaching him something.

Offer him up

Slaughtering one’s own child as an offering to a god was not unknown in the Ancient Near East, but it was a rare and desperate move. Within the Hebrew Bible, the king of Moav sacrifices his oldest son so that his god will help him defeat the Israelites.9 But Genesis 22:2 is the only time that the God of Israel asks for a human burnt offering.

Avraham does not question this shocking order from God. Although he used an ethical argument to persuade God to refrain from destroying Sodom, now he says nothing at all, even though Yitzchak is innocent of any crime.

Avraham’s silence also ignores the fact that Yitzchak is still unmarried and childless, and God promised him many descendants through Sarah’s son.

And Avraham got up early in the morning, and he saddled his donkey, and he took two of his servants with him and his son Yitzchak, and he split wood for the burnt-offering, and he stood up, and he went to the place that God said. On the third day, Avraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. (Genesis 22:3-4)

He does not tell either his servants or his son about God’s command during those three days. When they arrive, Avraham orders the servants to wait at the foot of the hill until “we will return to you.” (Genesis 22:5) As father and son are walking to the top, Yitzchak asks him where the lamb is for the offering, and Avraham says God will see to it. Perhaps he is lying, or perhaps he believes that at the last minute God will indeed provide a lamb to replace Yitzchak, and they will come back down together.

Once the wood is on the altar, Avraham can no longer conceal God’s command. And apparently Yitzchak accepts it, since at that time he is either 26 or 37 years old,10 and his father is 126 or 137 years old. Clearly the younger man is offering no resistance.

And Avraham reached out his hand, and he took the knife to slaughter his son. Then a messenger of God called to him from the heavens, and said: “Avraham! Avraham!” And he said: “Here I am.” (Genesis 22:10-11)

In the Hebrew Bible, a messenger of God (sometimes called an “angel” in English translations) may or may not be visible, but it always has a voice through which God speaks. The last words Avraham ever says to God in the Torah are his answer to the messenger: “Here I am”.

And [the messenger] said: “Don’t you reach out your hand toward the young man. Don’t you do anything to him! Because now I know that you are yarei God; you have not withheld your son, your only one, from me.” (Genesis 22:12) 

yarei (יָרֵא) = in fear of, in awe of, reverent of.

Perhaps God’s test is to find out how much Avraham is in awe of God.

Only then does Avraham see a ram caught in a thicket behind him. He uses it as the burnt offering in place of Yitzchak.

Then the messenger of God called to Avraham a second time from the heavens, and said: “By myself I swear, word of God, that since you did this thing, and did not withhold your son, your only one, from me, I will bless you and definitely multiply your descendants like the stars of the heavens and like the sand that is on the shore of the sea, and your descendants will possess the gates of their enemies. And they will bless themselves through your descendants, all the nations of the earth, as a consequence of your heeding my voice!” (Genesis 22:15-18)

This second speech repeats the promises God has been making ever since the call to leave home and go to Canaan, but now they are framed as a reward for Avraham’s obedience to God’s outrageous command.

Then Avraham returned to his servants, and they got up and went together to Beirsheva, and Avraham stayed in Beirsheva. (Genesis 22:19)

The text does not say that Yitzchak returned with Avraham. In the next Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, Avraham sends his steward to bring a bride to Yitzchak, who is living on his own at Beir-lachai-roi. He evidently knows it is useless to try to summon his son to his own encampment. Father and son are not in the same place again until Avraham dies at age 175, and Yitzchak and Yishmael come and bury him.11

Neither God, nor Yitzchak, nor Yishmael ever speaks to Avraham again. To me this indicates that even if Avraham passes God’s test, he does not earn flying colors.

The test

Jewish commentary is rich with theories about what God’s test is, and whether Avraham really passes it or not.

Does God want to know whether Avraham values obedience to God over love, reason, or ethics? (And if so, what does God want him to put first?)

Does God want to know if Avraham has enough compassion for Yitzchak to draw the line?13

Does God want to know whether Avraham believes that God would never expect him to do something evil?14 (And if so, does passing the test mean refusing to obey, or proceeding and assuming God will stop him at the last minute?) Or does God want to know whether Avraham can live with a clear contradiction—between God’s promises of many descendants through Yitzchak, and God’s command to slaughter Yitzchak while he is still childless?15 (And if so, does living with the contradiction count as passing the test or failing it?)

The silence

Why does Avraham revert to silent obedience when God orders him to slaughter Yitzchak as an offering?

He would never have argued with God about Sodom unless he believed in justice for the innocent. Yet he prepares to slaughter Yitzchak despite his ethical principles.

Is his compassion too limited? Does he feel more responsible for Lot than for Yitzchak? Is his heart too small to love more than one son?

Does he intuit that God’s contradictory command is a test, and decide to test God in return by silent obedience? If the divine messenger had not stopped him, would he have actually plunged in the knife?

Or is Avraham simply too old to figure out how to handle a radically new situation? The God character is able to try something new, but perhaps Avraham is no longer able to respond with anything but his usual obedience.

It would have been kinder if the God character had appreciated what Avraham had already achieved as the father of a new nation, and saved the ultimate test for one of his descendants.

  1. Genesis 12:1-3.
  2. The promises occur in Genesis 12:7, 13:14-17, 15:1-5, 15:7, 15:18,17:1-8, and 22:17-18.
  3. Genesis 12:17-19 and 20:3-7. See my posts Lekh-Lekha, Vayeira, & Toledot: The Wife-Sister Trick, Part 1 and Part 2.)
  4. Genesis 15:7-21.
  5. Genesis 17:1-27.
  6. Genesis 18:17-21.
  7. Genesis 12:5, 13:8-12, 14:12-16.
  8. Genesis 21:11. See my post Vayeira: Failure of Empathy.
  9. 2 Kings 3:26-67. Also see Jeremiah 19:5.
  10. Yitzchak is old enough to carry a load of firewood for his aging father, and is called a na–ar (נַעַר), a boy or unmarried young man. He is younger than 40, because at that age he is living away from his father and marries Rivkah (Rebecca). The two most common opinions in the commentary are that Yitzchak is either 26 or 37.
  11. Genesis 25:7-9.
  12. See Marsha Mirkin, “Reinterpreting the Binding of Isaac”, Tikkun, Vol. 18, No. 5, 2003.
  13. See David Kasher, ParshaNut: Parshat Vayera: “It’s Complicated”, 2104; and Elimelekh of Lizhensk, Noam Elimelekh, 1786. Also see Martin Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy, 1957; and .
  14. See Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, “Negative Capability: Vayera 5780”, 2019; and Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, 1843.

