YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
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INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA

PARASHAT VAERA

The Name "El Shaddai"
By Rav Michael Hattin

INTRODUCTION

Last week's Parasha concluded with the first encounter of Moshe and Aharon with Pharaoh, and with their utter failure to secure the liberation of Israel.  Appearing before him to demand the immediate release of the Hebrew slaves for a three-day furlough of worship in the wilderness, presenting themselves as the emissaries of the invisible God of Israel, Moshe and his brother are not able to sway the god king's heart.  "Who is God that I should hearken to his voice to let Israel go?" he thunders, "I do not know God, nor will I let Israel free!" (5:2).  In fact, quite the opposite, for Pharaoh now decides to impose upon the hapless slaves even more backbreaking servitude.  Henceforth, the people will no longer be given the straw needed to fashion their tally of bricks, but will painfully have to gather it themselves.

Ejected from the presence of the King, Moshe and Aharon wait expectantly at the palace portal for miraculous intervention, but none is forthcoming.  In the meantime, a delegation of Hebrew taskmasters arrives to plead the case of the Hebrews who cannot meet their tally of bricks, but Pharaoh dismisses them derisively.  An unplanned and uncomfortable meeting then ensues between the dejected taskmasters and their ostensible leaders, the two brothers who only a short time earlier had arrived from afar bearing wondrous signs and delirious tidings of salvation:

They encountered Moshe and Aharon standing before them as they came out from Pharaoh's presence.  They said to them: 'may God see what you have done and judge you, for you have made us despicable in the sight of Pharaoh and his ministers, placing a sword in their hands to kill us!'" (5:20-21).

A CHANGE OF DIRECTION

Moshe, stung by his people's disappointment and dejected by God's apparent indifference, now questions the wisdom of his mission: "Oh God, why have You dealt grievously with this people, why have You sent me?  Since I have come to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has dealt harshly with this nation, but You have not saved Your people!" (5:22-23).  God, however, is unmoved, and instead announces to Moshe the promise of imminent success: "You will now see that which I shall do to Pharaoh, for with a strong hand he will send them forth, and with a strong hand he will drive them forth from his land!"

What follows of course is the onslaught of the plagues, proclaiming God's complete mastery over the forces of nature, over the gods of Egypt, and over the Pharaoh himself.  In past years, we have dealt with the plague sequence at length, analyzing the progressing series from a number of aspects.  This time, we will consider the introductory passage of the Parasha, the series of verses that bridges between Moshe's ignoble failure last week, and this week's growing intimations of triumph.

The Lord spoke to Moshe and said to him: 'I am God.  I appeared to Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'acov by El Shaddai, but my name 'God' I made not known to them.  I also established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their sojournings in which they sojourned.  I also have heard the choking cries of the people of Israel whom Egypt oppresses, and I have remembered My covenant.  Therefore, tell the people of Israel that I am God, and that I shall extricate you from under the burdens of Egypt and I shall rescue you from their labor, and I shall redeem you with an outstretched arm and with awesome punishments.  I shall take you to Me as My people and I shall be your God, and you will know that I am God your Lord who extricates you from under the burdens of Egypt.  I shall then bring you to the land that I swore with an oath to give to Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'acov, and I shall give it to you as an inheritance, for I am God.'  Moshe spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not hearken to Moshe because of their broken spirit and because of the hard labor (6:2-9).

GOD'S NAMES

This brief and poignant passage, delineating God's loving concern and the people's abject disappointment, begins and ends with a reference to the forefathers.  God revealed Himself to them, but only by the peculiar name of "El Shaddai."  His name 'God,' in the original Hebrew rendered by the so-called ineffable four-letters of YHWH and known as the "Tetragrammaton" (tetra=four, grammaton=letters), remained "unknown" to them.  It is apparently this name that Moshe is now to communicate to the people of Israel, as he informs them that God is aware of their plight and will imminently intervene to save them.  Moshe is to tell the people that God will save them from Egyptian oppression through the exercise of His awesome power, will redeem them, take them as His special people, and then bring them to the land.  This final act of restoring them to Canaan will constitute the fulfillment of His oath to their forefathers, the very ones who were earlier described as somehow possessing an "incomplete" picture of His essence.  The passage concludes with the parenthetical observation that the people of Israel, overtaxed and crushed with ceaseless toil, remained unimpressed with God's soothing words.

