A Stroke of Brilliance

This reflection is part of the ongoing Forest Hills Haftorah Series. The rest of the content can be found here: https://www.sefaria.org/groups/FHJC-Haftorah-Series .

Wisdom was of incredible importance in ancient Israel and Judea, and it was one of the most beloved of topics for them to write about.

Here is a passage which I particularly love:

How about the imagery! Precious stones, length of days, a blossoming tree; Wow, this poet really held Wisdom to be in high regard.

This comes from one of the many wonderful cases of "Wisdom-poems" found scattered throughout the TaNaKh. Another wonderful example, one I like even more, is tucked into the middle of the book Job.

In its entirety, it is such a clever chapter (how appropriate, given the topic!) . But I'm going to skip the first 20 verses or so, even though it does kind of begin with a fun riddle.

​​​​​​​It is only once we get to verse 20 that we meet the main character of the chapter, Wisdom herself:

Do you notice any commonalities between these two passages?

Both speak of Wisdom as being something elusive, that must be sought out, or found. And for those who have been successful, it is valued even beyond the most precious of gold.

Wisdom was so beloved that there is even a whole genre in ancient Israelite and Judean writings dedicated to it; Wisdom Literature.

And even more than this, contemporary scholars think that our Wisdom Literature is a remnant of one of several ancient Israelite and Judean religions whose works would survive in the TaNaKh!

In an essay on the topic, Professor Stephen A. Gellar of the Jewish Theological Seminary says the following:

Given Professor Gellar's explanation of Wisdom-religion, can you think of any other books, or passages in the TaNaKh which would qualify? There are quite a few, actually!

Here is yet another nice poem, this one from the prayer-poem collection of Psalms. As you read, try to come up with the answer to the following questions:

What are the BIG philosophical questions that the author of this prayer-poem is thinking about?

Okay, don't tell me that's not deep.

Our philosopher-poet begins with reverence for the grandeur of the cosmos, the totality of which displays YHWH's splendor! I particularly love the image of YHWH's fingers, carefully and delicately setting the moon, and each star in its proper place.

But oh! How quickly our philosopher-poet redirects his attention from awe of the cosmos to that of the primacy of man! That despite how MASSIVE and populated the world, YHWH uniquely chose humankind for special attention; For a special relationship and purpose. How, or why could this be?

Do you share this philosopher-poet's wonder? Do you ever find yourself marveling at this? Or suddenly overcome by the Big Questions of the meaning of Life, as well as our Purpose here?

The Israelites and Judeans were not the only ones in the ancient near east that had "a thing" for Wisdom. This was very much a part of a bigger trend, a much more ancient tradition. The Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Sumerians who we learned about last week, every one of these peoples had Wisdom-literature traditions.

I'm going to share with you one fun example that I recently came across from the Babylonians, the Dialogue of Pessmisim.

The Dialogue is dated to around 1,000 BCE, and is found on multiple clay tablets in cuneiform. (Remember cuneiform last week? One of humankind's earliest writing systems, a bestowed upon humankind by the Sumerians.)

The structure is simple enough. The whole thing is a set of dialogues between a master and his slave, with each section consisting of a mere 6 lines, which progress as follows:

1. The master summons the slave;
2. The slave arrives;
3. The master expresses a desire;
4. The slave encourages, and provides justification to fulfill the desire;
5. The master changes his mind;
6. The slave discourages the maser from pursuing his original will, and provides justification.

From start to finish, it is quite short, and is a riot to read! Here is Section X, Philanthropy.

You might have to read it two or three times to catch the punchline.

Enjoy :- )

Isn't that neat?

You might be able to think of other Wisdom-traditions which employed the rhetorical technique of dialogues. We even have more than one case of this in our TaNaKh.

I now want to pivot a little bit to the individual celebrated throughout Israelite history as having attained the most Wisdom of all; Solomon the King.

The story of how this came to be is recorded in the Israelite Histories, in the book Kings:

And so by the grace of YHWH, just like that, Solomon son of David, King of Israel, would be granted a "wise and discerning mind, the likes of which never was, nor ever will be."

Kings wastes no time illustrating for us how this wisdom would manifest itself in Solomon's rulings. And so we immediately get the following story, which I'm going to just include in full.

(Please just be warned that there is quite sensitive material here in the bereavement of an infant.)

*Phew.