Vayeira: Persuasion

(Below is the third post in my series on how Abraham speaks to God. If you want to read one of my posts on this week’s Torah portion, you might try Chayei Sarah: Arranged Marriage.)

Avraham is the first human being to argue with God in the Hebrew Bible. Near the beginning of the Torah portion Vayeira (Genesis/Bereishit 18:1-22:21), after God tells Avraham that Sodom and Gomorrah will be completely wiped out, and Avraham boldly tells God what the “judge of all the earth” ought to do instead.

But near the end of that Torah portion, God orders Avraham to slaughter his own son and heir as a burnt offering, and Avraham does not protest. He reverts to silent obedience, his approach when we first meet him in the book of Genesis. (See my post Lekh-Lekha: Conversation.) Worse, he obeys the divine order regardless of the cost, like Noach (“Noah” in English). (See my post Noach: Silent Obedience.)

The Torah says that God is testing Abraham both times.

Teaching proposal

The portion Vayeira begins with three “men”, who turn out to be divine messengers. After Avraham has offered them hospitality, he walks with them to a lookout point to see them off. Below they see the lowland near the Dead Sea, including Sodom and its satellite towns.

And God thought: “Shall I hide from Avraham what I am about to do? Avraham must certainly become a great and numerous nation, and all the nations of the earth must be blessed through him. For I have become acquainted with him so that he will command his sons and his household after him, and they will keep the way of God: to do tzedakah and mishpat …” (Genesis 18:17, 19)

tzedakah (צְדָקָה) = right behavior, ethical behavior.

mishpat (מִשְׁפָּט) = justice; law.

Whatever the divine plan is for Sodom, the God character anticipates a teaching moment. But what principle of ethics and justice does God hope to teach Avraham?

Then God said: “The outcry in Sodom and Gomorrah is great, because their abundant guilt is very heavy. Indeed I will go down, and I will see: Are they doing like the outcry coming to me? [If so,] annihilation! And if not, I will know.” (Genesis 18:20-21)

Two of the divine messengers go down to Sodom to find out, while God (perhaps still manifesting as a man) stays with Avraham at the lookout.

Avraham teaches

Abraham Intercedes for Sodom, artist unknown

Avraham came forward and said: “Would you sweep away the tzadik with the wicked? What if there are fifty tzadikim inside the city? Would you sweep away and not pardon the place for the sake of the fifty tzadikim who are in it? Far be it from you to do this thing, to bring death to the tzadik with the wicked! Then the tzadik would be like the wicked. Far be it from you! The judge of all the earth should do justice!” (Genesis 18:23-25)

tzadik (צַדִּיק) = righteous, innocent. tzadikim (צַדִּיקִם) = people who are righteous or innocent. (Both words have the same root as tzedakah.)

This is a new thing in the world of the book of Genesis: a human being arguing with God and telling God the right thing to do.

Clearly God is “the judge of all the earth”; in the time of Noach, God judged the whole earth and drowned all the land animals, including humans, that were not on the ark. Avraham argues that since God is the ultimate judge, God should do justice. And justice requires discriminating between the innocent and the guilty, and not sentencing innocent people to death.

However, Avraham does not argue that God should pick and choose which individuals will live and which will die, instead of annihilating an entire population. Perhaps he recalls that it took a lot of advance preparation to arrange for Noach’s ark before God flooded the earth. Or perhaps Avraham has noticed that what we now call “acts of nature”, but the ancient Israelites considered acts of God, never distinguish between the innocent and the guilty.

So how can God save the innocent? Only by not annihilating a population at all! Avraham urges God to pardon everyone in the Sodom area, and refrain from annihilating the city and its towns, if there are a critical number of innocent people living there.

How many innocent people does it take?

Avraham starts with the number 50. According to Rashi,1 he is thinking of ten tzadikim for each town. (Although the portion Vayeira does not specify any settlements except Sodom and Gomorrah, in last week’s Torah portion, Lekha-Lekha, Sodom and Gomorrah are two of five towns that lose a battle at the Dead Sea.)2

And God said: “If I find in Sodom fifty tzadikim within the city, then I will pardon the whole place for their sake.” (Numbers 18:26)

The God character does not question or argue with Avraham. Either God finds Avraham’s argument enlightening, or God was testing Avraham and is pleased that his human protégé is standing up for justice.

Avraham dares to speak up again, although this time he makes a parenthetical statement of humility, saying that he is dust and ashes. He asks if God would destroy the whole city if there are 45 tzadikim, or 40, or 30, or 20. Each time God says “I will not destroy” or “I will not do it”.

Then he said: “Please don’t be angry, my lord, but I would speak one more time. Perhaps [only] ten will be found there!” And [God] said: “I will not destroy, for the sake of the ten.” And God went, as soon as [God] had finished speaking to Avraham, and Avraham returned to his place. (Genesis 18:32-33)

It is not clear whether Avraham stops at ten, or God cuts off the conversation after ten. Two reasons why Avraham might have stopped at ten tzadikim are summarized by Bachya ben Asher:

“Eight people had entered the Ark. Had there been another pair of deserving human beings at that time the deluge might have been delayed or might not have occurred at all. Furthermore, Avraham had reason to believe that there were ten righteous people in Sodom. He counted Lot and his wife, his four daughters and their respective husbands (or fiancés) as making up that quorum. [But] Seeing there were fewer than ten good people whose presence could protect their town against impending doom, God departed as soon as He had heard Avraham speak about ten good people.”3

Motivations

Avraham might be standing up for justice and ethical behavior. Or perhaps his speech is a cover for an attempt to save his nephew Lot; after all, after the battle in Lekh-Lekha, Avraham staged an armed raid to rescue Lot, along with other captives from the Sodom area.4 And later, when God does not find even ten innocent people in Sodom, God knows how to do Avraham a favor:

And it happened, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, then God kept Avraham in mind and sent out Lot from the midst of the overturning … (Genesis 19:29)

Regardless of Avraham’s motivation, he might be teaching the God character how to turn over a new leaf. According to Aggadat Bereishit:

“God said to him, ‘No, no, may it never be that they should say, “This is God’s way, to subject His creatures to cruelty.” In the generation of the Flood, and in the generation of the Dispersion [after the Tower of Babel was built], I did not restrain My wrath, but with you, may it never be. … And if you think that I have acted unfairly, teach me and I will act fairly from now on.”5

Nevertheless, God might feel that pardoning the whole population for fewer than ten innocent people is simply going too far. However, the two divine messengers whom God sent down to the city do rescue Lot and his wife and two unmarried daughters, just before God annihilates the plain of Sodom.6

On the other hand, if God is teaching Avraham, God might feel satisfied that Avraham has passed the test and stood up for the concept that it is more important to save the innocent than to punish the guilty. Perhaps God leaves after the conversation reaches ten tzadikim because Avraham has already proved himself.

