Bread From the Sky: Learning to Trust

Bread From the Sky: Learning to Trust Rabbi Shai Held Long after liberation, the lingering effects of dehumanization endure. For the people of Israel, a long and tortuous road lies between bondage and well-being. One of the many things 1 Pharaoh has taken from them is the ability to trust. God s provision of manna (and Shabbat) is intended to restore that ability to the people, and thus to open them to the possibility of healthy dependence and real relationship. Only days after their liberation from slavery, the Israelites grow thirsty and complain against Moses. God responds by miraculously providing them with drinking water (Exodus 15:22-27). For a brief moment, perhaps, the people learn that God is not only a warrior but also a provider; they will be saved from their enemies, but also nourished and fed. Yet a few weeks later, they find themselves hungry, and as a result, they grow belligerent. Earlier it seemed that only some of the people were complaining ( the people 15:24); now, the Torah makes clear, everyone is discontented ( the whole (kol) For a brief moment, the people learn that God is not only a warrior but also a provider. community 16:2). The Israelites angrily declare, If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this 1 I borrow the phrase between bondage and well-being from Walter Brueggemann, Exodus, The New Interpreter s Bible, vol. 1 (1994), p. 812 1

wilderness to starve the whole congregation to death (16:3-4). The people insist, in essence, that God is about to kill them in the wilderness, so he might as well have done the job back in Egypt, where at least they would have died on a full stomach. 2 A midrash suggests that the Israelites bellicose words give them away. During the time when they were enslaved, it teaches, an Egyptian would go into the wilderness, seize a ram or deer, slay it, place it in a pot, cook it, and eat it, while the Israelite would look on and taste nothing. Note carefully the people s words: When we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! It does not say when we ate from the fleshpots, but when we sat, because they had to eat their bread without any meat (Exodus Rabbah 16:4). In the eyes of its 3 inhabitants, Michael Walzer observes, the house of bondage was also a land of luxury No old regime is merely oppressive; it is attractive, too, else the escape from it would be much easier than it is. 4 With its portrayal of the people s skewed recollection of life in Egypt, the Torah demonstrates just how profoundly fear and anxiety can warp our perceptions. The people had been exploited and degraded in Egypt for generations; they had cried out in anguish from the back-breaking labor brutally imposed upon them. But now, only a few weeks distance has given a rosy hue to [Israel s] experience in the slave house. As Bible scholar Walter 5 Brueggemann notes, Egypt is known to be a place of deep abuse and heavy-handed oppression. Here, however, none of the oppression or abuse is mentioned, only meat and bread. Overcome with hunger or perhaps with fear of impending hunger the people can 2 Robert Alter, The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary (2004), p. 405. 3 For a very different Rabbinic understanding of the narrative, cf. the words of R. Eliezer the Moda ite in Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon b. Yohai, 16:3. 4 Michael Walzer, Exodus and Liberation (1985), pp. 34, 33. 5 John Goldingay, Old Testament Theology, Volume One: Israel s Gospel (2003), p. 455. 2

no longer see straight: Given anxiety about survival, the immediacy of food overrides any long-term hope for freedom and well-being. 6 God evinces no anger in response to the people s grumblings. Instead, God responds by providing food: the mysterious bread from the sky (i.e. manna) in the morning and meat in 7 the evening (16:4, 8). The manna appears each day, steadily sustaining the people through their long years of wandering in the desert (16:35). But it comes with built-in controls. First, whether one gathers a little or a lot, one ends up only with what one needs to eat; God shrinks the portion of those who take too much and expands the portion of those who take too little (16:17-18). And second, the manna must be eaten on the day it is collected; storing and hoarding are impermissible and, as the people soon discover, impossible (16:19). God also institutes a crucial exception to these rules: On Fridays portions are doubled in anticipation of Shabbat, and the manna that is left over for Shabbat day does not rot as on other days (16:22-26). Manna will not be found on Shabbat because the seventh day is God s day of rest (16:25). Note the language the Torah uses: See, how the Lord has given (natan) you the Shabbat; therefore [the Lord] gives you two days food on the sixth day (16:29). God has given the Sabbath, It becomes clear that God is not only feeding the Israelites but also attempting to educate them. 6 Brueggemann, Exodus, p. 812. 7 Scholars have long attempted to offer naturalistic explanations for what the manna might be. As Jeffrey Tigay explains, If [the manna] has a natural explanation, it is probably the sweet, edible honeydew (still called manna in Arabic) found in parts of the Sinai in June and July. Scale insects and plant lice ingest the sap of tamarisk trees and excrete it onto the branches, from which it crystallizes and falls to the ground as sticky solids. Bedouin use it as a sweetener. But Tigay immediately adds that if this was the manna, the miracle was that it arrived just when the Israelites needed it, that enough was produced to feed the entire people but never more than an omer per person daily, that it doubled on the sixth day and did not appear on the Sabbath, and that contrary to its natural pattern it appeared year-round. Jeffrey H. Tigay, Exodus, in Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds., Jewish Study Bible (2004), p. 140. It should be noted that some scholars are dismissive of the search for naturalistic explanations of the manna (seemingly even nuanced ones). Carol Meyers, for example, states simply that manna should be considered a non-natural substance, a miracle provided by God. Carol Meyers, in Torah: A Women s Commentary (2008), p. 396. 3

