To me, dogs are pets. Most dogs have appealing personalities, and the love between dog and human is real. I rarely cry, but I cried when our dog died.
Canaan dog
In the Torah, dogs are bad news. The ancient Israelites did not domesticate dogs until late in the First Temple period, even though their neighbors had long been training dogs for hunting, herding, and guarding. So most of the 24 references to dogs in the Hebrew Bible view them as disgusting feral scavengers. Calling a man a dog (or worse, a dead dog) means that he is the lowest of the low.
The first appearance of the Hebrew word for dog, kelev, is in this week’s Torah portion, Bo (“Come”).
Moses said: Thus said God: In the middle of the night, I Myself will go out in the midst of Egypt. And every firstborn in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones, and every firstborn beast. Then there will be loud wailing in all the land of Egypt, the like of which has never happened, and the like of which will not happen again. But as for all the children of Israel, not a dog yecheratz its tongue against man or beast; in order that you shall know that God makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. (Exodus/Shemot 11:4-7)
yecheratz = will cut, will sharpen, will use a sharp instrument, will decide
On the night of the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn, not a dog will use its tongue as a sharp instrument against the Israelites. In other words, while God is killing Egyptians, not even a dog will snarl or bark to threaten the Israelites.
The verses translated above include two contrasts between the highest and the lowest. First, God says all the firstborn of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on his throne, to the firstborn of the slave-woman who is behind the millstones. The phrase “slave-woman behind the millstones” is a translation of a phrase that an Egyptian document uses to indicate someone of the lowest possible social class. In other words, God will make no exceptions; everyone belonging to Egypt will suffer, regardless of social position, and regardless of guilt or innocence.
Next, the Torah says that everyone belonging to Israel will be safe from all threats: from the highest power possible–God Itself–to the lowest danger–dogs. In the middle of the night, while God is killing the Egyptian firstborn, and the Israelites are eating their Passover lamb, roaming dogs will not bite any Israelite humans or beasts. They will not even bark.
This reminds me of the dog that did not bark in the night in “Silver Blaze”, a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle. Inspector Gregory asks Holmes, “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
“The dog did nothing in the night-time.”
“That was the curious incident.”
Sherlock Holmes has deduced that the guard-dog was silent in the middle of the night because the intruder was not a stranger, but the dog’s owner.
The passage in Exodus/Shemot contrasts the loud wailing of the Egyptians with the silence of the dogs. Dogs get agitated when their owners start screaming and wailing, and they respond by whimpering and barking. The dogs who will not growl or bark during the night of the death of the firstborn clearly do not have Egyptian owners. The Israelites who wrote down the Torah thought of dogs as ownerless wanderers, so the silent dogs do not belong to the children of Israel, either. Whose dogs are they?
And it was at midnight when God struck every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh sitting on this throne, to the firstborn of the captive in the dungeon, and every firstborn beast. (Exodus 12:29)
God goes from house to house in Egypt that night, skipping over only the houses of the Israelites. But the dogs roaming in the streets are silent, like the dog in “Silver Blaze”–because they recognize their owner.
I want to be like a dog. I don’t want to be the lowest of the low. But I do want to recognize my owner.
I have often wondered why the scout in the book of Numbers/Bamidbar who argues that the Israelites should go ahead and enter Canaan, and trust God to give them the land, is named Caleb, Kaleiv in Hebrew. His name comes from the same root as kelev, “dog”. Yet Caleb’s actions are all virtuous, not base and low, the way most dogs in the Torah behave. Perhaps Caleb is named after the dogs in Egypt—because he, too, recognized God.
This week we open a new book in the cycle of Torah readings, the book of Exodus/Shemot (“Names”). The Israelites, who were welcome guests in Egypt at the end of Genesis/Bereishit, are now slaves under a genocidal pharoah. This week’s Torah portion, also called Shemot, tells the story of Moses from his birth to Hebrew slaves until his return to Egypt as God’s prophet.
His life story does not mention God until after Moses is settled in the land of Midian with a wife and child. He knows that he was born a Hebrew, and that his people have their own god, but he does not know the god’s name. Moses learns about Egyptian gods while he is growing up as the adopted son of the pharaoh’s daughter. He also learns about the gods of Midian, since he lives with the Midianite priest Yitro and marries one of his daughters.
In Midian, Moses leads a introspective life as a shepherd, deliberately taking his flock to remote places where he will be alone.
Moses was shepherding the flock of Yitro, his father-in-law, priest of Midian, and he guided the flock achar the midbar, and he came to the mountain of God, to chorev. (Exodus/Shemot 3:1)
achar(אַחַר) = behind, after, in the back, in the future
midbar (מִדְבָּר) = the wilderness. (A homonym is midbeir,מְדַבֵּר = speaking, speaker.)
chorev (חֺרֵב) = dry desolation; “Horeb” (in English), the name of a mountain and a region also identified as Sinai.
A simple translation is that Moses “guided the flock beyond the wilderness, and he came to the mountain of God, to (Mount) Chorev”.
Alternatively, maybe Moses “guided the flock to the future of the speaker, and he came to the mountain of God, to dry desolation”. The second translation is non-standard, but it does describe Moses’ psychological journey. He takes what he was given by his father-in-law the priest (literally sheep, but perhaps also theology), and goes beyond his accustomed life into his own future. He is about to become a prophet, a speaker for God. He is also about to feel dry and desolate, because he does not want the mission God thrusts upon him.
Meanwhile, God has noticed the groaning of the enslaved Israelites, and is about to recruit Moses as the instrument for liberating and leading the Israelites. But God does not suddenly speak to Moses, or appear in a dream, as God did with Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, and Jacob in the book of Genesis. Instead, God arranges a small miracle off to one side of Moses’ route.
Moses at the Burning Bush, by Rembrandt van Rijn
Then a messenger of God appeared to him in a flame of fire from the middle ofthe seneh; and he saw it; and hey! the seneh was burning in the fire, buttheseneh was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2)
seneh (סְנֶה) = a particular type of bush
In the entire Hebrew bible, the word senehappears only in this scene (five times), and once in Deuteronomy/Devarim. It is probably related to the Arabic word sina = thornbush, and the Latin senna = a family of woody flowering perennials with straggling branches, about knee-high. The seneh may or may not come from the same Hebrew root as Sinai(סִינַי), the other name for the mountain where Moses repeatedly meets God. But as Martin Buber pointed out, repeating the word senehthree times in one sentence certainly evokes the name “Sinai”.
Later in the book of Exodus, God manifests at Mount Sinai in volcanic fire and thunder. But here, God’s fire appears in a small plant, and burns quietly without consuming it. Why does God choose this manifestation?