Given how passionately Avraham argues for God to pardon Sodom if even ten innocent people live there, many Torah readers are surprised at Avraham’s silence about two decades later, when God tells him to slaughter his own innocent son and heir. I will discuss that development in the relationship between Avraham and God in next week’s post: Vayeira: Return to Silence.

  1. Rashi is the acronym for 11th-century Rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki.
  2. Genesis 14:1-12.
  3. Bachya ben Asher ibn Halavah,1255–1340, translated in www.sefaria.org. The Torah does not actually say how many daughters Lot has, though at least two of them must be married, since Genesis 19:14 refers to sons-in-law. Bachya assumes the two unmarried daughters living at home are engaged. We do learn that Lot’s sons-in-law are not innocent (Genesis 19:4).
  4. Genesis 14:12-16.
  5. Aggadat Bereishit 22:2, 9th-10th century midrash, translated in www.sefaria.org.
  6. Genesis 19:15-26.

Bereishit, Lekh-Lekha, & Vayeira: Talking Back

When characters in the Torah hear God speak, some simply obey. Others some talk back to God, either to ask questions or to make excuses. In this week’s Torah portion, Vayeira (Genesis 18:1-22:21), Avraham raises talking back to God to a new level.

Bereishit: shifting the blame

The first human being to whom God speaks is the first human being: the adam (אָדָם = human being) in the first Torah portion of Genesis/Bereishit (Genesis 1:1-6:8). The God character warns the adam that eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil would result in death.

Nothing happens. I suspect that the human does not understand, never having seen anything die, but nevertheless follows God’s advice and avoids the Tree of Knowledge.  Then God separates the human into male and female, and provides a talking snake. Finally the two humans eat the fruit.

The next time they hear God in the garden, they hide. Then God asks:

“Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9)

The male human answers:

“I heard your sound in the garden, and I was afraid because I am naked, and I hid.” (Genesis 3:10)

Before the two humans ate the fruit, they did not notice they were naked; so were all the other animals in Eden. But once they know that some things are good and some are bad, they become self-conscious. (See my post Bereishit: In Hiding.) God asks:

The Rebuke of Adam and Eve, by Domenichino, 1626, detail

“Who told you that you are naked? From the tree about which I ordered you not to eat, did you eat?” And the human said: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave to me from the tree, and I ate.” (Genesis 3:11-12)

The man admits that he ate from the tree, but only after blaming the woman. When God questions the woman, she blames the snake. Then the God character “curses” the snake, the woman, and the man with the ordinary hardships of life outside the mythical garden of Eden, and expels them from the garden so that they will not eat from the Tree of Life and become immortal.

Throughout the conversation, the God character is the authority figure, and the two humans are like children making excuses to avoid being blamed and punished.

Bereishit: lying and begging

The next human God speaks to is the oldest child of the first two humans, Kayin (קַיִן, “Cain” in English). He makes a spontaneous offering to God, and his younger brother Hevel (הֶבֶל, “Abel” in English) follows suit. Kayin gets upset because God only pays attention to Hevel’s offering. Then God warns Kayin to rule over his impulse to do evil, but the warning goes over Kayin’s head.

Cain Leads Abel to Death, by James Tissot, circa 1890

And it happened when they were in the field, and Kayin rose up against his brother Hevel, and he killed him. Then God said to Kayin: “Where is Hevel, your brother?” And Kayin said: “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s shomeir?” (Genesis 4:8-9)

Shomeir (שֺׁמֵר) = watcher, guard, protector, keeper.

Kayin certainly knows where he left Hevel’s body, so his answer “I don’t know” is a lie. He might not have understood what death is before he killed his brother, but he knows now, and he suspects that he did something wrong. So he lies in an effort to escape being blamed.

Next Kayin asks what might be an honest question. Was he supposed to watch over his brother, the way he tends his vegetables and Hevel used to tend his sheep?

On the other hand, his question might be a protest that he is not responsible for protecting his brother, so he should not be blamed for what happened when he “rose up against” Hevel.

The God character does not bother to answer. Instead God curses him with a life of wandering instead of farming. Kayin cries out in alarm:

“My punishment is too great to bear! … Anyone who encounters me will kill me!” (Genesis 4:13-14)

Kayin might be thinking that his future relatives will be angry with him, and kill him the way he killed Hevel.

Then God said to him: “Therefore, anyone who kills Kayin, sevenfold it will be avenged!” And God set a sign for Kayin, so that anyone who encountered him would not strike him down. (Genesis 4:15)

Once again, the God character is the authority figure. Kayin lies to avoid being blamed, but he also (indirectly) begs God for protection, which God provides.

Lekh-Lekha: doubting

The next human to whom God speaks is Noach (נֺחַ, “Noah” in English). God gives Noach orders, and Noach follows them without a word. (See my post Noach: Silent Obedience.) There are no questions.

Avram (אַבְרָם, “Abram” in English) begins his relationship with God on the Noach model. But after God has promised him twice that he will have vast numbers of descendants,1 and twice that his descendants will own the land of Canaan,2 Avram cannot resist speaking up. He points out that at age 75 he is still childless. Then he asks God for more than verbal promises.

“My lord God, how will I know that I will possess it [the land]?” (Genesis 15:8)

The God character responds by staging an elaborate covenant ceremony. (See my post Lekh-Lekha: Conversation.) At its conclusion, God repeats once more that Avram’s descendants will own the land of Canaan.

When Avram is 86, he has a son by his wife Sarai’s servant Hagar, and names the boy Yishmael (יִשְׁמָעֵאל, “Ishmael” in English). Although a divine messenger speaks to Hagar when she is pregnant,3 God does not speak to Avram again until he is 99 years old. Then God manifests to him and announces:

“I am Eil Shadai! Walk about in my presence, and be unblemished!” (Genesis 17:1)

Eil Shadai (אֵל שַׁדַּי) = God who is enough, God of pouring-forth, God of overpowering.

