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And the earth was waste and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep:
and the RUACH of God moved upon the face of the waters.
The above words from Genesis 1:2 are some of the best known words in
the world. Books have been
written about the use of the word RUACH in it.
Some say it should read:
And
the earth was waste and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep:
and the SPIRIT of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Others argue that it should read:
And
the earth was waste and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep:
and the WIND of God moved upon the face of the waters.
Beyond the question of whether RUACH
should be translated “SPIRIT” or “WIND” lies another question:
What was the RUACH doing?
The Hebrew text uses the word MeRAChEFET,
a feminine singular Piel participle.
The American Stand Version translators decided to
translate it as “moving”:
“. . .
moving upon the face of the waters.”
However, when Martin Luther translated
the same verse in his German translation of Genesis, he decided to
translate it “hovered.” To
use Luther’s term:
“the RUACH
hovered above the face of the waters that were not yet divided into
those of heaven and those of earth.”
But why did he choose the word
“hovered” instead of “moved”?
What sort of “hovering” or “moving” was it anyway?
Was it like a helicopter hovering over a potential landing site? Or was it like a predatory animal hovering over its next
victim? Or, was it something else?
Luther based his decision upon the
context in which the word was used in another verse, the only other
verse in the Hebrew Bible in which the word MeRAChEFET
appears – Deuteronomy 32:11:
As an eagle that stirreth up her nest,
that fluttereth (MeRAChEFET)
over her young,
He spread abroad his wings,
He took them, He bares them on his pinions.
In the above verse “God, who takes
Israel from among the peoples and bears it into the promised land, is
compared with the eagle, who with softly beating wings, hovers over its
nest to quicken it, i.e., to agitate its fledgling young to flight, but
who then spreads its wings wide, takes up one of its young, and `bears
it on its pinions.’” This
same idea is represented in Exodus
19:4
You have seen what I did unto the Egyptians,
and how I bare you on eagles' wings,
and brought you unto myself.
With this
information we are ready to modify our translation of Genesis 1:2 so
that it will more accurately reflect the meaning of MeRAChEFET:
And the earth was waste and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep:
and the RUACH of ELOHIM fluttered over the face of the waters.
In order to more
completely understand this verse we must now examine the genders of the
words in the phrase “the RUACH of God fluttered.”
(1) RUACH – noun feminine singular
(2)
ELOHIM – noun masculine plural
(3) MeRAChEFET – feminine singular piel
participle
Notice that of
the two feminine words – RUACH & MeRAChEFET – it was
the RUACH that fluttered over the waters.
Why is RUACH the subject instead of ELOHIM?
The answer becomes clear when we remember the other two verses
that used the example of the mother eagle and her young.
If RUACH had appeared by itself, then the usual lexical choices
of “wind” and “spirit” would top out the list.
However, in this case, the use of RUACH with ELOHIM provides us
with a third and much better option.
¬Martin Buber* points out:
RUACH
ELOHIM, the breathing, blowing, surging phenomenon, is neither natural
(wind) nor spiritual (spirit) but both in one; it is the creative
breathing that brings both nature and the spirit into one being. The Bible here thinks not lexically but elementally, and
would have its readers think in its manner, would have the movement from
God that precedes all differentiation undifferentially touch the hearing
heart. Here at the
beginning of the Bible, RUACH ELOHIM stands as a great, unformulated,
latent theological principle, expressed only by implication.
What is that
first principle of Genesis? Again
we turn to Buber for insight:
ELOHIM
is to be assigned neither to the realm of nature nor to the realm of
spirit, that ELOHIM is not nature and is not spirit either, but that
both have their origin in the male and female ELOHIM.
RUACH ELOHIM should probably best be understood as the PRESENCE
of ELOHIM, which is the unique CREATOR/PARENT of both realms, the
natural and the spiritual.
Using the earlier picture of the mother eagle and
her young as a guide, the words of Genesis reveal the picture of the
DIVINE PARENT (ELOHIM) and the NEST (the earth, darkness, and the deep).
