וַיְהִי בַיָּמִים הָרַבִּים הָהֵם וַיָּמָת מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם וַיֵּאָנְחוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מִן־הָעֲבֹדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל־הָאֱלֹקים מִן־הָעֲבֹדָה:
וַיִּשְׁמַע אֱלֹקים אֶת־נַאֲקָתָם וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹקים אֶת־בְּרִיתוֹ אֶת־אַבְרָהָם אֶת־יִצְחָק וְאֶת־יַעֲקֹב:
וַיַּרְא אֱלֹקים אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וַיֵּדַע אֱלֹקים:
It was during those many days that the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned from their labor and they cried out, and their entreaties from their labor rose up to God.
God heard their moaning, and God recalled His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
And God saw the Israelites, and God knew. (Ex 2: 23-25)
I can remember my first time studying Shemot, as a fourth grader at what was then the Yeshiva of Hudson County. The concluding verses of Exodus Ch. 2 left an indelible image in my mind, one of God anthropomorphized (I did not know that word back then) into a slave making cement and bricks along with the Hebrew slaves, feeling their pain in such a way that was possible only through presence and experience.
I cannot explain what led me to intuit this; perhaps it was a prescient observation of a precocious 10 year old. But I think that I was on to something.
We can find other similar images in the Tanakh. Psalm 91 concludes with the following verse, as spoken by God:
יִקְרָאֵנִי | וְאֶעֱנֵהוּ עִמּוֹ אָנֹכִי בְצָרָה אֲחַלְּצֵהוּ וַאֲכַבְּדֵהוּ:
When he calls upon Me I will answer him; I am with him in distress, I will deliver him and bring him honor. (v. 15)
Note here that the verse does not speak of God being with the supplicant in his distress, but that God, too, is in distress.
A similar image is can be seen in a complex passage* in Isaiah 63:9 (which is also the concluding passage of Haftarat Vayelech, the last of the seven haftarot of consolation.) The verse reads:
בְּכָל־צָרָתָם | לֹא [לוֹ] צָר וּמַלְאַךְ פָּנָיו הוֹשִׁיעָם בְּאַהֲבָתוֹ וּבְחֶמְלָתוֹ הוּא גְאָלָם וַיְנַטְּלֵם וַיְנַשְּׂאֵם כָּל־יְמֵי עוֹלָם:
The text as we have it translates as follows:
In all their troubles He was troubled, and the angel of His presence delivered them. In His love and pity He Himself redeemed them, raised them and exalted them all the days of old.
There are examples of God’s empathy. But this passage is different; what does verse 25 teach us? Shouldn’t it be obvious? If we believe in an omniscient God, then why do we need this verse in the first place? We believe in the economy of language in the Torah, that no word or letter is employed unnecessarily. So, we are challenged to drill down a little deeper; superficial meanings will reveal nothing.
The verb ידע is usually translated “to know,” but it has much to tell us about the realm of knowledge. We are accustomed to thinking of knowledge of facts or subject matter, something intellectual. But here, like elsewhere in the Torah, we are introduced to a knowledge that goes beyond the brain, and perhaps against the grain.
To understand the difference, we need to look at another example of ידע that we find early in Parashat Bereshit. After the Adam and Hava are banished from the garden in Eden we read:
וְהָאָדָם יָדַע אֶת־חַוָּה אִשְׁתּוֹ...
Adam knew Hava his wife... (Gn 4: 1)
Obviously he knew her; they were together in the garden, they spoke, they disobeyed, they were exiled. However, the association with the next words, וַתַּהַר וַתֵּלֶד , “she conceived and bore” [a child,] leads to an assumption that they were intimate. But is this simply a matter of sexual intimacy, or is there something more? We do find other words for sexual intercourse in the Bible, verbs that connote a physical action, for instanceלקח , שכב, or בא. Why ידע, a word so fraught with cerebration?
