Book of Days: asher553

GENESIS 12: GO FORTH.

The third section in the traditional annual cycle of Torah readings begins here, with G-d's summons to Avram. The early history of mankind is behind us, and from this point on, the text focuses on the story of the tribe that will become the Hebrew, or Israelite, nation. I've noted earlier that the early history of mankind, as told in the Bible, is a series of displacements; that tradition will be continued by Avram / Abraham and his descendants, the famously wandering Jewish people.

The command "go forth" - [lekh lkeha], or literally "go for yourself" in Hebrew - will be given again to Abraham. Here, he is being told to leave his native land [eretz], his heritage [moledeth], and his family [beth av], for parts unknown - "the land that I will show you". He's not told where he's going, or how he's supposed to know when he gets there. It is a leap of faith.

(In fact, he overshoots his destination and continues all the way into Egypt, a fact discussed at length by Grumet.)

There's some ambiguity about the chronology here, because we were just told at the end of Chapter 11, "Terach took Avram his son, and Lot son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, the wife of his son Avram, and he set out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans toward the Land of Canaan, and they came to Charan and settled there. And the days of Terach were 205 years, and Terach died in Charan."

Seemingly, then, the narrative first tells of the family's departure from Ur and of Terach's subsequent death in Charan (located in what's now southern Turkey, enroute to the Land of Israel) in order to close the chapter on the lives of the early generations. The text then backtracks to Avram receiving the call to travel. "Perhaps only Abram wanted to travel, and it was his journey that caused the rest of the family to undertake the move." (Steinsaltz)

Grumet takes a different view, holding that Avram has already left his native land of Ur when he receives the call. "Abram's birthplace is Ur Kasdim, and he already left there when his father moved the family at the end of Genesis 11."

To some extent, an understanding of this passage depends on the exact meanings of the Hebrew terms [eretz], [moledeth], and [beth av]. Alter and Grumet disagree over whether the second term means "birthplace" (Alter) or "national identity" (Grumet).

What is certain is that Avram is being called to re-create himself, as he leaves behind him the settled life of cosmopolitan Ur and embarks with his family on a pilgrimage into the unknown.

GENESIS 11: THE CITY OF BABEL

So far, the story of mankind told in Genesis is a story of displacements: the exile from Eden, Cain's banishment, the Flood. Now - narrated in just nine verses - we find the dispersion of mankind from Babel.

We know the story as "the Tower of Babel", just as we know the story of Noah as "the Flood" (even though the Hebrew word for "flood" never appears there). Here, as Grumet points out, the word "tower" occurs twice, but "city" appears three times, suggesting that "God's primary concern is about the city, and only secondarily about the tower". Prager (citing Gunther Plaut, among others) agrees.

Grumet elaborates: "The city is a means to concentrate people geographically, and the tower provides a vantage point for control of those people."

Hazony: "In these verses we get to see the biblical suspicion of the state in its distilled form."

Steinsaltz: "This generation expressed the very human desire to gather in large urban centers that hold all their power, control, and technology. Their unity enabled them to build these huge centers. Such centers however, are designed for preservation rather than progress. The world they tried to build is a frightening one. Indeed, it brings to mind the world we live in today, a world that is becoming increasingly uniform, in which many languages are succumbing to one dominant language, where one type of dialogue and one set of aspirations rule. Such a powerful society does not allow anything different to develop within it, and therefore individuals cannot free themselves from its chains. In a homogeneous technological society, nothing new will grow. Only when its frameworks are broken will a few individuals be able to venture out, act, and influence others. By forming a uniform pattern of life and society, these people were acting against God's intention that there should be a rich, multifaceted world in which the differences between people lead to progress and blessing. God wanted the entire world to be settled and for people to construct productive societies. Therefore, He dispersed mankind across the entire earth. For this reason, this generation is called the Generation of the Dispersion."