This is the first use in the bible of the name Eil Shaddai. This name for God occurs most often in the context of fertility. Here, the name might encourage Avram to believe God has the power to make even a 99-year-old man and his 89-year-old wife fertile. God continues:

“I set my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you very much.” (Genesis 17:2)

Avram responds by silently prostrating himself. He already has a covenant with God, and the only multiplication that has happened during all the years since is the birth of Yishmael.

But God outlines a new covenant, this time one in which both parties have responsibilities. First there is the question of names: just as God is now Eil Shadai, Avram will henceforth be Avraham (אַבְרָהָם; “Abraham” in English),

“… because I will make you the av of a throng of nations!”

av (אַב) = father. (Raham is not a word in Biblical Hebrew.)

The God character expands on the usual theme, promising that Avraham’s descendants will include many kings, and they will rule the whole land of Canaan. In return, Avraham must circumcise himself and every male in his household, including slaves, and so must all his descendants.

Next God changes the name of Avraham’s 89-year-old wife from Sarai to Sarah (שָׂרָה = princess, noblewoman), and promises to bless her so that she will bear Avraham a son.

But Avraham flung himself on his face and laughed. And he said in his heart: “Will a hundred-year-old man procreate? And if Sarah, a ninety-year-old woman, gives birth—!” (Genesis 17:17)

In other words, Avraham does not believe God, who has been making the same promise for years. But he does want blessings for the thirteen-year-old son he already has from Hagar.

And Avraham said to God: “If only Yishmael might live in your presence!” (Genesis 17:18)

Then God promises that Yishmael will also be a great nation, but the covenant will go through Avraham’s son from Sarah, who will be born the following year and will be called Yitzchak (יִצְחָק = he laughs; Isaac in English). The God character noticed when Avraham laughed.

The Torah portion closes with Avraham circumcising himself and all the males in his household, including Yishmael. Whether Avraham believes Sarah will give birth or not, he wants to fulfill his own part of the covenant. Why would he risk upsetting God?

In the portion Lekh-Lekha, the God character is more powerful than the man, and Avram/Avraham is careful not to incur God’s displeasure–but he has his own opinions.

Vayeira: teaching

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeira, opens when Avraham sees three men approaching his tent. At least they look like men, and Avraham lavishes hospitality upon them as if they were weary travelers. But the “men” turn out to be divine messengers. Through one of them, God speaks to both Avraham and Sarah, announcing that Sarah will give birth the next year. (See my post Vayeira: On Speaking Terms.)

Abraham and the Three Angels, by Bartolome Esteban Muriollo, ca. 1670

Then Avraham walks with the three “men” to a lookout point, where God says:

“The outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, because their abundant guilt is very heavy. Indeed I will go down, and I will see: Are they doing like the outcry coming to me? [If so,] Annihilation! And if not, I will know.” (Genesis 18:20-21)

Two of the divine messengers continue down to Sodom to see if its people really are as evil as God has heard,4 while God stays with Avraham at the lookout.

Avraham came forward and said: “Would you sweep away the tzadik with the wicked? What if there are fifty tzadikim inside the city? Would you sweep away and not pardon the place for the sake of the fifty tzadikim who are in it? Far be it from you to do this thing, to bring death to the tzadik with the wicked! Then the tzadik would be like the wicked. Far be it from you! The judge of all the earth should do justice!” (Genesis 18:23-25)

tzadik (צַדִּיק) = righteous, innocent. tzadikim (צַדִּיקִם) = people who are righteous or innocent.

This is a new thing in the world: a human being arguing with God and telling God the right thing to do.

Is Avraham the teacher now, and the God character his pupil? How does God react?

See my post next week: Vayeira: Persuasion.

  1. Genesis 12:2, 13:16.
  2. Genesis 12:7, 13:15-17.
  3. Genesis 16:7-12. See my post Lekh-Lekha: First Encounter.
  4. The God character in the Torah is not omniscient.

Lekh-Lekha: Conversation

(corrected version)

In last week’s Torah portion, Noach, God gives Noach (Noah in English) orders, and Noach obeys. The communication is strictly one-way; Noach never says anything to God. (See my post Noach: Silent Obedience.)

In this week’s Torah portion, Lekh-Lekha (Genesis/Bereishit 12:1-17:27), God speaks to Abraham, and Abraham responds—at first with action, like Noach, but eventually with questions.

An order or an offer?

The Lord Directing Abraham, by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860

The Torah portion opens when God first addresses Avram. (“Avram” is Abraham’s original name before God changes it.)

Then God said to Avram: “Go for yourself, from your land, from your kindred, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you. And I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, and I will magnify your name.” (Genesis 12:1-2)

The beginning of God’s first speech to Avram sounds more like an offer than an order. If Avram leaves and goes to the land God indicates, then God will make Avram’s descendants into a great nation, bless Avram with success, and make his name famous.

Although God could simply command Avram to move to Canaan, God seems to want Avram to choose going to Canaan over staying in Charan. 19th-century Rabbi S.R. Hirsch explained that God’s first promise would compensate Avram for giving up his nationality in the Aramean kingdom where he and his family lived; the second promise would compensate him for his prosperity there; and the third promise would compensate him for starting over again without his family’s reputation.1

Next God says:

“Veheyeih brakhah!” (Genesis 12:2)

veheyeih (וֶהְיֵה) = Then become! (The prefix ve- (וֶ) is a conjunction that means either “and” or “then”. Heyeih (הְיֵה) is the imperative of the verb hayah (הָיָה), which means either “be” or “become”.)

brakhah (בְּרָכָה) = blessing, a blessing. (In the Hebrew Bible, humans are considered blessed when they have prosperity, good health, fertility, victory over enemies, or power over subordinates.)  

What does God’s imperative “Then become a blessing!” mean?

