Torah Posting: וארא
After all the whining and waffling last week, God is going to begin this week’s parashah by setting Mosheh straight. Gone is God’s riddle about “I Will Be What I Will Be” being the divine name Mosheh should use; now there are new theological puzzles about God’s Name for us:
וָאֵרָ֗א אֶל־אַבְרָהָ֛ם אֶל־יִצְחָ֥ק וְאֶֽל־יַעֲקֹ֖ב בְּאֵ֣ל שַׁדָּ֑י וּשְׁמִ֣י יְהֹוָ֔ה לֹ֥א נוֹדַ֖עְתִּי לָהֶֽם׃
“I appeared to Avraham, Yitzhak, and Ya’akov in [My Name] ‘El-Shaddai,’ and My Name יהוה I did not make known to them.”
Now, we did get the name יהוה in Bereishit, so that’s sort of curious. We definitely did get אל-שדי, too, though, so perhaps we’re to understand this to mean that אל-שדי — which I have translated in previous installments as “the Breast-God” — is something like an aspect of the Divine that was manifested to the ancestors in earlier generations, whereas the one known in the text as יהוה is more salient in this part of the story, where the children of Yisra’el are no longer one wayward family but a nascent nation.
That’s… mostly how I take it. The Breast-God is a divine aspect that’s closer to creation, concerned with the birthing and formation of things. The יהוה aspect is the part that encounters a complex world and acts within history. Maybe this captures the significance of the plural name, אלהים, used in the actual creation story and at other cosmic moments throughout. Perhaps that’s the name that encompasses all aspects and attitudes and temporal manifestations of the Divine, and thus it’s given in the plural for the sake of human conventions.
I don’t think that’s the only significance of this strange statement about divine names, which is clearly untrue according to the plain meaning; Here in Bereishit 28:13, for example, is God saying to Ya’akov, “I am יהוה.” The traditional commentaries — which you may have noticed by now I make no effort whatsoever to cite — tie themselves in knots about this. Just as I did last week with a seemingly obvious continuity error, I propose the simplest possible explanation: The Torah is a composite text, and the core of Sefer Bereishit is probably far more ancient — and more pertinent to the ancient period described within its narrative — than the middle part of the Torah to which we’re working our way up.
There is a whole academic theory about this called the Documentary Hypothesis, which I do recommend you check out in depth, but I want to say something about it right up front:
To me, it is pretty obvious that it is more Jewish to treat this text as more sacred because of its complex history of passing between human fingers, and it is wholly un-Jewish to have some kind of fundamentalist idea about a book made of words in human languages having to be dictated precisely from God’s “mouth” to human ears one time, in full, in order to be the Word of God — and that’s equally un-Jewish whether you believe it’s true or whether you believe that means the Torah is “fake” and can’t be a “real” Bible because humans worked on it.
That is a sophomoric way of reading anything, and any construction of “religion” that works that way is a worthless cargo cult, especially if it works that way on sacred texts that are not from your own culture.
Enough said.
Anyway, the beginning of Sefer Shemot, where we’re introducing Mosheh as the main (human) protagonist of the Torah and setting the stage for the birth of the people he leads out of the womb — Mitzrayim, the “narrow places” — is a critical site of transition between the ancient creation stories of Bereishit and the fancy priestly religious culture we’re setting up. I don’t find it surprising that some of the gnarliest splices between layers of the composite text of the Torah can be found here.
And certainly, different names for the Divine are a crucial tell about these various layers. There’s a ton of good stuff out there if you want to get deeper into that aspect. Here’s just one example.
Whew. I’m relieved that finally came out after this many weeks of Torah Posting.
Anyhow. God now restates Mosheh’s mission for him, but when Mosheh goes to relate this to the Bnei Yisra’el as instructed, they don’t listen. They lack the רוח, the qi, the wind for it, because bondage has deadened their spirits.
God carries on anyway, telling Mosheh to go to Pharaoh and demand the release of the people, but Mosheh is already resisting the call again. The people won’t listen to him, he says, and he reminds God that he’s tongue-tied. So God speaks to both Mosheh and his brother Aharon, whom God designated as Mosheh’s spokesman to deal with this excuse. Now that there are two people receiving God’s instructions on this, perhaps they will hold one another accountable and get the job done.
The lineages of the people are given again, Mosheh and God discuss the whole plan — the let my people go, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the “extraordinary chastisements” (to use a charming phrase from the JPS translation) to follow, even the Aharon spokesman thing, again — the text is kind of a mess here.
One interesting tidbit, though, is in Shemot 7:1; God makes Mosheh analogous to God, as far as Pharaoh is concerned, with his brother, Aharon, as the prophet — the Mosheh, if you will — and God uses the name אלהים here, bringing in that name encompassing all divine aspects. Honestly, the most powerful thing about this divine name stuff to me is somatically experiencing the myriad generations of Jewish people sitting with this text confused about God’s Name just like I am.