Clearly, while the general outline of the above passage, its description of God's care, involvement, and preparedness to now act, is straightforward enough, the particulars of the matter are much more obscure.  Why does the verse indicate that God appeared to the progenitors in the guise of "El Shaddai" but not by His proper name?  What is the import of the difference between the two?  How do these names relate to the present plight of the people?  How is Israel to achieve surcease by appreciating the theological distinction between both of them?  How does all of the above relate to the landscape of Canaan, seemingly the most important aspect of the equation?  

THE COMMENTARY OF THE RAMBAN

While the commentaries offer various approaches to resolve some of these questions, we shall concentrate on the words of the Ramban (13th century, Spain) who this time also incorporates in his comments some of the thoughts of Rashi (11th century, France) as well as of the Ibn Ezra (12th century, Spain).

Let us preface the Ramban's words by remarking that while a superficial reading of our text may give the impression that the forefathers were only aware of the Divine name "El Shaddai" but not "YHWH," the narratives of Sefer Bereishit suggest otherwise.  While it is the case that the combination "El Shaddai" does feature prominently in the Patriarchal narratives where it occurs six times (Bereishit 17:1; 28:3; 35:11; 43:14; 48:3; 49:25) and nowhere else (although the names "El" and "Shaddai" do separately occur many times), God does employ the name "YHWH" in direct address to Avraham (Bereishit 15:7) and to Ya'acov (28:13).  Therefore, the verse cannot be indicating that the Patriarchs were not aware of the Tetragrammaton in the simple literal sense.  Instead, the Torah must be suggesting that they lacked an appreciation of the Name's meaning and implication, and instead had to content themselves with experiencing the God-man relationship through the prism of "El Shaddai."  The Ramban explains:

The wise Rabbi Avraham (Ibn Ezra) explained that…the matter of the verse is to state that God appeared to the Patriarchs by this name (El Shaddai), for it suggests His subduing of the celestial order.  Though He effected great miracles on their behalf, they were not accomplished through the suspension of the natural order.  Thus, in famine they were preserved from death, and in combat from the sword.  The Patriarchs were blessed with wealth, honor and all variety of goodness, after the manner of all of the Torah's promises of blessings or curses.  

After all, goodness does not befall a person as reward for mitzva performance, nor does evil strike down the transgressor, except through the agency of a miracle.  A man left to his own devices and to the effects of the constellations is neither benefited nor harmed by his deeds.  Rather, the reward and punishment in this life associated with the keeping or breaking of the Torah is completely miraculous but nevertheless concealed.  The onlooker sees only the functioning of the natural order but these things truly are a man's reward or punishment.

GOD ACTING THROUGH NATURE

According to the Ibn Ezra, the name "Shaddai" derives from the root Sh-D-D, associated with overpowering or defeating.  The name "El" means "mighty."  The combination of the two therefore yields an emphatic and superlative description of God's awesome might.  But, explains the Ramban, the might that God exhibits when in the guise of El Shaddai is not obvious or overt, but rather hidden.  It is God overturning the fate that is spelled out in the stars; it is God subduing the outcome that is predicted by statistical probability.  Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'acov all suffer through periods of famine but do not perish.  They experience warfare but are not harmed.  God intervenes to save and preserve them, but when so doing He does not overturn the natural order.  Salvation of the Patriarchs is accomplished through completely natural means, so that the onlooker may conceivably see no trace of Divine involvement.  But God is there!  Through the subtle arrangement of causes and effects, God is able to guarantee an outcome that represents only one possibility among many, but it is the possibility that yields survival or success.

But, says the Ramban, there is more.  ALL of the Torah's promises of reward or punishment in this world operate according to similar principles.  Thus, there is absolutely no rational or apparent causal link between a person's performance of a mitzva act or commission of a transgression, and the Torah's stated recompense for the deed.  As the Ramban explains in his lengthy comments to Bereishit 46:15 – 

One who cohabits with forbidden relatives or consumes the prohibited fat of an animal (two crimes punishable by spiritual excision) does not incur thereby death according to any natural process, nor should the heavens cease to provide their rains as a consequence of planting during the Sabbatical year.  All of the Torah's promises of success concerning those matters and all of the achievements of the righteous, all of the prayers of David our king as well as all of our prayers are miracles and wonders, that do not, however, involve overt subjugations of the natural order…