One tradition from the 13th century to the present is that the word veheyeih was assigned the wrong vowels, and actually means “then you will be”. According to this line of commentary, God is predicting that Avram will become part of peoples’ prayers for blessing. For example, Ramban wrote: “You will be the blessing by whom people will be blessed, saying, ‘God make you like Abraham.’”2 And eight centuries later Steinsaltz wrote: “… people will use you as a paradigm for blessings. When they bless one another, they will say: May you merit to be like Abram.”3

I prefer the alternate tradition, that God is telling Avram to act in such a way as to be a blessing to others. In Bereishit Rabbah (circa 400 C.E.), Avram becomes a blessing by praying for childless women, who then become pregnant, and for the sick, who then heal.4

Then God finishes:

“And I will bless those blessing you, and those demeaning you I will curse. And all the clans of the earth, nivrekhu vekha.” (Genesis 12:3)

nivrekhu vekha (נִבְרְכוּ בְךָ) = they will want to be blessed like you. (Nivrekhu (נִבְרְכוּ) is the third person plural of the rare nifil form of verb barakh (בָּרוּךְ), “be blessed”, and means “they seek to be blessed”. Vekha(בְךָ) in other contexts could mean “in you”, “by you”, or “through you”, but immediately after nivrekhu it means “like you”.)5

The second part of God’s initial speech to Avram, from “Become a blessing” through “they will want to be blessed like you” sounds like another if-then statement. If Avram becomes a blessing, then God will bless or curse everyone Avram encounters according to how they treat him, and everyone in the world will want the kind of blessing Avram has.

And Avram went, as God had spoken to him … (Genesis 12:4)

Avram’s first blessing from God

Avram brings along his wife Sarai (whom God later renames Sarah), his nephew Lot, all their servants, and all their livestock. When they reach a sacred tree near Shekhem in Canaan, God appears to Avram and says:

“To your descendants I give this land!” And he built an altar there to God, who had appeared to him. (Genesis 12:7)

Avram does not mention to God that he is still childless at age 75. He and his household keep traveling south, and when there is a famine in Canaan, they go all the way to Egypt.

There Avram scams the pharaoh by claiming Sarai is his sister, not his wife. (See my post Lekh-Lekha, Vayeira, & Toledot: The Wife-Sister Trick, Part 2.) The pharaoh takes Sarai as a concubine, and pays Avram a generous bride-price. The God character plays along and afflicts the pharaoh with an unmentionable disease. Then the pharaoh has Avram escorted out of Egypt—along with Sarai, all the other humans and animals who came with him, and the bride-price. Thanks to God’s assistance, Avram is blessed with even more prosperity.

Avram talks back

Enriched by more slaves, livestock, silver, and gold, Avram returns to the hills east of Beit-Eil. There he and his nephew Lot separate, with Avram staying in the highlands, while Lot takes his men and livestock down to the plain of Sodom.

And God said to Avram, after Lot had separated from him: “Raise your eyes, please, and look from the place where you are … For all the land that you yourself see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants like the dust of the earth, so that if a man were able to count the dust of the earth, your descendants could also be counted.” (Genesis 13:14-17)

Again Avram responds by building an altar to God, rather than by saying anything. Avram’s name is magnified (i.e. his reputation rises) in the central part of Canaan because he defeats four invading kings and returns the captives and the loot to their own communities. Then the priest-king Melchizedek says to Avram:

“Blessed be Avram by God Most High, founder of heaven and earth! And blessed be God Most High, who delivered your adversaries into your hand!” (Genesis 14:19-20)

So if this mysterious priest-king is correct, and if his god is Avram’s God, then God rewarded Avram for moving to Canaan with the blessing of success in battle.

But what about the blessing of fertility, which is necessary for God’s promise of a great nation of descendants?

The next time God makes him a promise involving descendants, Avram speaks up.

After these events, the word of God happened to Avram in a vision, saying: “Don’t be afraid, Avram! I myself am a shield to you; your reward multiplies exceedingly!” Then Avram said: “My lord God, what will you give to me? And I am going childless, and the heir of my household is a Damascan, Eliezer.” And Avram said: “Hey, you have not given a descendant to me, and hey! The heir of my household will inherit from me.” (Genesis 15:1-3)

The repetition of “Avram said” in the middle of a speech is a biblical convention indicating that the speaker pauses, but the one being addressed does not respond, so the speaker says more. In this case, the God character may be surprised that Avram asked a question; it is the first time someone questions God in the book of Genesis.6

After Avram rephrases his issue, God does respond:

“This one will not inherit from you. Instead, one going out from your innards, he will inherit from you.” And [God] brought him outside and said: “Look, please, toward the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And [God] said to him: “Thus will be your descendants.” (Genesis 15:4-5)

Does Avram believe God’s promise that he will father a son, who will have countless descendants? The text says:

And he trusted in God, and [God] reckoned it as righteousness on his part. (Genesis 15:6)

Yet after God repeats the promise to give Avram the land of Canaan (through his descendants), Avram says:

“My lord God, how will I know that I will possess it [the land]?” (Genesis 15:8)

Now he sounds as if he has some doubts about God’s promises, and wants something more reassuring than words. So God arranges an elaborate ceremony commonly called the “Covenant of the Pieces”. Following God’s instructions, Avram cuts in half a heifer, a she-goat, and a ram, and lines up the pieces facing each other. He adds two birds, so each row has three half-animals and a bird. One ritual in the Ancient Near East was for two leaders “cutting” a treaty to cut an animal in half and then walk between the two parts.7

Abraham falls into a deep sleep or trance at sunset, and hears God reveal that his descendants will suffer a 400-year exile in Egypt, but then return to Canaan. Then he sees an oven smoking, and a flaming torch passing between the pieces of the animals. The story concludes:

On that day, God cut a covenant with Avram, saying: “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” (Genesis 15:18)

Is God’s first covenant with Avram lop-sided, with only God vowing to do something? Or will God give Avram’s descendants all that land only if Avram “becomes a blessing”?

This year I am moved by Hirsch’s commentary saying that Jews, as Avram’s descendants, are also required to “become a blessing”:

“Honesty, humanity, and love are duties incumbent upon the individual, but are regarded as folly in relations between nations and are viewed as unimportant by statesmen and politicians. … In the midst of a world where mankind’s … ambition is to increase its power and extend its domain no matter what the cost, the nation of Avraham is—in private and public life—to heed only one call: Veheyeih brakhah! Its life is to be devoted to the Divine aims of bringing harmony to mankind and to the world and restoring man to his former glory.”8

May all human beings finally learn to be a blessing to others.