Okay, deep breath. I know that's a tough story - a disturbing story, to read.

And actually - as disturbing as it is, it is also quite creepy!

As I hear the first woman tell her story, I imagine the beginning of a dream sequence, the first image being a dark hallway of a home in the dead of night.

A woman is startled awake, thinking she heard a noise. Perhaps a floorboard-creak. She listens carefully. Fearfully. Shrugging, she lies back down and places her hand on the blanket covering her baby next to her, and settles almost instantly back to sleep. Meanwhile, within arm's reach, a shadowy figure is crouching. Watching. Biding its time...

Minutes later, the first woman is jolted awake again. Something is wrong, terribly wrong. She reaches for her baby, and---

As we've said before, should they make a TV series out of the whole of the TaNaKh, much of it would be in the horror section.

But I now want to focus on this from a different angle. Yes the story is disturbing. Yes it is creepy.

But it is also a work of art.

Robert Alter points out that there is a theme of doubles and repetitions. You might have noticed that I made some words and phrases bold. These are those that are used in the repetition-play.

Right from the first sentence, for example, we meet the two women. And as the first woman begins her story, in verses 17 and 18, we get the word "house" appearing twice in each, making a pair of pairs. And sure enough, this house serves as one of the main characters of this twisted story. You'll see how the writer plays with this all the way through to the end. (And if you're able to handle it in the Hebrew, you'll see that there are even more instances of this, and that they are more readily recognizable than in any translation.)

There's another grim detail I noticed.

Let's look back at what happens just as King Solomon declares his original intent:

What do you make of this exchange? Does anything stand out to you? Anything strange? Anything significant to the order regarding who speaks first?

I think the artist who crafted this story included such nice and subtle touches, as is always the case in the narratives in the TaNaKh.

Here's what stands out for me: Isn't it outright bizarre that the mother of the dead son would cheer on Solomon and say "Yes, kill the boy!"...?

Not bizarre in the sense that someone could be so cruel; Bizarre in the sense that she had just won! Right? She wanted the boy for herself, and the other woman had just forfeited her claim, saying, "Let her take him!" And so the mother of the dead son could have gotten what she was fighting for and left having gotten her wish.

I think the answer to this question lies with the fact that she spoke second.

As soon as Solomon declared his intentions, the real mother's outburst was an authentic outpouring of overwhelming emotion, just as the story describes: Overcome with compassion for her son. And she lost herself, grasping desperately at anything she could, so as to ensure that her beloved child will leave the king's court alive, with or without her.

And throughout all this, the other woman was silent; For unlike the mother who stood to lose her son, this woman, who had nothing of her own to lose, was watching, ever so carefully - exactly as she did the night before. And she was calculating. And at this moment, she revealed her true colors.

She had no interest in leaving there with a son. She was bitter and vindictive. Of course, our heart goes out to her for the unimaginable despair (and guilt?) she must be carrying.

But this despair became deranged hostility. If she was miserable, she would drag her house-mate down into despair with her. And whatever scenario would result in the real mother being as miserable as possible - that was the second woman's preferred outcome. And so she didn't respond to Solomon's decree so readily because she didn't yet know how she would want to react! It would be based on the response of the real mother.

And when the real mother began to protest, the second woman took it as her cue to encourage.

Of course, another possible explanation is that they both reacted at the same time, and the author just had to pick someone to write in as speaking first, and so happened to maintain the order of speakers as they were introduced from the beginning of the narrative.

What do you think? Any other ideas?

There's something else here I want to spend a moment on; And that is the narrator's description of the mother of the living son, just as the baby is about to be cut.

Here it is again:

The term for "overcome" in the Hebrew comes from the root k-m-r.

It is actually quite a rare word, and was meant to pack quite the punch for the Israelite readers. Other than this instance, it only shows up three other times in all of the works in the TaNaKh!

One of them is very similar. In fact, here it is a passive verb, the subject of which is the mother's compassion. The exact same is true in Genesis.

This is the moment where Joseph, after having risen through the ranks of the royal circles of Egypt, had been toying with his brothers to test their repentance. Upon seeing his younger brother after all of these years, he just about loses himself, and has to rush from the room:

I not only think this is one of the most emotionally heart-wrenching of passages in Genesis or the TaNaKh; This might be one of the most stirring passages of all of ancient near eastern literature anywhere.