The symbolic meaning of the burning bush according to Shemot Rabbah is that Moses is afraid Egypt will destroy Israel, just as a fire would normally destroy a bush. Since this burning bush is not consumed, it represents a promise that the Israelites will never be destroyed by their oppressors.1
I agree with 20th-century scholar Nehama Leibowitz that the fire in the bush is an implausible symbol for the Egyptians; since God’s messenger (angel) speaks from the middle of this fire, the fire would more plausibly represent divine revelation.2 According to 19th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, the burning bush means that anyone who opens their heart to God will not be destroyed by the divine power.3
Moses said: “Oh, I must turn aside so I will see this great sight! Why does the bush not burn up?” (Exodus 3:3)
The “messenger” of God is simply the sight of something outside natural law—and therefore numinous. Moses is a person who will notice something unusual and turn aside. Maybe he is curious about the nature of the universe; or maybe he is searching for God. After all, why did he take the flock beyond the grassy wilderness to this dry and desolate mountain, where there is nothing good for sheep to eat? His father-in-law the priest must have told him where to find the “mountain of the gods”. Now Moses is alert for any sign of the divine.
God does not speak to Moses until after he has turned aside to look at the bush. Apparently alert curiosity and a willingness to approach the numinous are essential traits that God requires in his prophet.
And God saw that he had turned aside to see, so God called to him from the middle of the bush, and said: “Moses! Moses!” And he said: “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:4)
That Moses hears God speak from a mere thorn-bush demonstrates that God is everywhere, even in the lowliest places: a scrubby shrub as well as a tall cedar of Lebanon, a small and barren mountain as well as a lofty peak.4
I have heard many of my friends say they feel God’s presence the most when they are out hiking and surrounded by tall trees or snow-capped peaks. I confess that I, too, feel touched by something numinous when I see the forest or the ocean here in Oregon. Yet I know that if we want to seek the divine, we need to look at straggly little plants as well as cedars, and pray in pre-fab rooms as well as cathedrals.
And God said: Don’t come closer to here! Take off your sandals from upon your feet, because the place that you are standing upon is holy ground. (Exodus 3:5)
Moses cannot come closer to God right away. No matter how much he wants to understand the divine, he must learn about God during the course of a long relationship.
In my experience, that is also true for God-seekers today. A mystical experience can be a message, but it does not change your life, or even your soul. The next day, your old behaviors come right back (even if your feeling of transformation keeps you from noticing them). One experience cannot change you into someone who walks with God—someone who thoughtfully does the right things and remains aware of a larger view of reality. You have to change yourself over the course of many years, noticing when it is time to turn aside, noticing when you have made another mistake, and remembering over and over again that a divine fire hides in the weedy bushes of life.
At least that’s what I believe. So I take comfort from knowing that even Moses cannot walk right into the divine fire and become one with God. His encounter at the burning bush is only the beginning. But at least God tells him he is standing on holy ground. If only we could realize that we are all standing on holy ground!
Shemot Rabbah 2:1. (Written by rabbis of the first few centuries C.E.)
Nehama Leibowitz, New Studies in Shemot, translated by Aryeh Newman, The Joint Authority for Jewish Zionist Education, Jerusalem, 1996, p. 55.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 31.
Mekhilta of R. Shimon b, Yochai, attributed to R. Eliezer b. Arakh, quoted in Leibowitz, p. 56.
On Thursday when my stepfather was released from the hospital, my mother was handed information about hospice care. As soon as she told me this over the phone, I pictured my stepfather’s name being erased from the book of life.
Every year, from Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur, Jews pray that God will inscribe their names in the book of life. The ancient Jewish tradition says that anyone whose name is omitted from the list will die sometime during the year. Jews greet each other during those holy days by saying: Leshanah tovah tikateivu! (May you be inscribed for a good year!)
In another part of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy, we acknowledge that we do not know when or how a person will die. The liturgy asks “Who by fire and who by water? Who by sword and who by wild beast?” The list of possible ways to die continues, and then broadens into the recognition that we do not even know what will happen to those who live. “Who will rest and who will wander? Who will be undisturbed and who yitareif?”
yitareif =will be like prey torn to pieces by wild animals
Who will die by cancer this year? Who will feel torn to pieces, like my mother?
If you are a subscriber to this blog and you notice that I miss a week or two, you will know I am helping my mother during the next stage of my stepfather’s exit from this world. On other weeks, I hope I will be able to carry on with my own life, including researching, writing, and posting this blog. But I do not know.
As for this week, the Torah portion is Vayeishev (And he settled), the first part of the story of Joseph. This year, I am struck by how quickly Jacob assumes that his favorite son, Joseph, is dead. In fact, his ten older brothers throw him into a pit far from home. They consider murdering him, but they sell him into slavery instead. Now that they have disposed of the brother they hate, what will they tell their father when they return home without him?
They took Joseph’s tunic and they slaughtered a he-goat kid, and they dipped the tunic in the blood. Then they sent the fancy tunic and had it brought it to their father. And they said: We found this. Recognize, please; is it the tunic of your son, or not? And he recognized it, and he said: The tunic of my son! An evil wild beast devoured him! Joseph is definitely toraf! (Genesis/Bereishit 37:31-33)
toraf = prey torn to pieces by a wild animal (a different form of the word yitareif above)
And Jacob ripped his cloak and he put sak around his hips and he put himself into mourning over his son for many, many days. All his sons (and grandsons) and his daughters (and granddaughters) rose up to console him, but he refused to console himself. And he said: For I will do down to my son in mourning, sheolah. And his father wailed for him. (Genesis 37:34-35)
sak = sack-cloth; crude material made of goat hair
sheolah= to Sheol, to the underworld, to the grave; to ask it, to wish for it
Why does Jacob refuse to be consoled for Joseph’s death, and continue wailing and wearing sackcloth for such a long time? We do not expect him to forget the (supposed) death of his favorite son, but the Torah implies that his mourning is excessive. I think Jacob feels responsible for Joseph’s death, and his guilt prevents him from turning back toward life.
Jacob is clearly responsible for the initial jealousy of Joseph’s ten older brothers.
…[Jacob] made him a fancy tunic. And his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of his brothers, so they hated him, and they were not able to speak to him in peace. (Genesis 37:3-4)
The brothers’ resentment increases when the 17-year-old Joseph tells them his two prophetic dreams, in which his brothers are symbolically bowing down to him. Jacob hears about the dreams, and he knows that his older sons cannot speak to Joseph in peace. Nevertheless, he sends Joseph far away from home to check up on how his brothers are pasturing the flocks, and report back.
Jacob must realize, on some level, that he is sending his favorite son into danger. Subconsciously he must be afraid that he has sent Joseph to his death. When he sees the bloody tunic, he asks no questions, but jumps to the conclusion that Joseph has been killed. When he says, “Joseph is definitely prey torn to pieces by a wild animal!” he might mean it literally. But he might also mean that Joseph is the prey of his brothers, who are like wild, murderous beasts. Jacob has not forgotten how his ten older sons once tricked the entire male population of the city of Shechem and then exterminated them.
Even Jacob’s use of the word Sheol is ambiguous. I do not know why Sheol, the word for the place where dead bodies go, has the same root as the verb “to ask” or “to wish for”. But here, both meanings of the word apply. Jacob is so overwhelmed by guilt, he wishes to die like his son Joseph. If Joseph is dead, Jacob can never make amends, never set things right.