  1. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash, Sefer Bereshis, English translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2002, p. 290.
  2. Ramban (the acronym for 13th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, or Nachmanides), translated in www.sefaria.org.
  3. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, 2019.
  4. Bereishit Rabbah 39:11, ca. 400 CE, translated in www.sefaria.org.
  5. William L. Holladay, A Concise Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI, 1971, p. 49. (On the other hand, the 1906 edition of The Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon states that the nifil form of barakh means the same as the hitpael form: “bless oneself” or “congratulate oneself”.
  6. Not counting Cain’s remark “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, which is an excuse rather than a true question.
  7. E.g. Jeremiah 34:18. Also see my post Lekh-Lekha: Unconditional Covenant.
  8. Hirsch, p. 292-293.

Noach: Silent Obedience

This week’s Torah portion, Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:31), begins:

These are the histories of Noach: Noach was a tzadik man; he was tamim in his generations; Noach hithalekh God. (Genesis/Bereishit 6:9)

Noach (נֺחַ) = rest, resting-place; “Noah” in English.

tzadik (צַדִּיק) = in the right, just, God-fearing, innocent.

tamim (תָּמִים) = whole, intact, unblemished, perfect, unobjectionable.

hithalekh (הִתְהַלֶּךְ) = walked around with, went around with, followed around.

Is Noach being praised as a morally and religiously superior person?

Tzadik could mean righteous, or merely innocent. Tamim could mean perfect, or merely unobjectionable relative to others. The verb hithalekh could mean that Noach followed direct instructions from God, but did not take initiative to follow the spirit of God’s directives like Abraham and Hezekiah, who “walked around in God’s presence”.1

As the story of the flood unfolds, Noach does everything God tells him to. But does this make him virtuous? Or is he merely resting, like his name, because it is easier not to think for himself?

Not too awful

Just before the Torah portion begins, the text sets the scene:

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso, 1937

Then God saw that great was the evil-doing of the human on the earth, and every shape of its conscious planning was only evil all the time. And God had a change of heart about making the human on the earth, and [God] felt mental anguish. And God said: “I will wipe out humankind, which I created, from the face of the earth, from human to beast to crawling thing to flying thing of the sky, because I have had a change of heart about making them.” But Noach found favor in the eyes of God. (Genesis 6:5-8)

(See my post Noach: Spoiled on why God wipes out all the other land animals, as well as human beings, except those on Noach’s ark.)

In the context of massive evil-doing by nearly all human beings, it need not take much for the God character to view Noach favorably. At least Noach is innocent and unobjectionable, and takes orders.

According to Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, “So, here, God chooses Noah, not because he has achieved significant wisdom or virtue, but because He seeks to convey to some one the knowledge of Himself.”2

I find it hard to believe that out of the entire human population, Noach is the only family head who is innocent, unobjectionable, and obedient (and has some carpentry skills). Surely there must be a few other meek and non-violent men. So why does God choose Noach?

According to Daniel Feldman, God chooses Noach because he is calm. “… the prized attribute he possessed is hinted at in his name, Noach, which suggested calmness. In other words, he was in control of his temperament, and did not give himself to anger … On the other hand, a failure to anger can sometimes reflect a failure to respond to, or even to notice, injustice and immoral behavior in one’s orbit. Accordingly, the source of Noach’s chein [favor] may equally have been the source of his criticized passivity.”3

Noach’s silence

Noah is minding his own business when God suddenly speaks to him.

And God said to Noah: “The end of all flesh is coming before Me, because the earth is filled with violence because of them. So here I am, ruining them along with the land. Make for yourself an ark of gofer wood …” (Genesis 6:12-6:14)

Noah listens silently to the instructions of the voice in his head, and follows them to the letter.

And Noah did everything God commanded him; that is what he did. (Genesis 6:22)

Another person might ask why God plans to drown all the animals on earth except for those in the ark: eight humans (Noah, his wife, their three sons, and the sons’ wives) and one pair of each of other species.4 Even if almost all adult humans are violent and do evil, some of them might repent if they were warned. Some children might learn better behavior. And what about all the non-human animals God has doomed?

But Noah only does what he is told.

Then God said to Noah: “Come into the ark, you and your whole household, for I have seen you are a tzadik before me in this generation.” (Genesis 7:1)

The “you” in this sentence is singular, not plural; it does not seem to matter whether Noah’s wife, sons, and daughters-in-law are innocent.

After giving some additional instructions about animals, God says:

Noah’s Ark and the Flood, Augsburg Book of Miracles, ca. 1552

“For in another seven days, I will be sending rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe out everything that exists, that I made, from the surface of the land.” (Genesis 7:4)

Apparently this explicit warning still does not inspire Noach to speak—either to question God, or to tell any humans outside his immediate family what is about to happen.5 The text only repeats:

And Noach did everything that God had commanded him. (Genesis 7:5)

Failure to question or pray

According to one 18th-century commentary, Or HaChayim, “Noach became convinced from what God told him that any prayer of his would be futile, that the fate of these people had been sealed beyond reprieve. All of this is contained in the words: ‘the end of all flesh has come before Me, here I am about to destroy them.’”6

Another 18th-century commentary, Kedushat Levi, attributed Noach’s decision to remain silent to his own self-evaluation: “Now even though Noah was a great and blameless tsaddik, he was very small in his own eyes and did not have faith that he was a powerful tsaddik with the ability to annul the decree of the flood. In fact, he thought of himself as being equal to the rest of his generation. …Therefore, he did not pray to save the people of his generation.”7

But this is a poor excuse, wrote Arthur Green. “The question is whether we choose to stand up and act for the good, even while knowing that we may not succeed and that our actions will be imperfect.”8

Modern commentator Norman Cohen, on the other hand, wrote that Noach is passive because he is self-centered.  “Noah saw the world through the narrow prism of his own life and his own needs. He was concerned only with himself—a trait evident in most young children. He seemed to show a lack of compassion for all the rest of humanity, which was about to be destroyed. All that mattered to him was that the ark would guarantee his survival and that of his household.”9

Failure to warn

The same explanations for why Noach fails to speak up to God also apply to the question of why Noach fails to warn other human beings.

Irreversible fate. Just as God seems adamant about wiping out all humans and land animals except for those on the ark, Noach’s neighbors might seem unyielding in their determination to do wholesale violence. He might believe that warning them about their fate would be useless, since they would never reform. (He might also think that even if a few people did repent, God would not let him smuggle them on the ark, or let them build their own boats.)

