When Eden Becomes Egypt

I was reading a book over this past Shabbat and came across a reference to Deuteronomy 11:10-12, so I looked that up. It says:

10For the land to which you are coming to possess is not like the land of Egypt, out of which you came, where you sowed your seed and which you watered by foot, like a vegetable garden.

11But the land, to which you pass to possess, is a land of mountains and valleys and absorbs water from the rains of heaven,

12a land the Lord, your God, looks after; the eyes of Lord your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.

I started contemplating our ancestors’ stay in Egypt and Adam and Eve’s short tenure in the Garden of Eden, in the light of a class I took this summer at the Haberman Institute with Rabbi Dr. Yosef Leibowitz. It occurred to me that the latter foreshadows the former. They are very close parallels, and perhaps that’s a stylistic device that was chosen consciously in writing the story of the origin of mankind. A story that would mimic the foundational story of the Jewish people, its Exodus from Egypt.

The Garden of Eden had everything in it that humanity would need to survive and thrive. All manner of food for them to eat, since humanity was originally intended to be vegetarian, perfect and balmy weather, and the notion of permanence that Adam and Eve had – they will live forever in this idyllic setting and nothing will ever change. Thanks to Leibowitz and his wise insights, I found myself able to view the Garden of Eden as an incubator – a safe place to launch the human adventure. Just as with baby chicks and tender seedlings, when they have reached the appropriate maturational stage (perhaps sexual maturity, based on the saga of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?), they can be set out into the world more ready to thrive.

The Garden of Eden was watered by several rivers and was lush and fertile. Everything they could ever want was provided to them there. They had tasks to do there – to keep watch over the Garden, to work it, to make sure all was well with it – but these were not overly challenging. The contrast to the larger world – where they will have to earn their meager living by the sweat of their brows (Genesis 3:17-19) – could not be more pronounced.

Let’s now skip through the generations until we reach the Children of Israel in Egypt. How did they get to Egypt in the first place? We recall that Joseph was sold as a slave to a passing tribe of Ishmaelites, who in turn sold him to Potiphar in Egypt. When the years have passed and he is first reunited with his brothers, he hastens to reassure them that they need not feel guilty because this was all part of God’s plan (Genesis chapter 45):

5But now do not be sad, and let it not trouble you that you sold me here, for it was to preserve life that God sent me before you.

6For already two years of famine [have passed] in the midst of the land, and [for] another five years, there will be neither plowing nor harvest.

7And God sent me before you to make for you a remnant in the land, and to preserve [it] for you for a great deliverance.

8And now, you did not send me here, but God, and He made me a father to Pharaoh, a lord over all his household, and a ruler over the entire land of Egypt.

And what do we know about Egypt?

1) It is watered by the Nile River, which floods every August after the monsoons in Ethiopia (the location of one of the sources of the river) and keeps the land fertile. It is not dependent on rainfall in its vicinity.

2) The Pharaoh at the time (the one who knows and honors Joseph) has provided Joseph’s family with land and cattle – in Genesis 47:6, we read Pharaoh’s words: “’The land of Egypt is [open] before you; in the best of the land settle your father and your brothers. Let them dwell in the land of Goshen, and if you know that there are capable men among them, make them livestock officers over what is mine.’”

The children of Israel thus have everything they could want – land and cattle are provided to them, and they are left to their own pursuits undisturbed. 430 years pass and they have grown vastly in number and property. The people have matured to the point where they are ready to take the next step – a family, a group of people related by blood, is about to become a nation, a group of people additionally related by law and custom.

Moses leads them out of Egypt and into the wilderness on the way to the Promised Land, and oh do they complain!

Exodus 16:2-3:

2The entire community of the children of Israel complained against Moses and against Aaron in the desert.

3The children of Israel said to them, If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat, when we ate bread to our fill! For you have brought us out into this desert, to starve this entire congregation to death.

And again, Numbers 11:4-6:

4But the multitude among them began to have strong cravings. Then even the children of Israel once again began to cry, and they said, "Who will feed us meat?

5We remember the fish that we ate in Egypt free of charge, the cucumbers, the watermelons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.

6But now, our bodies are dried out, for there is nothing at all; we have nothing but manna to look at."