Prager goes on to observe: "City dwellers are far more capable of anonymity than people who live in small towns and rural areas. And when people are anonymous, they feel less moral obligation to their neighbors - who are also likely to be anonymous. When both the individual and his neighbors are anonymous, people inevitably feel much less connected to one another. And they often act worse ...".

There's not much for me to add to these insights, but I do want to come back to the theme of wandering and exploration. The text tells us that "The entire earth was of one language and one speech" and that "they traveled from the east." This seems to indicate that the entire human population migrated together (although Steinsaltz maintains that "they" refers only to "a large group of people" - which, in turn, would imply that some other portion remained unaffected by the Dispersion). "From the east" is ambiguous: it's [mi-qedem] in Hebrew, but the word could also mean "from ancient times" - and we've run into that word before, referring to the Garden of Eden (2:8).

They settled in a plain (Steinsaltz and Alter explain that [biq'a] means a plain, and not "valley" as in later Hebrew) in Shin'ar, which is in Mesopotamia. And it seems like they got tired of wandering.

Although the episode is just nine verses long, the text takes the time to point out that the people made bricks from clay (the first architectural detail in the Bible) "which were for them as stone" suggesting that they had improvised and adapted to their new environment. But, having grown comfortable there, they didn't want to leave.

"Lest we be scattered" - this is fascinating. What were they afraid of? Who or what did they think was going to scatter them? And yet, in the end, scattered they were, and scattered they must be.

Adam was exiled from Eden, to work the land from which he was taken. Cain was condemned to wander the earth, and so to give up his own settled lifestyle and re-create the nomadic existence of his murdered shepherd brother.

And the people of Babel were scattered "upon the face of all the earth". They were cast out from the stultifying order of the city-state to the terror of the wilderness.

In each case, it is not just a change of place, but a change of habits and lifestyle. It is the biblical "hero's journey". It is a summons to mend oneself, and to grow, by encountering the danger and the chaos of the unexplored world outside.

GENESIS 10: THE TABLE OF NATIONS.

Chapter 10 of Genesis lists the descendants of Noah - the nations of the Earth. It is not a tribal but a universal narrative, something unknown in other literatures of the ancient Near East. Notice that for the first time in Genesis, the development is lateral as well as vertical; that is, all of the sons in each generation are named, and not just the firstborn.

Among the descendants of Cush (one of the sons of Ham) was Nimrod, described as a mighty hunter, and also the first person identified by the Bible as ruling over other people.

A descendant of Shem, for whom the Semitic languages and peoples are named, is Eber (also transliterated as Ever). The name is cognate to the word meaning "to cross over", and also to the name "Hebrew" (Ivri).

Mankind has descended into violence and barbarism, and the Creator decides it's time for a reboot.

Chapter 6 opens with a description of the lawless violence that has engulfed the world. There's also a reference to the "Nephilim", whose exact identity remains a mystery.

One thing that's striking about the Flood narrative is the amount of detail, in the measurements of the Ark and especially in the chronology of the Flood itself. (And we have to assume that the information in the text represents Divine revelation, as it must have been impossible for Noah to keep track of months and days when the sky was obscured.)

Incidentally, the word for the Flood used in the text, [mabul], doesn't mean simply a flood of water, it means destruction.

I want to zoom in on verse 2. "The sons of the mighty [bnei ha-elohim] saw the daughters of man ..." Now this is tricky to translate, because "elohim" can mean either "God" or "mighty ones", but it's clearly used in the second sense here.

Also notice that this verse very subtly echoes the refrain of 1:4, etc., "... and God [Elohim] saw that it was good," only here of course it's in a negative sense.

Now the next part of the verse is often translated in English as "... [they] saw that the daughters of man were fair (or, "beutiful", etc.)", but the word that's actually used [tovoth] simply means "good". And in fact that's how the Artscroll edition renders it, and I think it's the most straightforward understanding of the verse. The daughters of man may have been beautiful or not, but they carried themselves with decency and dignity - they were *morally* good.

And it was this goodness that the corrupt, powerful men saw in them - and they despised them for it.