Rhapsody in Blue: The Origin of God's Footstool in the Aramaic Targumim and Midrashic Tradition 9781463234430

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Rhapsody in Blue

Analecta Gorgiana

1059 Series Editor George Anton Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and short monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utilized by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

Rhapsody in Blue

The Origin of God's Footstool in the Aramaic Targumim and Midrashic Tradition

Rachel Adelman

Y W 2012

Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com G&C Kiraz is an imprint of Gorgias Press LLC Copyright © 2012 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in 2010 All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2012

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ISBN 978-1-4632-0106-7

Y W

ISSN 1935-6854

Reprinted from the 2010 Piscataway edition.

Printed in the United States of America

1. RHAPSODY IN BLUE: THE ORIGIN OF GOD’S FOOTSTOOL IN THE ARAMAIC TARGUMIM AND MIDRASHIC TRADITION RACHEL ADELMAN

MIAMI UNIVERSITY, OHIO [email protected] ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on three interpretative trends that address the vision at the ratification of the Sinai covenant. The Israelite leaders ascended Mount Sinai where they saw “the God of Israel: under his feet there was the likeness of brick-work of sapphire [lapis lazuli], like the very sky for purity” (Exod. 24:10). The Aramaic translations gloss over the implication that God can be seen; the leaders only see the “throne of Glory”. One midrashic tradition claims that what or how they saw was forbidden and the leaders were punished. Another links the vision to a horrific, yet pivotal moment in the Israelites’ oppression in Egypt.

PROLEGOMENON The verse describing the theophany at the ratification of the Sinai covenant (Exod 24:10) is one of the most astonishing and inexplicable verses in the Hebrew Bible. Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and the seventy of the elders of Israel ascended Mount Sinai, where they saw “the God of Israel: under His feet there was the likeness of brick-work of sapphire, like the very sky for purity”

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MIDRASH AND THE EXEGETICAL MIND

(Exod 24:10).1 On par with the vision of Isaiah, who saw the Lord seated on a high and lofty throne, the skirts of His robe filling the temple (Isa 6:1), or Ezekiel’s vision of the Heavenly Chariot on the banks of the Chebar Canal (Ezek 1), the verse beckons interpretation.2 As Nahum Sarna points out, “The language is circumspect. There is no description of God Himself, only of the celestial setting beneath the visionary heavenly throne.”3 The verse only conveys what they saw under God’s feet, while He [God] did not raise His hand against the leaders of the Israelites; they beheld God, and they ate and drank. (Exod 24:11, NJPS). Does this divine restraint, not “raising His hand against [them],” imply that there had been a transgression? How does the exegetical tradition circumnavigate the experience of direct sight and the anthropomorphism implied in the reference to God’s “feet”?4 In reflecting on the experience at Sinai, Moses claimed that the nation perceived “no form” and saw “no shape”, but only heard the voice of the Lord speaking out of the fire at Horeb (Deut 4:12, 15). In the scene following the prophet’s request for direct revelation after the Sin of the Golden Calf, God tells Moses: You cannot see my face, for man may not see me and live (Exod 1 All translations of primary texts are the author’s unless otherwise indicated. 2 In addition to Ezek 1:26; 10:1, 20, Ibn Ezra refers to 1 Kgs 22:19: “But Micaiah said, “I call upon you to hear the word of the Lord! I saw the Lord seated upon His throne, with all the host of heaven standing in attendance to the right and to the left of Him” (cf. 2 Chron 18:18, Ibn Ezra, Perush ha-’arokh on Exod 24:10). 3 Nahum Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Exodus (Philadelphia: JPS 1991), 153. 4 Elliot Wolfson argues that the corporeal representation of God prevalent in kabbalistic sources is continuous with the biblical sources, using this text in particular as his springboard. See Elliot Wolfson, “Images of God’s Feet: Some Observations on the Divine Body in Judaism,” in People of the Body: Jews and Judaism from An Embodied Perspective (ed. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz; Albany: SUNY Press 1992), 143-81. I am less equivocal about the sources; it seems that the Aramaic Targum tradition strains at this understanding. Commenting on the disappearing act of God’s feet (in Pirqe R. El. 42), Wolfson suggests: “Although God’s presence is surely felt...the feet must nevertheless be hidden: at the point of divine disclosure something remains concealed” (ibid., 146). It is the elusive hide-and-seek at moments of revelation that most intrigue the rabbinic imagination, and exegetical expansions on this verse prove to be no exception.