Jacob’s inconsolable mourning demonstrates what happens when you carry a burden of guilt. It is easier, in the short run, to act without thinking about whether your action will hurt someone. It is easier, in the short run, to avoid making amends when you are guilty over a past mistake. But I know that in the long run, guilt catches up with you. And you never know when it will suddenly be too late to set things right.
I believe that if we think ahead, dedicate ourselves to doing no harm, and address our mistakes as soon as we realize them, then we will not suffer like Jacob. We will be able to accept the reality of death, and also rejoice in the reality of living.
But I know this belief of mine will be tested again. We are all tested. Every year, some people are left out of the book of life.
Esau and Jacob are twin brothers, but because of their personality differences they can never build a real partnership—any more than a goat can partner with a snake.
Birth of Esau and Jacob, by Francois Maitre, ca. 1480
The Torah identifies the twins with these two animals when they are born in this week’s Torah portion, Toledot (“Lineages”):
The first emerged red [and] completely like a robe of sei-ar, so they called his name Eisav. And after that his brother emerged, and his hand was holding fast to the heel of Eisav, so he called his name Ya-akov … (Genesis/Bereishit 25:25-26)
sei-ar (שֵׂעָר) = goat hair, bristling hair. (From the same root as sa-ir, שָׂעִיר = he-goat.)
Eisav (עֵשָׂו) = (Esau in English) Doer, Made. (From the root verb asah, עָשָׂה = do, make.)
Ya-akov (יַעֲקֹב) = (Jacob in English) Heel-grabber, Sneak. (From the same root as akeiv, עָקֵב = heel, which derives from the verb akav, עָקַב= came from behind.)
The Torah explains why Jacob and Rebekah, the parents of the twins, named the second one Ya-akov: he emerged hanging onto his brother’s heel. But why did they name the first one Eisav? Rashi (11th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yiztchaki) wrote that because he was covered with hair, he looked like an adult, completely “made”.
Toledot
At birth, Esau is hairy like a goat. Goats are also known for being “horny” beasts, which fits Esau’s personality when he grows up. He brings home not one, but two Hittite wives against his parents’ objections.1
Jacob’s grip on his twin’s heel is a reminder of the snake in the garden of Eden, whom God cursed to crawl on his belly and bite humans on the heel.2 The Torah describes the heel-biting snake as arum (עָרוּם) = naked; clever, cunning.3 Jacob is hairless, and therefore naked compared to Esau; and when he grows up he is the clever one. We first see this when Esau comes home famished and Jacob talks him into trading his birthright for a bowl of stew.4
In the next scene about Esau and Jacob, their blind father, Isaac, wants to give his firstborn son a blessing. But first he tells Esau to go hunt game and make it into the delicacy he loves. Rebecca, the twins’ mother, overhears. She is certain that Jacob should get the blessing instead. So she orders Jacob:
“Please go to the flock and take for me two good goat kids, and I will make them a delicacy for your father like [those] he loves.” (Genesis 27:9)
Rebecca’s favorite son can bring back goats from the flock faster than Esau can hunt, and she knows how to make them taste like the game Esau often cooks for his father. On another level, Rebecca may be implying that Jacobshould overpower his hairy he-goat of a brother.
And why does she need two goats for one old man’s meal? Is she subconsciously sacrificing both of her sons to make sure the right one gets Isaac’s blessing?
Isaac Blessing Jacob, by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, 1642, detail
Jacob protests:
Hey, my brother Esau is a sa-ir man, and I am a smooth man! (Genesis 27:11)
sa-ir (שָׂעִר) = hairy. (Also from the same root as sa-ir, שָׂעִיר = he-goat.)
Physically, Jacob is still as smooth as a snake. So Rebecca fixes it. After dressing Jacob in Esau’s clothes, she covers his hands and neck “with skins of goat kids” (Genesis 27:16). When he brings in the dish of meat, his blind father is not sure which son he is. He speaks like Jacob, so Isaac asks him to come closer, and touches his son’s hands.
And he did not recognize him because his hands were like the hands of his brother, se-irot. And he blessed him. (Genesis 27:23)
se-irot(שְׂעִרֹת) = hairy. (The plural of sa-ir above.)
Isaac gives Jacob the blessing he intended for Esau. Enraged by the “theft” of his blessing, Esau rashly swears he will murder his brother, and Jacob quickly slips away and heads for his uncle Lavan’s house in Aram.
Vayeitzei
In the next Torah portion, Vayeitzei (“And he went”), Jacob marries his uncle Lavan’s daughters, Leah and Rachel, and serves Lavan for fourteen years in lieu of bride-prices for them. When his time is up, his employer/uncle/father-in-law does not want to let him go.
And Lavan said to him: “If, please, I have found favor in your eyes! Nichashti, and God has blessed me on account of you.” And he [Lavan] said: “Designate your wage to me, and I will give it.” (Genesis 30:27-28)
nichashti (נִחַשְׁתִּי) = I received an omen. (From the same root as nachash,נָחָשׁ = snake. Snakes were associated with omens and magic in the ancient Near East.)
Lavan comes close to saying, “I sought a snake, and God has blessed me on account of you.”
The serpentine Jacob makes a clever bargain with Lavan and works for another six years in exchange for far more livestock than his employer expected. Then twenty years after Jacob fled to avoid being murdered by his brother, he finally heads back toward Canaan with his family, servants, and flocks.
Vayishlach
The next Torah portion begins:
And Jacob sent messengers ahead of himself to his brother Esau, to the land of Sei-ir, the country of Edom. (Genesis 32:4)
sei-ir (שֵׂעִר) = hairy goat.
Esau has become the chieftain of “The Land of the Hairy Goat”, also called Edom. Jacob’s messengers return with the news that Esau is already marching to meet him—with 400 men.
Reconciliation of Jacob and Esau, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1624
This time, instead of bargaining with his twin brother, Jacobsends him extravagant gifts of livestock. (See my post Vayishlach: Two Camps.) In the morning, after Jacob has wrestled with a “man” who turns out to be a messenger of God, the estranged brothers meet. They embrace one another and weep out loud. Esau offers to return Jacob’s gifts, and Jacob insists that he keep everything.
“Because I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me.” (Genesis 33:10)
Then Esau offers to travel with Jacob as far as Sei-ir. But Jacob politely says his group has to go more slowly, so Esau and his men should go ahead, and he will catch up later. As soon Esau and his warriors are out of sight, Jacob heads in another direction. The two brothers do not see one another again until their father’s funeral.5
Esau and Jacob do better than Cain and Abel; they manage a peaceful reunion, and nobody dies. Yet a goat and a snake cannot become close friends and go home together. They have separate destinies.
May each of us be blessed, like Jacob, to see God’s face in people who are fundamentally different from us. And may we learn to greet them in peace, and part from them in peace.
Rebecca tries so hard to set up her son Jacob for a good life—and everything she does turns out to be a mistake.