previously holy only to [God] (Genesis 2:1-3) as a gift to Israel. 8 The people ask for food; God respond with gifts both material and spiritual. As the story unfolds, it becomes clear that God wants to teach the people trust, God is not only feeding the Israelites but also and genuine trust will require the attempting to educate them. The people are embrace of healthy dependence. anxious and fearful; their impulse is to grab and to hoard. Introducing the gift of manna, God tells Moses, I will rain down bread for you from the sky, and the people shall go out and gather each day that day s portion [or quota] that I may thus test them, to see whether they will follow My instructions or not (16:4). Rashi (1040-1105) explains that God is testing Israel s obedience, whether they will keep the commandments connected to [the manna] not to leave any of it over, nor to go out to gather it on Shabbat (Comments to Exodus 16:4). Why would obedience in this instance be hard? R. Obadiah Seforno (1475-1550) suggests that the manna represents a life of ease, and faithfulness can be difficult when one is provided for with no pain (Commentary to Exodus 16:4). But Seforno s comments retroject God s later 9 fears that Israel will grow spoiled and entitled once it enters the land onto the very different 10 experience of wandering in the desert; he seems to miss the depth of Israel s anxiety, the extent to which it is still struggling to leave slavery behind. More convincing, I think, are the words of R. Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089-1167), who maintains that God is testing Israel s ability to tolerate needing [God] each and every day (Commentaries to Exodus 16:4). 11 Dependence can be difficult, Ibn Ezra realizes, especially when one has heretofore been dependent upon a merciless tyrant. But God wants to teach the people trust, and genuine 8 Tigay, Exodus, p. 141. 9 Cf., similarly, R. Hayyim Ibn Attar (1696-1743), Or Ha-Hayyim to Exodus 16:4. 10 Cf. what I have written about life in the land in Against Entitlement: Why Blessings Can Be Dangerous, CJLI Parashat Ki Tavo 5774, available here. 11 Cf. also the comments of R. Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam, 1085-1158), ad loc. 4

trust will require the embrace of healthy dependence. The real test, Brueggemann argues, is whether Israel can receive bread under wholly new terms : The ways of receiving bread in Egypt are completely inappropriate here. Israel will be under scrutiny to see if old ways of receiving bread in Egypt (in anxiety, oppression, hoarding) can be resisted. The people are 12 being taught a new way of being, and a new way of receiving. The test does not go well. The people pay no attention to Moses and try to store manna overnight; it becomes infested with worms (16:20). And despite what they have been told, some of the people go out looking for manna on Shabbat, thus eliciting God s anger and frustration (16:27-28). [God] provides for physical needs each day, only to have some of his people attempt to hoard for the next day. [God] provides for the spiritual growth of his people by setting one day apart as special, only to have some lose the benefit by ignoring the day. Israel s resistance proves stronger than God s command. Trusting God is evidently 13 14 too frightening; the people want instead to establish a surplus, to develop a zone of selfsufficiency. 15 Given their prolonged persecution in Israel s resistance proves stronger Egypt, it is no surprise that the people resist dependence of any kind. But God is not than God s command. Pharaoh, and gracious gifts should not be conflated with the meager rations supplied by a ruthless despot. Strikingly, the term daily quota (devar yom be-yomo) is used in only two contexts in the book of Exodus. As Bible scholar Gerald Janzen explains, In chapter 5, the 12 Brueggeman, Exodus, p. 813. 13 John I. Durham, Exodus (1987), p. 226. 14 Just how difficult the transition is from oppressive slavery to dignified relationship to God is evidenced by the fact that of the whole first generation to experience freedom, only two people, Caleb and Joshua, make it to the Promised Land. Cf. what I have written about the recalcitrance of that generation in The Tragedy (and Hope) of the Book of Numbers, CJLI Parashat Shelah 5774, available here. 15 Brueggemann, Exodus, p. 814. 5