Then we get the information that Mosheh is 80 years old and Aharon 83 at the time when they approach Pharaoh, so that’s interesting and very different from the Disney version.
Then God has Mosheh teach last week’s staff/snake magic trick to Aharon. He does it before Pharaoh, it works, and then Pharaoh’s sages and sorcerers work their own magic to do the same, but Aharon’s snake-staff swallows the Egyptian snake-staves. This display does not move Pharaoh; he turns them away.
When Mosheh — for some reason — tells God that exactly what God said was going to happen happened, God gives Mosheh further magical instructions: Go to Pharaoh in the morning, bring the magic snake-staff, and meet him at the edge of the Nile. Ask him again, and when he says “no,” have Aharon hold out the snake-staff over the water, and all the waters of Mitzrayim will turn to blood.
This happens just as God says, and it’s described rather nastily. All the fish die, the water stinks, and no one can drink it. But once again, the Egyptian חרתמים are able to replicate the trick, Pharaoh’s heart hardens, and he dismisses the petition of Mosheh and Aharon, returning to his palace.
Meanwhile, his people are digging in the dirt to find water.
God lets this status quo remain for a week, and then God instructs Mosheh to go back to Pharaoh and demand again, this time threatening a plague of frogs to swarm the land, enter the palace, fill the homes and beds and ovens and kneading bowls of everyone. This all comes to pass again, including the replication by the Egyptian magicians.
This time it’s bad enough that Pharaoh says, “Plead with יהוה to get rid of the frogs, and then I’ll let your people go make your offerings in the wilderness or whatever.” Mosheh (seemingly fine speaking directly with Pharaoh here without his brother’s help) decides to pull a neat trick; he asks Pharaoh for a precise time at which the frogs should be removed — that way, when it happens right on time, Pharaoh will know God is the coolest. And it comes to pass, of course, except rather than magically poofing out of existence, all the frogs just die where they sit and rot. Yuck.
Of course, as soon as the mess is cleaned up, Pharaoh changes his mind again. Next, Aharon strikes the dust of the ground with the snake-stick, and seemingly every mote of dust turns into lice that swarm the land and plague human and beast alike. This is the first trick the חרטמים are unable to replicate. “This is the finger of God!” they cry. But Pharaoh is still unmoved.
God has Mosheh go to Pharaoh as he’s emerging from the water early in the morning again, and this time the threat is swarms of flying insects, usually interpreted traditionally to be locusts. This time, God specifically protects Goshen — the region where the Israelites’ holdings are — from this plague. This one is apparently bad enough to get Pharaoh to summon Mosheh and Aharon and tell them to take their people and go make their offerings, but he insists they do it within Egyptian territory.
Mosheh responds that this would be ritually unclean to the Egyptians, and they would stone the Israelites to death for it, so they have to go three days into the desert, which was indeed part of their original request. Pharaoh responds that they can leave the land, but they must not go far. He also asks them to pray for him.
Mosheh says he will ask God to remove the swarms, but he warns Pharaoh not to pull any more fast ones.
Guess what happens.
Next, God sends Mosheh back to Pharaoh with the threat of an exceedingly severe disease that will wipe out all the livestock; again the Israelite herds and flocks will be spared. It’s the fact that none of the Israelite livestock die that pisses Pharaoh off enough to refuse to let them go this time.
Now the ingredients of the magic get a little scarier. God instructs Mosheh and Aharon to throw handfuls of soot from the kiln into the air in sight of Pharaoh, and it will spread all through Mitzrayim and cause painful boils on the skin of all people and animals as it lands. This one is bad enough that the חרטמים aren’t even able to appear before Pharaoh to try to match its power. And this time, the text makes extra clear that when Pharaoh’s heart hardens, and he says no, that God willed it to happen like this.
Now the proclamation before Pharaoh becomes more severe. Mosheh is to make clear that God could have simply killed all the Egyptians with a swipe of God’s hand, but instead they were spared in order to demonstrate God’s power throughout the world. Since Pharaoh continues to refuse to free the Hebrews, the next plague will be a catastrophic weather event unprecedented in the recorded history of Mitzrayim. Every living creature who is not under shelter will be struck and killed by hail.
The people in Pharaoh’s court who are by now afraid of God’s power bring their slaves and livestock under shelter. The ones who seemingly have no idea what’s going on around them at any time and have missed the last few weeks of absolute horror do not. Mosheh holds up the magic wand, and it turns out that this hail is on fire!!! Goshen has clear skies, of course.
Pharaoh offers his most contrite statement yet and says that the Hebrews may go if God puts a stop to the flaming hail. Mosheh says he’ll do it, but he knows Pharaoh’s people still don’t fear God.
A brief herbological aside is included here. The flax and barley were ruined because they were in season, but the wheat and emmer were not hurt, for they ripen late. I’m hoping one of my astro-herbalist friends can help me understand why this is surely the most significant passage of the entire parashah and contains its most actionable teachings.
Mosheh goes outside the city and spreads out his hands before God. The hail stops.
Guess what happens.
🐸
