Under His Wings: the World Was Hatched, Not Built

Every description the Torah gives of divine protection is the same shape, and it is not the shape of a wall.

The covenant keeps one thing whole

Sealing the covenant between the pieces, Avraham cuts every animal in two and lays the halves opposite each other. One creature he does not divide.

וְאֶת הַצִּפֹּר לֹא בָתָר

And the bird he did not divide. Bereishit 15:10

When the birds of prey come down on the carcasses he drives them off (15:11), guarding the uncut bird against what the dark sends at it. The founding covenant of Israel has, at its centre, one thing that is never cut and only sheltered.

The shape is always the same

בְּאֶבְרָתוֹ יָסֶךְ לָךְ, וְתַחַת כְּנָפָיו תֶּחְסֶה

He will cover you with His pinions, and under His wings you will find refuge. Tehillim 91:4

The children of men shelter in the shadow of His wings (Tehillim 36:8). Hide me in the shadow of Your wings (Tehillim 17:8). The image recurs across Tanakh as a geometry rather than a sentiment: curved, enclosed, warm, and dark before it becomes light.

It is the shape of incubation.

The first act of creation, in that posture

The Zohar reads the hovering of the divine spirit over the primordial waters as a mother bird over her nest (Bereishit 9a). The verb at Bereishit 1:2 is מְרַחֶפֶת, and the Torah uses that same verb once more, for an eagle.

עַל גּוֹזָלָיו יְרַחֵף

Hovering over its young. Devarim 32:11

The world was hatched, not built.

The mother bird settled on her eggs has a word of her own.

רֹבֶצֶת עַל הָאֶפְרֹחִים

Sitting upon the chicks. Devarim 22:6

That word is worth holding. It is the same participle used of the deep in Yosef’s blessing: בִּרְכֹת תְּהוֹם רֹבֶצֶת תָּחַת, blessings of the deep crouching beneath (Bereishit 49:25). The deep broods underneath a person the way a bird broods over what has not hatched yet.

Which makes conversion an egg

Ruth entering Israel is described with the same wings.

לָבוֹא לַחֲסוֹת תַּחַת כְּנָפָיו

To come and take shelter under His wings. Ruth 2:12

Sheltered, enclosed, dark, warm, gestating, until she cracks open into a people. The line from her runs to David.

And the question the court asks

The Gemara records what a person is asked when brought before the heavenly court, and the list is not what anyone expects. Among the questions: צִפִּית לִישׁוּעָה, did you watch for the redemption (Shabbat 31a).

That is the question put to something inside an egg, waiting for the break. Jewish life read this way is an incubation, and what the tradition calls the birth pangs of redemption is the shell giving.

Fill a shell with oil and light it, and the arrangement is the shape of protection at the scale of one table. The shell is the wing. The oil is the warmth. The flame is the hatching, and the word for hatching is the word for the splitting of the sea.

Worked out in Kol Tehom, free in English and Hebrew.

Keep reading

• Baka  one verb splits the sea and cracks the egg
• Solomon’s Question, Answered by an Eggshell  how a finite vessel holds what the heavens cannot
• Tehom  the deep that crouches beneath, in the same word

The map shows how all of it connects.