SEEING GOD'S INVOLVEMENT

God's involvement, then, is concrete and real but covert and concealed.  The world appears to be operating according to exclusively natural and predictable laws of cause and effect, but God's participation in the process will decide the outcome.  It is that Divine participation that renders an event a "miracle," rather than any supernatural effects. We are all familiar with stories, apocryphal and true, of situations in which a person's seemingly insignificant decision in response to seemingly innocuous choices has altered his/her life and the lives of others irrevocably.  One who misses their routine morning bus ride is confronted with innumerable possibilities of getting to work.  Almost always, the subsequent course of action taken yields results that are unsurprising and expected, but occasionally the consequences are fateful.  

What we fail to realize, however, is that every choice, every situation and every option is just as charged FOR THE ONE WHO LIVES HIS/HER LIFE IN GOD'S PRESENCE, for God in fact guides every progression to its conclusion.  This is the meaning of God acting with the attributes of "El Shaddai," for the name indicates His concealed guidance, just as the Patriarchs experienced that guidance during the entire course of their lives.  Presumably, according to the Ramban, one who lives a life estranged from God and His watchful gaze, insensitive to His holy calling and deaf to His words, experiences only the vagaries of nature, living and dying in accordance with purely mechanistic principles.  Significantly, however, because God's involvement is anywise hidden under multiple layers of "customary conjunction," the outside observer may be unable to distinguish between the unfolding destiny of a Patriarchal life versus the banal fate of a mechanistic one.

The Ramban continues:

God therefore indicates to Moshe that "I appeared to the Patriarchs with My strong hand by which I overpower the stars and assist My chosen ones (El Shaddai), but I did not make myself known to them by the name YHWH by which all existence was brought into being.  I did not create new realities for them by upsetting the laws of nature.  Therefore, tell the people of Israel that I am God (YHWH), and indicate to them this great name a further time, for by it I will perform wonders for them so that they may know that I am God who does all."

The message of hope that Moshe is to convey to the oppressed Israelites is that God will now intervene overtly and obviously in their lives in order to extricate them from bondage.  He will very soon perform miracles and wonders on their behalf, phenomena that will upset the laws of nature and make clear beyond any doubt "that I am God who does all;" He will unleash the Plagues. The people of Israel, therefore, need not cry out any more, for God has seen their plight and will topple the cosmic order in the course of their liberation.

IDEAL FAITH

While the Ramban on our passage does not explicate the matter further, from his comments at the conclusion of Parashat Bo (13:16) it emerges that God's performance of overt miracles is a necessary reaction to situations in which people lack sufficient trust, but that the ideal form of His involvement is actually the more meandering route of "Nes Nistar" or concealed intervention.  The undeniable upset of natural law, which we mistakenly tend to associate with God's "real" intervention, is in fact an oblique response to jaded human hearts that no longer recognize the existence or involvement of an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent Creator!  Those that are steadfast in trust, cognizant of God's constant care and concern, those that follow the paradigm of the Patriarchs, have no need for overt miracles to bolster their faith.

The people of Israel, oppressed beyond their capacity to bear, crushed by Pharaoh and his evil minions into the dust, numb to any other reality beyond meeting the tally of their mud bricks, could not be faulted for their impatience with Moshe and for their inability to internalize God's soothing words.  They could not be expected to have preserved the essence of "El Shaddai" when all around them the brutal gods of servitude held sway.  So God indicated to them that He would overturn heaven and earth to save them: "Therefore, tell the people of Israel that I am God (YHWH), and that I shall extricate you from under the burdens of Egypt and I shall rescue you from their labor, and I shall redeem you with an outstretched arm and with awesome punishments.  I shall take you to Me as My people and I shall be your God, and you will know that I am God your Lord who extricates you from under the burdens of Egypt."  But at the same time, God makes clear, through His reference to the Patriarchs and to the Land, that there is another dimension to His involvement.  The truest expression of God's absolute abilities and unfathomable essence may in fact be indicated by the name YHWH.  But the name that best articulates the role of the human being in the scheme of things, free to act and free to believe, the name that best conveys God's acknowledgement of human potential and His ultimate faith in human choices, is "El Shaddai."

Shabbat Shalom