Birth of Esau and Jacob, by Francois Maitre, ca. 1480
In this week’s Torah portion, Toledot (“Histories”), Rebecca and Isaac have twins who are opposites. Esau, the firstborn, is big and hairy, emotional and impulsive, fixated on food and sex.1 Jacob, born holding onto Esau’s heel, is smooth-skinned and smooth-tongued, clever and scheming, fixated on becoming a patriarch someday. He makes his first move when Esau comes home hungry after a long day of hunting, and Jacob trades a bowl of stew for his his brother’s birthright as the firstborn.2
Esau expresses his love for his 100-year-old blind father, Isaac, by feeding him meat from his hunts. Esau’s needs are as simple as his intellect, and he takes care of himself. Rebecca does not worry about her firstborn son.
Isaac loved Esau because of the hunted-meat in his mouth, but Rebecca was loving Jacob. (Genesis/Bereishit 25:28)
Rebecca does worry about her son Jacob. Although he has the intelligence and desire to carry on the legacy of his grandfather Abraham, he sticks close to the family’s tents, and at age 40 he remains unmarried. He will never be able to serve Abraham’s god unless he gets out into the world, and he will never continue the line of Abraham’s descent unless he marries a suitable woman.
What Rebecca wants for Jacob is a good wife and Abraham’s blessing from God. But only her husband Isaac can make these things happen. They live in Canaan, where marriages are arranged by men. And although God did answer Rebecca’s question once, when she was pregnant, Isaac has a stronger connection with the divine. After all, when he prayed to God to let her bear children, God responded.
Also God gave Isaac the blessing of Abraham. Rebecca knows that he has the power to pass it on to Jacob before he dies. And Isaac’s health is failing. When the twins were born, Isaac was 60. Now he is over 100. He is blind and finds it hard to stand up. One day, Rebecca overhears Isaac tell Esau:
“… go out in the field and hunt meat for me. Then make for me some tasty food that I love, and bring it to me, and I will eat it, so that my nefesh will bless you before I die.” (Genesis 27:3-4)
Rebecca jumps to the conclusion that Isaac is about to give Esau the blessing of Abraham. But God’s blessing would be wasted on Esau; it has to go to Jacob!
Isaac Blessing Jacob, by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, 1642 (detail)
Rebecca orders Jacob to bring Isaac the tasty food and secure the blessing before Esau gets back from the field. When Esau and Isaac find out what happened, she will take care of the consequences somehow. The charade spins out from there. Rebecca fastens goat-skins around Jacob’s hands and neck to imitate Esau’s hairiness. Isaac, after some uncertainty, gives Jacob the blessing he intended for Esau: a prayer for a life of material abundance and power, with no reference to God or Abraham.
I can imagine Rebecca listening in and discovering her mistake. Isaac merely wanted to bond with Esau the only way he could, through food, and then leave him with a father’s blessing–the blessing of his personal self, or even the blessing of his appetite. Isaac was saving the blessing of Abraham for Jacob after all. Now what can she do?
Of course the subterfuge is discovered as soon as Esau returns from his hunt. Esau weeps and begs his father for another blessing, and Isaac does the best he can. But Rebecca finds out that Esau is so enraged, he wants to kill Jacob as soon as their father dies.
Rebecca does not try to talk him down. Instead, she sees another opportunity to promote Yaakov’s welfare. She tells Yaakov he must flee to her brother in Charan in order to escape Esau’s murderous rage. Then she reminds Isaac of how much they dislike Esau’s Hittite wives, and hints that he must send Yaakov away to get a wife.
Rebecca said to Isaac: “I am disgusted with my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob takes a wife from the Hittite women like these, why should I go on living?” (Genesis 27.46)
So Isaac summoned Jacob and he blessed him and commanded him, and he said to him: “You must not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Get up, go to Padan of Aram, to the house of Betu-el, your mother’s father, and take yourself a wife from there, from the daughters of Lavan, your mother’s brother.” (Genesis 28:1-2)
Then Isaac, who never loses his temper, gives Jacob the blessing of Abraham.
“May God give you the blessing of Abraham for yourself, and for your offspring as well, so as to possess the land from your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham.” (Genesis 28:4)
Most commentary says that Rebecca’s motivation is to save Yaakov’s life, and her marriage scheme is an excuse. I think it is the other way around. As modern commentator Tikva Frymer-Kensky writes, Jacob would be just as safe if Isaac sent him to his ally, King Avimlelkh, or to his half-brother Ishmael, both of whom live nearby. Rivkah is smart enough to think of a pretext for sending Jacob to either man. Instead, she deliberately brings up the subject of Jacob’s marriage, knowing that Isaac’s first thought will be to get Jacob a wife from the relatives in Aram, just as Abraham did for him.
Why does Rebecca want Jacob to marry one of her brother Lavan’s daughters? The Torah does not say, but her desire is similar to Abraham’s; both want to keep the intermarriage among the descendants of Terach going. At least Lavan worships the same god as Abraham, even if he is not exclusive about it.
Rebecca also knows that her brother thinks in terms of material wealth. In last week’s Torah portion, we read that Lavan was willing to marry off his sister once he saw the jewelry Abraham’s steward had given her, and the ten camels carrying packs. Lavan would not accept a husband for any of the women in his household without receiving a hefty bride-price.
Yet in next week’s Torah portion, Vayeitzei (And he went), Jacob leaves home on foot, carrying nothing but a staff (and a few personal supplies, such as the oil he pours on the stone where he has his famous dream of the ladder of angels). Surely neither Isaac nor Rebecca would send their son off to Lavan to take a wife without giving him a mount, some servants, and a generous bride-price!
In my blog post Vayeitzei:Guilty Conscience, I speculated that Jacob’s guilt drives him to leave home before his parents have time to give him anything, and then to sentence himself to seven years of servitude to Lavan as the price for a wife. Now I think Jacob’s hasty departure might be due to fear as well as guilt. And Rebecca is to blame for this fear, since she tells Jacob Esau is determined to kill him, and urges him to flee.
Poor Rebecca. What she wants for Jacob is God’s blessing and the right wife. But everything she does to help Jacob has the opposite effect. Isaac planned all along to give God’s blessing to Jacob. By making Jacob masquerade as Esau, Rebecca only makes Jacob guilty and Esau enraged. Then Rebecca tries to get Jacob the right wife by telling him to flee to his uncle Lavan before Esau tries to murder him. The combination of fear and guilt make Jacob leave too soon, without a bride-price, and stay with Lavan for 20 years.
Jacob does, eventually, get what his mother wants for him: God’s blessing, both from Isaac’s lips and from God in a vision; and both of Lavan’s daughters as his wives. Yet Rebecca dies without ever seeing her favorite son again, or his children.
Could she do better? What if, as soon as she overheard her husband promising to give Esau the blessing of his nefesh, she went straight to Isaac and asked him what he intended? Or what if she spoke to Jacob directly about why he should marry one of Lavan’s daughters? Could Rebecca achieve her goals by being honest?
I know from my own experience that being honest and direct works well with someone who can listen to me, and ask for clarification when necessary. It does not work well with someone who becomes emotionally overwhelmed because a childhood complex is triggered, or with someone who simply cannot focus on what I am saying.