There is a debate among exegetes over whether the first sexual encounter took place in the garden or after the banishment from it. On the one hand, there is a principle that Torah does not keep to chronological order (אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה) so the fact that it appears where it does is meaningless. On the other hand, perhaps the position of this story is, in fact, intentional and chronological. If that is the case, we may draw an interesting lesson from the choice of ידע.
Consider what transpired in the first three chapters of Genesis. Adam and Hava knew a life of limited responsibility, much freedom, and no shame. They then engaged in temptation, deception, humiliation, exile, and a new found fear of the unknown, including the knowledge that, at some point, their very existence would come to an end. And they experienced all this together. They learned that they are frail beings with finite capabilities forced to live within the web of human uncertainty. They came to know themselves, and they came to know each other, within this context, through this experience. And they came to look to each other as a source of refuge, comfort, and hope, not despite their limitations, but because of them. So “Adam came to know Hava his wife” (and one hopes that Hava, likewise, came to know Adam her husband as well,) in an intimate partnership that developed through time and experience, not through an instance of infatuation or “chemistry.”
The prophet Hosea speaks allegorically of a marital relationship between God and Israel. In verses that are recited when wrapping the strap of tefillin around the fingers, one says:
וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי לְעוֹלָם
וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בְּצֶדֶק וּבְמִשְׁפָּט וּבְחֶסֶד וּבְרַחֲמִים:
וְאֵרַשְׂתִּיךְ לִי בֶּאֱמוּנָה
וְיָדַעַתְּ אֶת־ה’:
And I will betroth you to me for eternity,
And I will betroth you to me with fairness and with rules, with kindness and with compassion.
And I will betroth you to me with faithfulness,
And you will know God. (Hos 2: 21-22)
These verses set out stages for the development of a relationship from which a knowing, intimate connection grows. It begins with a basic commitment of being together, one that surpasses time. For it to grow, it requires additional commitments that are active and emotional - צדק, a commitment to being just and playing fair; משפט, following rules that set up expectations and offer protections and boundaries; חסד, acting with kindness and consideration; רחמים, compassion, caring, listening, feeling. When these elements become the active components of a relationship, then אמונה, faithfulness, a sense of trust and confidence in the other, coming from experience, becomes manifest, and the possibilities for דעת, the opportunities for deep, intimate knowledge, grow from there.
Hosea’s model, which reflects the development of a meaningful relationship, whether between human lovers or between Israel as a people and God, begins to develop in these early chapters of Exodus and continues through the rest of the Torah. While the concept of an intimate, marital-type relationship between God and Israel is a recurrent motif in Jewish tradition, one must ask how well this analogy can work. It may be possible for God to have an intimate, knowing relationship with a whole people, but can Israel, as a whole, ever keep up its end of a mutual relationship? In looking at the Tanakh as a whole, one might be forced to answer in the negative. Beyond the moment at Sinai, when did K’lal Yisrael ever come together in a univocal response to an entreaty of God? It is questionable that there could ever be a sense of corporate intimacy. But that may not be the point.
What exactly God knew is mysteriously undefined in our verse. What God responds to, as derived from the verses that precedes our verse, is not the singular cry and entreaty of an entire people, but the many cries of individuals in their suffering. We can assume that what God knew was the suffering of each Israelite who cried out in his or her own way to God. The challenge of the verse is that we take what we know about knowing relationships, the type that we hope to know in our own lives, and put that to work in our own individual relationships with God.
Note:
*The sages who were responsible for the finalization of the Massorah (the text of the Tanakh as we know it, with verse breaks, vocalization, spelling and cantillation marks) had some difficulty with this verse, as indicated by the passeq (the vertical line) and the qere/qetiv (how it is read or recited/how it is written) variants of לא and לו. An alternative reading would place the end of the previous verse at the passeq and would thus read: לא צר ומלאך פניו הושיעם no messenger or angel; His countenance saved them.
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