A Taste of the Bible

For a full description of our Bible Project and for an outline of the first two sessions, click on the sidebars to the right. Below is a thought on Genesis 1. 

God as an Expectant Parent

In the opening lines of Genesis one, the Torah says this: ‘v’ruach Elohim m’rachefet al p’nei ha’mayim’/Before the world was created, God’s spirit hovered (m’rachefet) over the surface of the primeval waters. It turns out the word m’rachefet is only used one other time in the Torah. Moses describes God’s relationship with the Jewish people as the relationship between parent eagles and their young:

K’nesher ya’ir kino, al gozalav yerachef (same root as m’rachefet)

As an eagle stirs up its nest, and hovers over its young 

The Rabbis describe the image this way: When the parent eagles want the little ones to fly, they beat their wings against the nest and get them all agitated so they flap their wings and start to lift off. But, they stay hovering close by (yerachef), so that when the little ones get tired, they can ride on their parents wings. 

Now, if we read the root rachaf/to hover expectantly—anxiously back into the Creation story, we get something quite beautiful. Before the world is born, when it is like a chick about to burst its shell, God is a m’rachefet. God hovers, like a nervous, concerned, loving parent watching over a child who is still quite fragile and has all this potential that is about to burst forth. Like the parent eagle, God backs away, enough to give this newly emerging universe room to come to life on its own, yet close by enough to protect God’s child, the world, from danger. The same tenderness that God shows to the fledgling Jewish people in Deuteronomy is shown by God to the world as a whole as it spreads its fragile wings and prepares to take flight for the first time.