Revisiting Parashat Bereishit offers us an opportunity to examine anew God’s perspective on an ideal society. On some level, Parashat Bereishit describes a perfect world, a primal state where everything is orderly and in its proper place. The sun and the moon shine down from above, with the lower waters separate from the upper waters, every living creature living in families and so forth. In Parashat Bereishit one can find the stages of planning, those that existed before Mankind began to redesign it, with the improvements – and destructiveness – that Man would come and introduce.
There is one issue where the Torah draws a clear contrast between the situation at the time of Creation and after Man enters the picture – water and irrigation.
In the second chapter we learn “…because the LORD God had not sent rain upon the earth and there was no man to till the soil.” Somehow, God’s decision to refrain from bringing rain is connected with the fact that Man was missing. This should not be understood to mean that the land was not watered at that time. In fact, the very next verse relates “but a flow would well up from the ground and water the whole surface of the earth.” Furthermore, we learn that “a river issues from Eden to water the garden...”
Man’s appearance requires an operating system that is appropriate for the new reality, and the Torah assumes that there need to be significant changes in how the world works. The land can no longer be irrigated with water from the river, nor with underground water sources. Now we require Divine intervention. We probably would have assumed the opposite, since it is when Man is not present to dig irrigation canals that Heavenly rain is essential, and it is only when Man appears that artificial means of irrigation could be developed.
The Midrash explains the change as a deviation from God’s original plan: “And the Holy One blessed be He changed His mind so that now the land would receive sustenance only from above.” According to this, God had originally believed that the appropriate means of irrigation would be from the river or from underground water sources, but in the end He switched to an alternative plan. The Midrash offers four reasons for this change:
Rav Hanan of Zippori in the name of R. Shmuel bar Nahmani –
There are four reasons that God changed His mind and decided that the land should receive sustenance only from above.
- Because of those who strong-arm others
- In order to dispel bad dews
- So that higher ground could receive just as lower ground does
- So that all Mankind would turn their eyes heavenwards, as is written “Who gives rain to the earth, and sends water over the fields; To raise the lowly to the heavens” (Job 5:10-11) .
Bereishit Rabbah 13:9
The connection between rain and Man made by the Torah notwithstanding, only one of the reasons in the Midrash relates to Man’s presence – “because of those who strong-arm others.” If all water sources are found on Earth, those who are strong will collect all of it onto their own property, using force to keep others from benefitting from. In contrast with the implied position in the Torah, the other reasons suggest that there are objective benefits to rain from heaven over water sources in or on the ground.
“So that higher ground could receive just as lower ground does,” notes that water in a river will always flow to the lowest point. This offers an advantage to ground that is lower over ground that is higher up. Rain, on the other hand, is an “equal opportunity” irrigator, offering water to fields equally, whether high or low.
“In order to dispel bad dews” relates to the fact that rain helps improve ecological balance. It purifies the air and removes pests from the plants. While ground irrigation quenches the thirst of the soil, it does not offer other advantages.
“So that all Mankind would turn their eyes heavenwards” reminds us that having reservoirs of water fool us into thinking that we can survive independently without the ongoing support of the Creator.
So we see that rain has a calming effect on nature as a whole and plays a role in creating balances within nature. It helps control human nature and encourages equality between the strong and the weak. This is true in a number of different areas: In evening out topographic inequality between “low and high,” in undoing the damage to the world brought about by “bad dews,” and in creating a balance between man’s mastery of nature and the appearance of God as a mirror image of man.
Rain’s ability to create balance is something that we feel intuitively, but the Midrash connects this concept with verses in our Parasha while applying it to a broader range of systems: The same thing that has a calming effect on natural phenomenon like air and water, also encourages equality between people and even appropriate balance between spirit and matter.
This concept – that our spiritual lives and relationships between people are mirror-images of nature, and work by means of the same systems – is a fundamental principle that the Sages taught us by means of this Midrash. This principle leads us to understand that everything we discover in the laboratory as a natural phenomenon can also be seen as a metaphor for human and interpersonal behavior, and for the relationship between Man and God. Compounds and mixtures are not only chemical, they apply in the spiritual world, as well. The physical description of the existence of energy is not limited to the capacity generated by virtue of movement and height alone. We recognize it when we feel recharged after a good night’s sleep, just as we recognize it in the renewal of spiritual forces at different times and in different seasons. The force of gravity does not only affect objects through the rules of mass and weight, it applies to people and their interactions, and it applies to relationships between man and his Creator and the relationship between the body and the soul. It also works on leadership and authority, on cohesion and social structures, and on differences in Divine service for the community and the individual.
But the deep meaning of this Midrash is that the world undergoes multiple renewals and transformations, all with the profound direction of the Creator and with the intention of maintaining equilibrium in the world. This balance is necessary not only in nature and as part of the need to preserve it or adapt it to human development. A geological response, a material change, a shift in the relationships between people, are all metaphors for a change in the way God appears in the world.
“Teaching you that the day of rains is as great as the day on which Heaven and Earth were created” (Bavli Ta’anit 9b).