Low self-esteem. Just as Noach does not believe God would listen to him, Noach would not believe that other people would listen to him. A low self-opinion makes everyone else look more powerful. Feldman wrote: “In order to react proactively to injustice, one must first have faith in their own ability to make a difference. A lack of such faith can result in the perception that all reaction is futile, and not worth the effort.”10

Egocentrism. If the problem is that Noach is so self-centered that he lacks compassion, he has no motivation to go to the trouble of warning people about the coming flood. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg wrote: “It is not surprising that he is not effective in swaying his contemporaries. … Noah’s silence, I suggest, is essentially a metastasis of the sickness of his time. He is incurious, he does not know and does not care what happens to others. He suffers from the incapacity to speak meaningfully to God or to his fellow human beings.”11 Zornberg added that Noach’s time in the ark teaches him about compassion, since he and his family must spend all their time feeding the various animals. “… there is feeding, the acute awareness of timing and taste in nurturing the other. I suggest that feeding animals becomes a year-long workshop in … kindness.”12

Noach’s name means “rest”. When he is born, his father, Lemekh, gives him that name as an expression of hope, saying:

“May this one give us a change of heart from our labor and from the toil of our hands, from the ground that God cursed.” (Genesis 5:29)

Eight long generations after God cursed the ground so that Adam would have to work hard to farm it,13 Lemekh is fed up with the endless labor and wants some rest.

We all want rest from hard labor, time off to do the things that please us. Over the millennia, humans have found ways to reduce the hardship—through inventing technologies, yes, but mostly through cooperating and helping each other. When we engage in too much violence, the system falls apart and people starve. The cure for a world of violence, as the God character realizes at the end of the story of the flood,14 is not to make an ark to rescue a select few and start a new world. The cure is the mutual aid that can only happen if we are not like Noach—only if we care about our fellow creatures, and do not rest silently in the belief that our efforts would be futile.

  1. Noach and Enoch (Genesis 5:24) “walked around with God” (et ha-Elohim hithalekh, אֶת הָאֱלֺהִים הִתְהַלֶּךְ). The Hebrew Bible also refers three times to walking around in God’s presence (lehithaleikh lifnei Elohim, לְהִתְהַלֵּךְ לִפְנֵי אֱלֺהִים), by Abraham in Genesis 24:40, Hezekiah in 2 Kings 20:3 and Isaiah 38:3, and the psalmist in Psalm 56:14. The injunction to “walk humbly with your God” in Micah 6:8 uses the infinitive kal form of the verb halakh (lekhet, לֶכֶת = “to walk”), rather than the infinitive hitpael form of the verb (hithaleikh, הִתְְהַלֵּךְ = to walk around).
  2. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, Doubleday, New York, 1995, p. 41.
  3. Daniel Z. Feldman, “Noach: Of Rage, Rainbows, and Redemption”, Mitokh Ha-Ohel: Essages on the Weekly Parashah from the Rabbis and Professors of Yeshiva University, Yeshiva University, New York, 2010.
  4. Genesis 6:19-20.
  5. See my 2013 post Noach: Righteous Choices.
  6. Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar (c.1718 – c.1742), Or HaChayim, on 6:13, translated in www.sefaria.org.
  7. Levi Yitzchak of Berdyczow (1740-1809), Kedushat Levi, translated by Arthur Green in Speaking Torah: Vol. 1, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2013, p. 90.
  8. Arthur Green, Speaking Torah Vol. 1, commentary on Kedushat Levi, p. 90.
  9. Norman J. Cohen, Voices from Genesis, Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, VT, 2001, p. 52.
  10. Feldman, ibid.
  11. Zornberg,p. 58.
  12. Ibid, p. 61.
  13. Genesis 3:17.
  14. Genesis 8:21.

Bereishit: Darkness First

Simchat Torah (“Joy of the Torah”) is the day when, besides dancing with the Torah scroll, Jews read the end of Deuteronomy/Devarim, then roll the Torah scroll all the way back to the beginning and start reading Genesis/Bereishit. The annual cycle of Torah portions begins again!1

Then for Shabbat this Saturday morning we read from the first Torah portion in Genesis. In this blog post, let’s look at the darkness at the beginning of the book.

Darkness before light

The book of Genesis begins with a grand poetic work describing six days of creation and a seventh day of rest. It opens by stating the subject of the composition:

At the beginning God created the heavens and ha-aretz. (Genesis/Bereishit 1:1)

ha-aretz (הָאָרֶץ) = the earth, the land, the ground; the world.

In Genesis 1:1 it means “the earth”, since the heavens and the earth together make the created world. In the next verse, we learn that God does not create the world ex nihilo, out of nothing. What already existed before God begins to speak was dark, shapeless, and watery.

And ha-aretz had been2 undifferentiated unreality, and darkness over the face of tehom; and the breath of God hovered over the surface of the water. (Genesis 1:2)

In this verse, the best translation for ha-aretz is “world”, since it refers to what existed before there was a solid mass of earth (or, in today’s terms, a planet). “Undifferentiated unreality” is one translation for tohu vavohu (תֺטוּ וָבֺהטוּ). The “breath” of God is one translation for God’s ruach (רוּחַ). (See my post Bereishit: Before the Beginning for alternate translations of tohu vavohu and ruach.)

The Hebrew word for darkness is choshekh (חֺשֶׁךְ), which captures both the literal usage and many of the same metaphorical usages as in English. But the darkness is over the surface of something else: tehom.

tehom (תְהוֹם) = a source of deep water, i.e. an underground spring; the subterranean water beneath the earth.

In the second verse of Genesis, tehom probably means infinitely deep water, since the breathof God hovers “over the surface of the water”.

Hieronymus Bosch, exterior shutters of The Garden of Earthly Delights, 15th century. In ancient Israelite cosmology, the black background would represent the waters above and below.

(As in much literature from the Ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible pictures the universe as having four layers. The bottom is tehom, the water below, which extends downward infinitely, but is capped at the top by a layer of solid earth (with some rivers, lakes, and so forth). Above the earth is air and sky, the lower part of the heavens. The upper part of the heavens consists of more water: the water above, which extends upward infinitely.)

Both darkness and God’s “breath” are described as being over, or above, the tehom. So even though everything is undifferentiated unreality before God begins to create, there is in fact one distinction before creation: above and below. Either God is one of the things in the undifferentiated unreality above the tehom, or God is another category altogether, and only God’s hovering breath is there above the tehom.