Isaac is passive and traumatized because his father nearly sacrificed him as a burnt offering, lifting the knife off his throat only at the last moment. Everything relating to fathers and sons might be emotionally overwhelming for him. And he is 100 years old, infirm, and blind. When the Torah says his eyes have dimmed, it may mean his mind has also dimmed, and he cannot focus long enough to hear Rebecca out.
And Jacob? He would be shocked by the consequences of obeying his mother and stealing Esau’s blessing, and expect a rejection from his father or an attack by his brother at any moment. In the middle of this crisis, how could he listen to someone talk about marriage?
Perhaps there are times when we are all like Rebecca, longing for the best outcome, but knowing there is no use in going for it directly and honestly. Yet if we try to manipulate the situation, we may discover that we have misread another person’s heart, and done everything wrong. We are only human. Yet sometimes, even if it comes too late for us, the best outcome arrives after all.
Esau is hairy from birth (Genesis 24:25), becomes a hunter (Genesis 25:27), is more interested in eating than in preserving his future (Genesis 25:29-34), and violates custom by bringing home two local Hittite women as wives without his parents’ permission (Genesis 26:34-35).
Biblical Hebrew has no separate verb for “marry”. Instead, a man “takes a wife”, or someone else takes a wife for him. In a culture dominated by men, a woman never “takes” a husband for herself.
The book of Genesis/Bereishit uses the verb “take” 138 times, and fully 40 of those times refer to taking a wife or concubine. Some individual men take wives for themselves: Lamekh, Abraham, Nachor, Pharaoh, Avimelekh, Esau, and Judah. But Sarah “takes” her slave-woman Hagar and gives her to Abraham as a second wife. Hagar takes a wife for her son Ishmael from the land of Egypt (Genesis 21:21). Lavan takes his daughter Leah to be a wife for Jacob. Both of Jacob’s wives, Leah and Rachel, take their slave-women and give them to Jacob as wives. Judah takes a wife for his son Eir. And in this week’s Torah portion, Chayyei Sarah (Life of Sarah), Abraham’s steward takes a wife for Abraham’s son Isaac.
Abraham does not even tell Isaac he is arranging a marriage for him. (They may not be on speaking terms, since Abraham put a knife to his son’s throat in last week’s Torah portion.) Instead, Abraham has his steward (possibly Eliezer, who was his steward before Yitzchak was born) arrange the marriage, and he makes the man swear, in a formal ceremony, that he will not take a Canaanite wife for Isaac. (See my earlier blog posting, “Chayyei Sarah: A Peculiar Oath“.) The steward, who is called Abraham’s “senior servant”, must go to his master’s relatives back in Aram to find the wife.
The servant said to him: “Perhaps the woman will not consent to go after me to this land; then, surely, won’t I bring your son back to the land which you left?” (Genesis/Bereishit 24:5)
This is the only marriage arrangement in the Torah in which the woman’s consent is mentioned. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that her consent is not necessary for the marriage, only for moving to the land where her bridegroom lives. If the bride refuses to move, then Isaac could only fulfill his duties as a husband by moving to the bride’s city.
But Abraham tells his steward that he must not bring Isaac to the land of Aram under any circumstances. If the wife he finds in Aram refuses to follow him to Canaan, then the marriage is off, and the steward is absolved of his oath. As many commentators have pointed out, Abraham seems to fear that if Isaac ever leaves Canaan, he will never return. He knows Isaac is a peacemaker who lacks initiative. But God has promised the land of Canaan to Abraham’s descendants through Isaac. So he insists that Isaac must stay in Canaan.
Why does he also insist that Isaac must not marry a Canaanite, and send his steward off to take a wife for Isaac from his relatives in Aram? For one theory on why Abraham’s family does so much intermarriage, see my post Book of Genesis: Inbreeding. Traditional commentary also points out that Isaac’s ideal wife must resemble Abraham; Abraham stipulates that she must come from the same family, and she, too, must be willing to to to a strange land, while Abraham’s steward stipulates that she must be as generously hospitable as Abraham.
Rebecca et Eliezer, by Alexandre Cabanel, 1883
When the steward reaches the city of Nachor in Aram, the first teenage girl he encounters is Rebecca, who proves to be extraordinarily generous, watering all ten of his camels and offering his whole caravan food and lodging for the night. She is also a close relative: the granddaughter of Nachor (Abraham’s brother) and Milkah (Abraham’s niece by another brother). The only requirement left is that she will agree to go to Canaan.
But first Rebecca’s parents must agree to the marriage. The steward has loaded the ten camels with gifts, and before he even asks her about her lineage, he gives Rebecca a gold nose ring and two gold bracelets. The Torah does not describe her reaction to this gift, but she would recognize it as first installment of the bride-price for a marriage arrangement.
The teenage girl ran, and she told her mother’s household about these events. (Genesis 24:28)
Why does the male-oriented Torah refer to her mother’s household, when both her father Betu-el and her brother Lavan are living there? Perhaps when Rebecca’s parents married, her father Betu-el went to live with his wife’s family–just as later in the book of Genesis, Jacob lives with his father-in-law and uncle, Lavan. Rabbi Elyse Goldstein has suggested that it was the custom in Rebecca’s family of origin for the groom to join the bride’s household, rather than the groom’s household.
The stories about Abraham’s family are probably set sometime between 1800 and 1500 BCE, when Aram was a region of Assyria in northern Mesopotamia, and would have followed the Babylonian customs during the reign of Hammurabi. The Code of Hammurabi includes both a law relating to when a young married couple is living with the groom’s parents, and a law relating to when they are living with the bride’s parents. So it is plausible that an Aramean family might have a tradition that the groom always moves in with bride’s family.
Presumably both Abraham and his steward know about this family tradition, and therefore know that the bride’s willingness to leave her mother’s house and travel to Canaan will be critical.
Rebecca’s father, mother, and brother agree to the proposed marriage on the same day the steward arrives in their house–perhaps because of the large bride-price, or perhaps because the steward’s story proves that the marriage is the will of the god that they, as well as Abraham, worship. But accepting the bride-price is only the first step in an arranged marriage.
Ancient Mesopotamian texts match the sequence in this week’s Torah portion:
1) The prospective husband, or his representative, gives the prospective bride’s parents the bride-price (her purchase price) as a “gift”. The parents (but not the bride) decide whether to accept the bride-price.
2) The two families draw up a marriage contract, which lists the bride-price and any stipulations. Now the bride and groom are betrothed, but the bride remains in her parents’ house.
3) The bride’s family gives the bride all or most of the bride-price, and adds some of their own wealth as a dowry for their daughter. This combined wealth will be controlled by the husband until he dies or divorces his wife; then the property (land, slaves, furniture, jewelry, gold, or silver) reverts to the wife.
4) The bride and groom themselves join hands (sometimes meeting for the first time) and the groom utters a wedding formula in front of a qualified witness.
5) The marriage is consummated in private.
Abraham’s steward gives Rebecca’s family a handsome bride-price, and they accept it. Presumably they write a marriage contract. The next morning, the steward asks permission to return to his master.