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33:20). To all prophets, God appears in visions, riddles or dreams, but to Moses alone He speaks mouth-to-mouth (Num 12:5-8). All of these instances suggest that God deliberately presents Himself in a non-visual mode, elusive of form and image. As George Steiner eloquently penned, the Israelite God is as “blank as the desert air…. The memory of His ultimatum, the presence of His Absence, have goaded Western man”5 ever since Sinai. These biblical verses in Exodus 24, in all their-concrete yet elusive lure, likewise goad the exegetical imagination. The Septuagint and the Aramaic Targum tradition tread with mincing steps, assiduously avoiding anthropomorphic language. Yet the ‘aggadah in the Babylonian Talmud and the later midrashic traditions (namely the Tanʚuma) suggest that, in feasting as they saw God (or feasting upon what they saw), the elders and Nadab and Abihu breached a boundary between earth and heaven on par with the sin of the Tower of Babel. So the vision was precisely what the text implies; they did see the semblance of God’s “body” (but let’s not suppose what we dare not suppose), and what they saw was absolutely forbidden! In this paper, I explore the narrow path the rabbinic tradition and Aramaic Targumim navigate between the claims for an apocalyptic vision and an outright rejection of such claims. There is, however, a third way that harmonizes the idea of a formless God, of-no-image and transcendent, with a direct experience, in this context, of the divine presence in history. Both Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer and the Targum Pseudo-Jonathan attach a narrative to the vision that entails neither exegetical prevarication nor an implied transgression, while suggesting a radically redemptive moment. How does this midrashic narrative “rescue” the biblical text from the charge of anthropomorphism, and salvage the God-ofno-form-and-of-no-image for an immanent engagement in the vicissitudes of history?

THE BIBLICAL TEXT AND TARGUM TRADITION “Traduttore, traditore!”

Let us begin with a close study of the biblical verses and their intertextual resonances. 5 George Steiner, In Bluebeard’s Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press 1971), 39.

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MIDRASH AND THE EXEGETICAL MIND Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel ascended; And they saw [K:’ –Q ™#] the God of Israel: And under His feet [#'+š ’:™ =%™ =™ ’#] there was the likeness of brickwork of sapphire [:'a– _™ !™ = ™1’ +– !g— 4” /™ V], ’ like the very sky for purity [:!œ™ &+š - –'/™ iš !™ -8˜ 4˜ )K]]. ’ Yet He did not raise His hand [ œ+ # š' %+™ f]] š against the leaders of Israel; they beheld [K$%“ ˜Q ™#] God, and they ate and drank (Exod 24:9-11, NJPS).

Two expression for seeing the deity are used in this passage -K:’ –Q ™# and K$%“ ˜Q ™# – both rendered by Tg. Onq. as “#$%#” [and they saw]. According to the Targum, the leaders had a distinct visual experience, but not of God’s “bodily” presence; rather the anthropomorphic expression “His feet” is understood to be a euphemism for the “the Throne of Glory” [!':9' '2:#)].6 Tg. Onq. is known for his close adherence to the plain sense of the biblical text, with the exception of direct anthropomorphic language. Any expressions in the Hebrew Bible that allude to God as having a physical form, such as “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm” or “the finger of God” are usually subject to circumspection. The tannaitic literature, in fact, justifies this principle: too exact a translation would be considered badai [deception].7 A literal translation, in this case, is a kind of betrayal, as the Italian expression goes: “traduttore, traditore!” (the translator is a traitor). Ironically, divergence from a literal understanding when it comes to anthropomorphic language is considered to be a more faithful rendition of the biblical text. Onqelos then translates the complete verse as: “They saw the glory of the God of Israel. Under His Throne of Glory was the likeness of a good stone and like the appearance of the heaven for purity [ :9' =' #$%#

6 See the discussion in Avigdor Shinan, Mikr’a ‘ahad ve-targumim harbeh (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad 1993), 26-31. 7 This verse serves as the paradigmatic example in rabbinic discourse on anthropomorphic language. According to a teaching in the name of R. Yehuda, there are two types of inappropriate translation: one that is too literal – “ha-metargem pesuq ketzurato harei zeh badai”; and one that adds – “hamosif alav harei zeh megadef” (m. Qidd. 49a; t. Meg. 3 [4], 41). See the discussion in Shinan, ibid., 26-28, and Roger Le Deғaut, Introduction a̖ la litte̗rature targumique (Rome: Institut biblique pontifical 1966), 43.

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