people as slaves of Pharaoh must scatter day by day to look for straw with which to make their daily quota of bricks. In chapter 16[, in contrast], the people of God scatter day by day to look for the daily quota of food that God promises to provide. This stark contrast 16 between God and Pharaoh is amplified by the envelope structure (inclusio) of chapter 16 as a whole. While the chapter begins, as we have seen, with Israel s distorted and debilitating memory of past provisions in Egypt, it ends with an attempt to instill a very different kind of memory in the people. Aaron is to put an omer (about two quarts) of manna in a jar and place the jar before the Ark, to be kept throughout the ages in order that they may see the bread that I fed you you in the wilderness when I brought you out from the land of Egypt (16:32-34). Terence Fretheim explains the point of bracketing the chapter in such divergent memories: The idealized and unwarranted memories of Pharaoh s food are to be replaced with the genuine memories of the bread from God. This is in many ways the key to the 17 story: The people are to be fed not by a cruel taskmaster but by a loving provider. To be fed by God requires dependence but does not lead to a fresh bondage. 18 The people are to be fed not by a cruel taskmaster but by a loving provider. On the surface, there is something odd about the instructions given to Aaron to set the manna in the ark: The ark has not yet been built, and directions for its construction have not yet even been revealed. Why the anachronism? On one level, of course, the answer may simply be that in dealing with the manna, the Torah includes both the story and its later implications in one place. 19 16 J. Gerald Janzen, Exodus (1997), pp. 116-117. Cf. Exodus 5:13, 19; and 6:4. 17 Terence E. Fretheim, Exodus (1991), p. 187. 18 Brueggemann, Exodus, p. 812. Cf. what I have written about serving God and serving Pharaoh in Whom Do We Serve? The Exodus Toward Dignified Work, CJLI Parashat Va-Yakhel 5774, available here. 19 Cf., for example, Richard Elliot Friedman, Commentary on the Torah: With a New English Translation and the Hebrew Text (2001), p. 225. 6

But something deeper and more powerful may also be going on: The ark will contain the Ten Commandments, which encapsulate Israel s obligations to God. But crucially, the ark contains something else as well and by the logic of this text, contains it first: Before the ark receives the tablets, it receives the jar. That is, in terms of the ark s contents, Scripture first tells us about a God of manna before it tells us about a God of mandates, a God who graciously provides before a God who lays down the law. Unlike Pharaoh, God is not a 20 stern taskmaster. God first loves and then commands. After generations of hardship and abuse, the people need this subtle reminder: Serving God and serving Pharaoh are utterly distinct and incommensurable. Religion is about many things one of them The question, ultimately, is not is the aspiration to surrender the illusion of whether we will be dependent, but self-sufficiency. We need God, and we need other people. Because we are human, on whom. and therefore embodied and fragile, the question, ultimately, is not whether we will be dependent, but on whom. The Torah is, in part, a story about leaving destructive dependency (and the toxic memories that keep us in its thrall) and discovering life-affirming dependency as a radical alternative. We should not make an idol of dependency (any more than we should make one of autonomy); there is a dignity that comes from being able to care and provide for oneself (just ask any young child who insists time and again, I can do it! ). And yet dependency is an irreducible part of the human condition and should be embraced as such. But Jewish theology takes an even more radical step: It tells us that not only are we dependent on God, but also that on some level God chooses to be dependent on us. There is no symmetry here God remains God and we remain human creatures but a relational God is also, necessarily, a vulnerable and dependent One. The deeper we dig the more a theology 20 Victor P. Hamilton, Exodus: An Exegetical Commentary (2011), p. 258. 7

of human dependence on God reveals itself to be a theology of divine-human interdependence, or covenant. There is a courage and a dignity in learning to say I need you. Remarkably, Jewish theology teaches, even God decides to say those fateful, liberating words. Shabbat Shalom. See Shai Held s other divrei Torah on parashat BeShallah: 5774 Leaving Slavery Behind: On Taking the First Step Sign up to receive Rabbi Shai Held s weekly divrei Torah direct to your inbox: www.mechonhadar.org/shaiheld 8