They didn’t have it so bad in Egypt, despite the fact that they were slaves! They had food provided to them, plentiful and varied. Now they are in an arid climate where both food and water are a constant worry for them. This situation will continue in the Promised Land, which is dependent upon rainfall because it has nothing like the Nile River keeping it fertile and well-irrigated. They will have to start to worry about rain, propitiate their God, develop rituals to ensure a good harvest year after year. They will eat only by the sweat of their brows and by favorable weather conditions.

We can now see Egypt as an incubator of sorts for these people. They lived in ideal conditions, almost alone in the entire Middle East (Babylonia, watered by the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, enjoys a similar situation; it is not by accident that mighty civilizations arose in these two locations). Everything they wanted was provided to them and water was plentiful. Now they have been thrust out into the world to take the next step in their maturational process: becoming a nation, accepting a highly detailed body of law, learning to govern themselves and take their place as a people on the world stage. They did NOT leave Egypt solely to come out of slavery and into freedom. They mainly left it to confront their God and be given all of the rules that would henceforth guide them as a civilization. They entered into a covenant with God at Mount Sinai and that was the real purpose of leaving Egypt. As we read in Exodus Chapter 19:

3Moses ascended to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, "So shall you say to the house of Jacob and tell the sons of Israel,

4'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and [how] I bore you on eagles' wings, and I brought you to Me.

5And now, if you obey Me and keep My covenant, you shall be to Me a treasure out of all peoples, for Mine is the entire earth.

6And you shall be to Me a kingdom of princes and a holy nation.' These are the words that you shall speak to the children of Israel."

7Moses came and summoned the elders of Israel and placed before them all these words that the Lord had commanded him.

8And all the people replied in unison and said, "All that the Lord has spoken we shall do!" and Moses took the words of the people back to the Lord.

They have left Egypt explicitly to become the sovereign people of their God. That is the purpose for which they have now matured enough – not to accept freedom but to crystallize as a people with a ruler and a governing structure of law.

Standing at Mount Sinai was the seminal moment for the Children of Israel. They were a family before that and a fledgling nation afterwards. The moment of revelation is what everything goes back to in all of our subsequent sacred texts, and the pivotal event toward which everything points in our preceding writings. This is what we were being readied for during all the years in Egypt – the prosperous years and the enslaved years.

In retrospect, it was good to leave the Garden of Eden, to start to shape the world around them instead of being the passive recipients of plenty, to start to exercise their free will and make their own decisions about their future courses of actions – good or bad.

In retrospect, it was good to leave Egypt, to become a sovereign nation free to worship its own God and abide by their own distinct rules. We read every week in the Kabbalat Shabbat service from Mishkan T’filah:

“Standing on the parted shores, we still believe what we were taught before ever we stood at Sinai’s foot; that wherever we go, it is eternally Egypt; that there is a better place, a promised land; that the winding way to that promise passes through the wilderness. That there is no way to get from here to there except by joining hands, marching together.”

The word for “Egypt” in Hebrew is מצרים, which literally means "narrow place.” They have left the enclosure of their incubator (a birth canal of sorts?) to emerge into the world as a people.

The Garden of Eden is the place we left behind. Egypt too is the place we left behind. Our eyes are on the future, our aspirations do not permit us to look backward, as we make our own way in the world.

After I finished this piece, I stumbled across a poem by Yehuda Halevi (in Poems from the Diwan, Poetica 32, translated by Gabriel Levin) in which the poet compared Egypt to Eden 1000 years ago:

In Alexandria

Has time taken off its clothes of trembling

and decked itself out in riches,

and has earth put on fine-spun linen

and set its beds in gold brocade?

All the fields of the Nile are checkered,

as though the bloom of Goshen

were woven straps of a breastplate,

and lush oases dark-hued yarn,

and Raamses and Pithom laminated goldleaf.

Girls on the riverbank, a bevy of fawns,

Linger, their wrists heavy with bangles –

anklets clipping their gait.

The heart enticed

forgets its age, remembers boys or girls

in the garden of Eden, in Egypt, along the Pishon,

running on the green to the river’s edge;

the wheat is emerald tinged with red,

and robed in needlework;

it sways to the whim of the sea breeze,

as though bowing in thanks to the Lord …