Her brother said, and her mother: “The (teenage) girl will stay with us, yamim or ten; afterward, she will go.” (Genesis 24:55)
yamim = days (literally); some while, about a year (figuratively)
And he said to them: “Don’t hold back on me, when God made my journey successful; send me, and I will go to my lord.” And they said: “We will call the girl, and we will ask her [for a decision from] her mouth.” And they called to Rebecca and they said to her: “Will you go with this man? And she said: I will go.” (Genesis 24:56-58)
Rebecca has a choice. She could insist on staying with her family in Aram, betrothed but not yet married, until Isaac himself shows up. Instead, she decides to go with the steward she met only the day before, and live with her new husband in Canaan. She willingly commits herself not only to a man she has never met, but also to a land she has never seen.
I admire Rebecca’s courage–all the more so because she must have grown up expecting that her parents would marry her to a man who would come and live with them. Her husband would be new, but the rest of her household would remain the same. And she would have no say in the arrangement.
With the arrival of Abraham’s steward, Rebecca suddenly gets a choice. And she makes her choice instantly and decisively, just as she decides to water all ten camels despite the great effort required.
I am fortunate enough to live in a society in which women can make many choices about their lives. But if someday I am given a totally unexpected choice, I pray that I may see the opportunity, and choose as boldly as Rebecca.
Noah’s ark is a favorite theme for children’s illustrators. Who can resist the animals climbing into, or out of, the ark in pairs? But the larger story is unnerving for adults: God decides to wipe out all life on earth because humans have “spoiled” it, and the most righteous man around makes no protest. His name, and the name of this week’s Torah portion, is Noach in Hebrew.
Noah’s Ark, by Edward Hicks, 1846 (detail)
God looked at the earth, and hey! nishechatah, because all flesh hishechit its way upon the land. And God said to Noah: “The end of all flesh is coming before Me, because the earth is filled with violence on account of them, so hey! —mashechitam along with the land. Make for yourself an ark … (Genesis/Bereishit 6:12-6:14)
nishechatah(נִשְׁחָתָה) = it had become spoiled, ruined. (A form of the verb shachat, שׁחת = spoil, ruin, corrupt.)
hishechit (הִשְׁחִית)= has spoiled, ruined; has wiped out. (Also a form of the verb shachat.)
mashechitam(מַשְׁחִיתָם) = spoiling themselves, ruining themselves. (Another form shachat.)
The God-character here sounds like a small child wailing, “They spoiled my toys! Now everything is ruined! I’m going to kill them all, and wipe out the whole world! But me and my friends, we’ll build a boat and escape …”
Is God actually being childish in this passage? Is the Flood an overreaction? Or is humanity in this story irredeemable?
And is there any reason for wiping out all the other living things on the land?
One clue about the people of Noah’s generation is that the Torah calls them neither “humanity” (adam) nor “men” (anashim), but “all flesh” (kol basar). Perhaps the relationship between flesh and spirit in those early humans is spoiled; people’s spirits are unable to master their physical cravings. (See my post Bereishit & Noach: All Flesh.)
In the previous Torah portion, God creates the human out of two materials: dirt and the divine breath. Body and soul. Flesh and spirit. By Noah’s time, according to traditional commentary, the desires of human “flesh” have taken over. People think only of gratifying their physical appetites, and the desires of their spirits disappear.
According to some commentary, the people of Noah’s generation avoid having children, so they can devote more time to their own animal pleasures. Modern commentator Avivah Gottleib Zornberg argues that the real problem is the narcissism of these pleasure-seekers. If someone has no curiosity, no interest in other people, then love and kindness are impossible.1 I would add thatif you do not care about other people, then you will speak and act with violence whenever you feel like it (and believe you can get away with it).
According to the Torah, before the Flood all humans are wallowing in selfish sensuality, their souls beyond recovery, except for Noah (and possibly the other seven people God allowed on the ark: Noah’s wife, sons, and daughters-in-law). Noah is not a paragon; the Torah portion opens with this description:
These are the histories of Noah: Noah was a righteous man–he was unblemished in his generations–Noah walked with God. (Genesis 6:9)
In other words, compared to everyone else at the time, Noah is good. Presumably he retains the proper balance between his spirit and flesh, paying enough attention to his divine side to “walk with God”. But he never questions God’s plan to wipe out all life on earth. He is deficient in compassion, yet there is hope for him or his descendants.
So God decides not to give up on the human experiment altogether, but instead to destroy the failures, and start over again with Noah and his family. Then why does God choose to flood the earth, and wipe out millions of land animals and birds along with the irredeemable humans?
Traditional commentary claims that God made all the other animals, and everything else on earth, only for the sake of the human. Non-human life on earth has no value in itself. When humans use other living things for corrupt purposes, they have to be destroyed, too.
To me, this opinion demonstrates a lack of interest in, or curiosity about, the rest of the world. When a commentator views other animals as merely tools for humans to use in carrying out God’s laws, he is committing the same error as the antediluvian man who views other animals as merely tools to use in the pursuit of selfish pleasure.
This is the kind of selfish attitude that leads people today to “spoil” nature: to pollute the air and water, to cut down forests, to disregard extinctions of species, and to do nothing about global climate change. They focus only on their own immediate desires, and take no interest in the earth and its life.
Clearly, human beings are still spoiled, and still spoiling the earth. In the Torah, after the Flood is over and Noah makes an animal sacrifice, God says to God’s heart:
Never again will I draw back to curse the earth (adamah) for the sake of the human (adam), because the shapings of the human heart are evil from its adolescence; and never again will I strike down every living being, as I have done. (Genesis 8:21)
God reseeds the earth with human beings who are still mixtures of dirt and divine breath, body and soul. God continues to grant humans free will, and accepts that sometimes adolescents and adults, people who are old enough to know better, will nevertheless choose evil. God’s experiment with humanity continues.
Today, we do not need an anthropomorphic God to create a flood. We humans have the ability to strike down every living being, all on our own. We are the ones melting the glaciers and ice caps, threatening to flood the earth. I just hope we have not completely spoiled it.
Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, Doubleday, New York, 1995, p. 46, 53, 54, 63.
I knew that “in the” was ba– (בַּ), not be-(בְּ). So I preferred modern translations of bereishit, such as “In a beginning”. Then I checked all the other places where the word reishit appears in the Hebrew bible, and I discovered that reishitis an unusual word, in that it does not take a definite article even in contexts where the English translation would be “the beginning” or “the first step”. So in 50 of the 51 times that reishit appears in the Hebrew Bible, there is no prefix indicating a definite article (“the”).1 And the word bereishit appears four times in the book of Jeremiah in the phrase “at the beginning of the reign of”.2 I had to conclude that the King James version’s “In the beginning” is an acceptable translation after all.
The second Hebrew word is bara(בָּרָא) = “created”. Before I learned Biblical Hebrew grammar, I made the translation mistake that the Talmud warns against3, and wondered if bereishitbara Elohim meant that “In-a-beginning” created God.Then I found out that the subject follows the verb in Hebrew, so the correct translation of bara Elohim is “God created”, not “created God”.