The western institutionalized masculine model of God makes it
impossible for the western readers to see of feel the “motherly”
picture of ELOHIM painted by these words. Yet, the ancient person hearing the words of this verse would
have felt the “expectation” of the scene.
The time of birth was imminent, something was about to be born.
What would it be? What was in the nest of ELOHIM?
Then the words of the following verses
burst forth and the whole known world of the ancient audience is
birthed. As the entire
creation flew out of ELOHIM’s nest, only one thing reflected the
“image and likeness of ELOHIM” – mankind, both male and female.
Now let’s return to Buber* for his
amazing analysis of the event:
“We should
note that ELOHIM’s RUACH is named only at the beginning of the
creation story – it is the undivided intentional totality of the work
of creation that is assigned to RUACH, not the individual actions in the
world’s becoming or even the entirety of them.
Not even where the divine breath is blown into Adam is RUACH
named, although (as is clear from 6:3) it is RUACH itself that expands
in him into the breath of life … Both accounts of creation – the
account of the making of the world (1:1-2:4a) and the account of the
making of human beings (2:4b-25), the primordial legend of nature and
the primordial legend of history … In the first, RUACH maternally
spreads her wings to shelter the totality of the things that are to be;
in the second, unnamed and enigmatic, she is infused into the being
destined for existence in history, to be present for his decision and to
share his fate. . . .
“More
immediately accessible to German … is the idea of ELOHIM’s RUACH,
which in the beginning of creation hovers above the face of the waters,
spreading its wings as the eagle spreads its wings above the children in
their nest. (`Hover,’ however, does not by itself render the Hebrew MeRAChEFET,
because, unlike the Hebrew word, `hover’ does not necessarily evoke
the image of a bird, in particular a bird holding steady in the air with
gently beating wings) … In the Bible, RUACH always denotes a process.
. . ."
Every time I read
Genesis 1:2 and meditate on its words, one of my most favorite Psalms, Psalm
91, comes to mind. See
if its words take on a new meaning for you.
He that
dwells in the secret place of the Highest,
He shall abide under the shadow of the Many Breasted One.
I will say to YAHWEH,
He is my refuge and my fortress;
My ELOHIM, I trust in Him.
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler,
And from the deadly pestilence.
He will
cover you with his pinions,
And under his wings shall you take refuge.
His faithfulness is a shield and a buckler.
You shall not be afraid for the terror by night,
Nor for the arrow that flies by day;
Nor the pestilence that walks in darkness,
Nor for the destruction that destroys at noonday.
A thousand
shall fall at your side,
And ten thousand at your right hand;
It shall not come near you.
Only with
your eyes shall you look,
And see the reward of the wicked.
For you, YAHWEH, are my refuge!
You have made the Highest your habitation.
No evil shall befall you,
Neither shall any plague come near your tent.
For he
will give his messengers charge over you,
To guard and protect you in all your ways.
They shall support you with their hands,
Lest you stump your foot against a stone.
You shall tread upon the lion and adder;
The young lion and the serpent shall you trample under foot.
Because he has set his love upon me,
Therefore will I deliver him.
I will set
him on high, because he has known my name.
He shall call upon me, and I will answer him;
I will be with him in trouble.
I will deliver him, and honor him.
With long life will I satisfy him,
And show him my deliverance.
The psalmist paints a beautiful picture
in which I can’t but help see the “wings” of ELOHIM spread above
the one who trusts in Him and who expectantly awaits the “process of
the RUACH” to begin, the process that will bring deliverance from the
trial facing him. *
Scripture and Translation by Martin Buber and Franz
Rosenzweig. Translated by Lawrence Rosenwald with Everett Fox. Indiana
University Press; Indianapolis, IN; (C) 1994; "People Today and the
Jewish Bible: From A Lecture Series" by Martin Buber (November
1926) pp. 4-21. |