Having established the situation before God begins to create, the text continues:

And God said: “Light, be!” And light was. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness night. And it was evening and it was morning, one day. (Genesis 1:3-5)

The separation of light from darkness creates the first day, consisting of a period of light (newly created) and a period of darkness (already there before God spoke).

So what does “darkness”, choshekh, mean in the first five verses of Genesis?

Is darkness visible?

Does “darkness” mean the absence of light, or is it something that is present, the way light is present? The clause “… and darkness was over the face of tehom …” implies that there was something above the surface of the water. If darkness meant the mere absence of light, the Torah could have said “… and nothing was over the face of tehom …”.

Furthermore, the curious sentence “And God separated the light from the darkness” implies that when light popped into being, it was mixed together with darkness at first. Then God began creating the orderly world by separating these two opposites, in time if not in space. The next verse says: “God called the light day, and the darkness night”.3

When God creates the plague of darkness in the book of Exodus, darkness seems like a visible and tangible substance.

And God said to Moses: “Stretch out your hand up to the heavens, and darkness will be over the land of Egypt, and [the Egyptians] will feel darkness!” And Moses stretched his hand up to the heavens, and gloomy darkness was in all the land of Egypt three days. A man could not see his brother, a man could not get up from his spot, for three days. But for all the Israelites, light was in their dwelling-places. (Exodus/Shemot 10:21-23)

The poetic image is of a darkness so dense that it presses against the skin. But then it becomes clear that the Egyptians are totally blind for three days, while the Israelites can still see light.

One tradition in Jewish commentary is that darkness did exist before God spoke light into being, but the darkness was invisible. (This begs the question of whether something can be invisible if there is nobody to see it.) The writer known as Pseudo-Philo, who lived circa 70-150 C.E., imagined King David singing: “Darkness and silence were before the world was made, and silence spoke and the darkness became visible.”4

This implies that God was the primordial silence, and darkness was the primordial light. First God changed, by speaking. Then God’s first words, “Light, be!” changed darkness into light, making it visible.

In the 12th or 13th century, Radak wrote that the darkness before God spoke was actually a type of fire, but it was invisible because it could not produce light. He added that this invisible fire is still present at night. “If this primordial fire would give off light, we would be able to see at nighttime. The night would appear to us as if it were aflame.”5

Is darkness bad?

And God saw the light, that it was good … (Genesis 1:4)

Does that mean merely that God identifies light as good? Or does it mean that darkness is bad by contrast?

The implication that light is good and darkness is bad appears as early as Second Isaiah, written in the 6th century B.C.E.:

Forming light and creating darkness, making peace and creating evil—I, God, am doing all these. (Isaiah 45:7)

But many commentators have objected to the idea that God creates, or created, evil. They take the view that there is only one God and God is good, so therefore evil must come from a different source. But what is the source? One common answer to the “Problem of Evil” is that God gave human beings free will, and therefore we sometimes choose to commit evil acts. But this does not explain another category of evil: the natural causes of diseases and disasters that make innocent people suffer.

One solution to the problem is that our world is “the best of all possible worlds”, the explanation of Gottfried Leibniz in his 1710 book known as the Theodicy. But the first chapter of Genesis indicates a different solution. Israel Knohl wrote:

“In my view, the Priestly description of Creation is an effort to solve this fundamental dilemma. The primeval elements tohu [undifferentiation], choshekh [darkness], and tehom [water below] all belong to the evil sphere. The three elements comprising the preexistent cosmic substance are the roots (put another way, the substance) of the evil in the world. At the conclusion of the Priestly account of Creation, it is written: ‘And God saw all that He had made, and found it very good’ (Gen. 1:31). All that God had made was very good. Evil was not made by God. It predated the Creation in Genesis 1!”6

But S.R. Hirsch pointed out that if we assume that God did not create darkness, we end up limiting God’s abilities:

“If matter had antedated Creation, then the Creator of the universe would have been able to fashion from the material given Him not a world that was absolutely good, but only the best world possible within the limitations of the material. In that case, all evil—natural and moral—would be due to the inherent faultiness of the material, and not even God would be able to save the world from evil, natural or moral.”8

Since Hirsch could not accept the idea that God is not omnipotent, he insisted that God created everything that ever was, including the darkness that existed before God created light. Then he maintained that God is omnibenevolent, and this is not merely the best of all possible worlds, but the only ultimately good world.

“This world—with all its seeming flaws—corresponds with the wise plan of the creator; He could have created a different world, has such a world corresponded with His Will. … Both, the world and man, will reach the highest ideal of the good, for which both were created. They will achieve this level of good because God, Who has placed this goal before them, has created them both for this goal, in accordance with His free and unlimited Will.”9

Assigning a goal to not just human beings, but the whole natural world, strains credulity. Is it worth denying the plain meaning of Genesis 1:2—that chaotic undifferentiation, darkness, and the mysterious deeps existed before God started creating the world—in order to defend the post-biblical belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent?

The beginning of Genesis does not say that God created darkness. Nor does it say that darkness is evil. Darkness is just there, like God’s hovering breath. Evil does not come into the picture until after God has created humankind.

After all, we humans decide what we classify as evil.

  1. Some congregations read an entire Torah portion each week, while others read a third of the Torah portion on that week. (One year it is the first third, the next year it is the middle third, and the third year it is the last third.) By either system, Jewish congregations finish Deuteronomy and start Genesis again on Simchat Torah.
  2. In Genesis 1:2, the noun ha-aretz comes before the verb, haitah (הָיְתתָה), which is in the perfect form. This syntax is used in Biblical Hebrew to indicate the past perfect, so the correct translation is “And the earth had been …” (Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, HarperCollins Publishers, New York, 2001, p. 6) 
  3. God does not create the sun until the fourth day. However, on the fourth day God says that the purpose of the sun, moon, and stars is: “to separate the day from the night”(Genesis 1:14).
  4. Pseudo-Philo, Book of Biblical Antiquities, translated by Howard Jacobson, Outside the Bible, Jewish Publication Society, 2013, p. 601.
  5. Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, 1160-1235), translated in www.sefaria.org.
  6. Israel Knohl, The Divine Symphony: The Bible’s Many Voices, The Jewish Publication Society, Philadelphia, 2003, p. 12.
  7. See my post Psalm 73: When Good Things Happen.
  8. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Bereshis, English translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2002, p. 1.
  9. Ibid, p. 2.