What about the word Elohim? It is a plural noun, used in the Torah for both God and for other peoples’ gods. But the book of Genesis/Bereishit would hardly say that other peoples’ gods created the heavens and the earth!
The word translated in the King James version as “the heaven” is hashamayim(הַשָּׁמַיִם) = the heavens. But insisting on the plural is nit-picking.
When I began researching this blog, I still hoped I could come up with a more interesting, yet accurate, translation. Over the years I have enjoyed reading alternate translations, especially when they lead to intriguing ideas about the nature of God.
For example, here is one of 19th-century Rabbi Raphael Samson Hirsch’s translations:
From the very beginning God created the heaven and the earth.4
I notice that this version implies not only that God is the original, and perhaps the only, creator, but also that creating the heavens and the earth is an ongoing process.
Another is Rabbi David Cooper’s 20th-century translation:
With a beginning, [It] created God (Elohim), the heavens and the earth.5
Cooper explained that in kabbalah, the ein sof (“without end”) precedes Nothingness, and out of Nothingness comes Beginningness. From Beginningness comes Elohim, the plural name of God, and then plural creation follows, starting with the heavens and the earth. The first part of this amazing progression occured before the first word of the Torah. The word bereishit catches the kabbalistic progression at the stage of Beginningness.
Yet the 17th-century King James translation, prosaic as it seems, is closer to the original Hebrew. So then I wondered if I could invent an interesting alternate translation by using one of the other meanings of reishit.
The word reishit appears in the Hebrew bible 50 times. It is used most often (23 times) to indicate one kind of offering to the temple: an offering of the first or the finest sample of an agricultural product–usually fruit or grain, but sometimes bread, oil, or livestock. Another common use of the word (10 times) is to indicate that something else is first-rate: a person, a group of people, a father’s vigor, a land’s fertility, a fig’s flavor.
If the reishit part of the first word in the Bible meant “first-rate”, the first sentence could be translated: With the best, God created the heaven and the earth. We would learn that our universe is first-rate (or at least the best of all possible worlds), and that God also created other, inferior universes!
Is this stretching too far? The Hebrew bible uses reishitto mean “the beginning” at least 17 more times after the opening Bereishit. Twelve of these occurrences refer to the beginning of something that unfolds over a period of time: a year, an episode in someone’s life, a king’s reign, a person’s lifetime, a kingdom’s duration. Two more occurrences refer to the beginning of a process of divine creation: the book of Job claims the behemoth was the beginning of God’s creation of animals, while the book of Proverbs claims wisdom was the beginning of God’s creation of the world. The word reishitis also used three times for a more abstract beginning, as in Psalm 111:10: The beginning of wisdom is awe of God.
The compound word bereishitshows up four times in the book of Jeremiah.2 All four times, bereishit merely gives the approximate date of a prophecy, by placing it “in the beginning of the reign of” a certain king. So the bereishit in the first sentence of the Torah must also be the beginning of something that unfolds over time, like a king’s reign. But this beginning came before everything. It is the beginning of time as we know it (one new thing after another), or the beginning of being.
Maybe Elohim,the god of plurals, means God the Creator, the God of Time, and the God of Endless Beginnings. Then what came before the beginning of time and creation, before Elohim? If the answer is God, this is a god we cannot even imagine. The Ein Sof (“Without End”) of kabbalah is, by definition, inconceivable. As the Zohar says, “No thought can grasp You at all.” Yet Elohim, the God that we can think about, points back at the Ein Sof, the inconceivable God that began Rabbi David Cooper’s kabbalistic progression.
“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” is more profound than I thought.
The exception is the word lareishit(לָרֵאשִׁית) = “for the first [fruits]” (Nehemiah 12:44).
Jeremiah 26:1, 27:1, 28:1, and 49:34.
Talmud Bavli, Megillah 9a.
Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash, English translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2002, p. 1.
David A. Cooper, God is a Verb, Riverhead Books, Pernguin Putnam Inc., New York, 1997.
And this is the blessing with which Moses himself, the man of God, blessed the children of Israel, before his death. (Deuteronomy/Devarim 33:1)
The book of Deuteronomy/Devarim is a series of speeches by Moses, sometimes in God’s name, sometimes in his own words, to the generation that is about to cross the Jordan without him. Moses repeatedly tells the Israelites that they have screwed up before, and God will punish them if they screw up again. The second-to-last Torah portion, Ha-Azinu, is God’s rather dark poem prophesying that they will, indeed, screw up again. But the last portion in Deuteronomy (the very last one in the Torah scroll) takes a brighter tone.
In this portion, Vezot Habrakhah (And this is the blessing), Moses blesses each tribe with prophesies of good outcomes: life, strength, religious knowledge, security, and plenty. After these unusually positive parting words, Moses climbs Mount Nevo and dies.
Before Moses blesses the first tribe, Reuben, he introduces his blessings with a few obscure poetic verses. Modern scholars view these verses as quoted from a much older poem, with some bits lost in the transmission. One piece of evidence for this theory is that the mountain where the Israelites received the “Ten Commandments” is called Mount Sinai, just as it is in the book of Exodus/Shemot. This is the only appearance of the name “Sinai” in the whole book of Deuteronomy; the rest of the time, Deuteronomy calls the mountain Choreiv (Horeb).
Here is the first obscure verse: And he [Moses] said:
God entered from Sinai
and dawned from Se-ir for them;
shone out from a mountain of Paran,
and came from holy myriads;
from Its right side is אשדת for them. (Deuteronomy/Devarim 33:2)
אשדת = ? Thesefour Hebrew letters do not make a word anywhere else in the Hebrew bible. Commentators generally agree they indicate a compound word beginning with eish = fire. For the second part of the word, we have only the two letters ד and ת, corresponding to “d” and “t”. Traditional commentary assumes the two letters stand for dat = edict, a word borrowed from Persian that does not appear in Hebrew texts until centuries later. They translate the whole word as “fiery law”. Most modern scholars assume that d-t is a fragment of the word daleket = flaming, and translate the whole word as “fire-bolts” or “lightning”.
What does the verse mean? Se-ir is the land southeast of Canaan where, in the book of Genesis/Bereishit, Esau founds the kingdom of Edom. The Talmud associates Se-ir with Rome. Paran is a wilderness south of Canaan where Ishmael settles in Genesis. The Talmud associates Paran with Islam.
Most commentary from the Talmud through the 19th century assumes that Moses is once again insisting that the religion of the Israelites is the only acceptable creed. The light of God, they said, is the Torah, and this verse means that God offered to Torah to the Israelites at Sinai, to the Edomites (standing in for Romans or Christians) at Se-ir, and to the Ishmaelites (standing for Muslims) at Paran. But only the Israelites accepted the Torah. The “holy myriads” are God’s angels, who do not need the Torah to instruct them on how to live properly in the world. So God’s right hand gives Israel alone the eish-dat, the fiery law.
I am not persuaded. Yes, Moses spends 40 years denigrating other religions and reminding the Israelites that God chose them– 40 years of warning and criticizing and yelling and laying down the law. But in Vezot Habrakhah, Moses finally drops that role and blesses the tribes with good fortune and plenty. He wants to leave the world with blessings rather than curses. In his softened mood, maybe he quotes part of an old poem not to reinforce Israelite triumphalism, but to hint that divine enlightenment can reach people who belong to other groups, other religions.
The simple meaning of the verse appears to be that God’s light shone on at least three different peoples south of Canaan. And I think the next verse continues this theme, despite traditional commentary’s insistence that it must mean God has power over all peoples, but loves only Israel.
One difficulty in translating verse 33:3 is that it seems to switch back and forth between referring to God in the second person singular and the third person singular. But this is not unusual in the Torah. To make the verse easier to read, I will use [God] instead of a confusing pronoun.
Indeed, [God] is a lover of peoples;
all of [God’s] holy ones are in [God’s] hand;
and they place themselves at [God’s] feet;
yissa from [God’s] pronouncements. (Deuteronomy 3:3)
yissa = he/it lifts; he/it carries
Traditional translations ignore the fact that the word amim means “peoples”, and change the word to “tribes” or “the people” in the singular. These translators assume that God would never be described as a lover of more than one people: the people Israel.
But why not take the Hebrew word for “peoples” literally? What if God really is a lover of many “peoples”, many ethnicities, many religions? Then, as the next line says, all of God’s holy ones, from every population, are in God’s hand. And they humbly position themselves at God’s feet.
In the last line of the verse, God lifts, or carries, from God’s pronouncements. Modern scholar Robert Alter, who translated the line as “he bears your utterances”, noted that its meaning is so unclear, it must have been altered in transmission from the original poem.
True, pronouncements are normally neither lifted nor carried nor borne. But I wonder if the word yissa is an abbreviation of an idiom. One common biblical Hebrew idiom is yissa rosh, “he lifts the head of”, and means “he pardons”. Maybe God pardons the holy ones at God’s feet for disregarding God’s pronouncements. Maybe, contrary to Talmudic thinking, God pardons the more righteous members of many religions when they transgress God’s decrees.
With such obscure Hebrew, it is all guesswork. But my guess is that the two verses together mean that the divine light is not like a laser focusing on just the children of Israel, but rather like the sun, that rises over every height where a people seeks inspiration. God offers enlightenment to everyone, in broad daylight. Furthermore, God loves not just the Israelites, but many peoples. The Roman Christians of Se-ir and the Muslims of Paran can also count as holy. God does pronounce laws and requirements; but all holy ones who transgress them can be pardoned, if they place themselves humbly at God’s feet.
This is the poem Moses quotes before he blesses the tribes of Israel and climbs up the mountain to die. After spending 40 years of his life browbeating his people into committing themselves to God, maybe Moses feels that his great task is finished. Now, at last, he can let go of his anger and frustration and give blessings–not just to the tribes of Israel, but to all peoples.
Before Moses dies, he teaches the Israelites a long song. The words are recorded in this week’s Torah portion: Ha-azinu (“Use your Ears”).
The two main messages in the song are that God is all-powerful, and that God wreaks vengeance on the Israelites when they worship other gods. This is not news; the God-character portrayed in the Torah has no concept of modern educational methods.
Yet within the song are some gems of inspiration. One of them employs the relatively rare word tohu.
[God] found it/him in a land of wilderness
And in the tohu of a howling desolation;
[God] surrounded it/him and gave it/him understanding,
[God] protected it/him like the pupil of [God’s] eye. (Deuteronomy/Devarim 32:10)
Hebrew prefixes and suffixes indicating the third person singular can be translated as either “it” or “him”. So what or who did God find in the wilderness of chaotic, howling desolation?
One third-century commentary says God found, or encountered, Abraham there.1 But the book of Genesis/Bereishit states that God called to Abraham when he was living in Charan and told him to go to Canaan.2 Charan was a civilized town, not a howling wilderness.
Most commentaries take their cue from the preceding line of the song, Because God’s portion is [God’s] people, Jacob … (Deuteronomy 32:9) and assume that “it” is the people named after their ancestor “Jacob” or “Israel”. (The Torah often refers to a people, an ethnic or political group, in the singular.)
Yet in the book of Exodus/Shemot, God does not find Israel in the wilderness. God notices the Israelite slaves in Egypt when God hears their cries of distress. Then God leads them out of Egyptian civilization and into the wilderness.
Modern scholars who take the verse about tohu literally explain these discrepancies by attributing the poem in Deuteronomy and the stories in Genesis and Exodus to different myths explaining the origin of the Israelite people.
But why get stuck on a literal reading? The Torah often uses metaphor and analogy, especially in its poetry. I think the wordtohu in this verse points toward a more profound meaning.
This is only the second occurrence of the word tohu in the Torah. The first use of tohu is in the sentence just before God says “Let there be light”:
And the earth was tohu and vohu, and darkness over the face of the deep, and the wind/spirit of God hovering over the face of the deep. (Genesis/Bereishit 1:2)
vohu (בֹהוּ) = a poetic extension of tohu, translated as “unformed”, “void”, “empty”. (The word vohu appears only three times in the Hebrew bible, always paired with tohu; here, in Isaiah 34:11, and in Jeremiah 4:24.)
I think the meaning that best fits all 19 appearances of the tohu in the Hebrew Bible is “unreal” or “unreality”.
Translatingtohu as “unreality” in this week’s Torah portion is awkward if you take our verse literally. But if “wilderness”, tohu, and “howling desolation” all describe a psychological state, tohu as “unreality” makes sense. When you feel desperate and desolate, as if there is no hope and you are utterly alone, you experience an inner howling, and your mind no longer anchors itself in familiar habits and beliefs. You wander in a mental wilderness, and your former world-view seems unreal.
What if someone in a mental state of unreality and howling desolation encounters God? What if God then encircles them, gives them understanding, and protects them until they pull themselves together and reorganize their lives to fit their new outlook? During this process, God protects the person’s soul as if it were the pupil of an eye, which can perceive reality and apply insights only if it is both uncovered and unharmed.
Atheists today might object that God itself is unreal, so believing that God is finding and protecting you is an indulgence in unreality. I don’t blame them. I am an atheist myself, if you define God as either the anthropomorphic jealous king who lives in the sky, or as the omni-being of medieval theologians. But many people, including me, use the word “God” for something else, something we have no better word for in English. Something that defies a clear definition, a mystery that we experience or intuit.
Connecting with this holy mystery is a real experience, one in which the phrases “God finds you” and “you find God” mean the same thing. I have found that if it happens when my life is falling apart, the connection really does protect me, stabilize me, and give me understanding.
These days, when my emotions begin to overwhelm me, I don’t wait for God to find me. I take preemptive action by singing prayers, singing until the tightness in my throat relaxes. Then my mind becomes calmer and clearer, and understanding becomes possible.
So here is my version of the verse from Ha-azinu, with different pronouns. Maybe this interpretation will ring true for you.
I found God in a land of wilderness
And in the unreality of a howling desolation;
God surrounded me and understanding came;
God protected me like the pupil of an eye, and I saw.