Can you picture it? The Viceroy, the most powerful man in the Egyptian Empire, hiding out in a room by himself as he listens to his brothers conversing one room over. And it all becomes too much. With the voices of the brothers he should have had in his ears, his tears stream down.

This moment, along with our mother in the Solomon story, are the only two places in the TaNaKh where this idiom of overcome with compassion, נכמרים רחמים is used.

Although the root k-m-r itself does occur, in places which I think are worth looking at.

The first one we'll see comes from Hosea 11. You are probably getting used to the pattern by now. This is a passage laden with emotion.

Our word-of-interest occurs in verse 8. But I'll give it to you with some more context:

It might be hard to appreciate everything that's going on here. But this is YHWH, reminiscing about that moment of "love-at-first-sight," when there was just so much to look forward to between him and Israel, so much optimism for what was bound to be a relationship of love, of mutual respect and devotion.

But then YHWH, full of heartbreak, reflects on how foolhardy he was, as Israel would go on to betray his love and his trust at every opportunity. And so the time has come to banish them forth from his sight, sending them to the faraway reaches of Egypt and Assyria.

He cannot bear to see them a moment longer. (Can he be blamed?)

But then... He can't do it. As YHWH says above, something touches him. Something stirs (k-m-r), and rekindles, those earliest of sparks, such that love is yet again able to overpower frustruation.

Let's now look at the last of k-m-r's four occurrences, which will now bring us to the Lamentations-collection.

Huh! Somethings different.

Every other occurrence of the root was related to emotion, but this time around it uniquely refers to the burning of the skin.

What do you make of this; Could there be any relation?

The Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible (2006) offers a definition that I think tries to bridge these two different uses:

To burn with passion for another.

What do you think, does this work to connect the use of k-m-r as it pertains to emotion in Kings, Genesis, and Hosea on one hand, with being burnt on the other in Lamentations?

With that, let's now turn back to the Solomon story. There's a couple of more line I want to share look at:

Everybody heard! And why shouldn't they? Solomon's solution was utterly brilliant. To an outside observer, it might have seemed like there is absolutely no way of discerning which woman is telling the truth. As the first woman says, she and the other woman were home alone, with no one else in the house with them. I.e., No witnesses! One woman says one thing, the other says another.

Let's put ourselves in Solomon's shoes for a moment. What would you have done? Are there any other possible solutions?

Well, I'm not claiming to be as wise as Solomon of course, but I think I've got an idea too.

Consider this verse:

Now I've never been a mother, but I would think that even after only three days, a mother would know her child quite well; The noises the baby makes, feeding and bathroom habits, all the birthmarks, how it responds to being touched; And in fact, the above comment supports this! What does the first woman say?

I looked at him closely in the morning, and this was not the son I had borne!

How would she know? There must be some tell-tale sign! (One the "fake" would not have picked up on.)

So I wonder if it would have worked to separate the two women and then put them to the test, asking them to describe, to the very last detail, how much about the living baby they can. Who do you think would win? The woman who had been it's mother for a matter of hours? Or the mother who had birthed him, and had been by his side day-and-night for the last 72 hours straight. (This also would have saved the real mother those moments of anguish after Solomon's initial call for the sword.)

However, given that Solomon is presented as the wisest person there ever could be, I have to assume he certainly thought of this solution and rejected it. Any thoughts on why?

Well, from a literary-historical perspective, the story as we do have it certainly has its place in tradition. I read of a story of an Ariopharnes, King of Thrace. At some point, three men approached him in court, each claiming to be the sole rightful heir to the King of Cimmerians, and appealing to Ariopharnes for help. And so, he accompanied them to the tomb, handed them each a bow and an arrow, and asked them to shoot the deceased. Two of them immediately took aim. The third one dropped his bow with tears.

I'll let you discern which of the three King Ariopharnes believed after that.

Given that the Israelites, as well as their neighbors all loved their Wisdom, and Solomon was the wisest of all, it makes sense that his fame would spread far and wide, as the end of our story tells us.

Here is a wonderful moment in which a skeptic arrives to put Solomon to the test:

Because of all of this, Solomon would become associated with one of the greatest collections of Israelite Wisdom-literature as well, the Proverbs-collection.

While Solomon is most definitely not responsible for all of the proverbs in the collection, here is how the whole work is introduced:

The Proverbs-collection is an incredible work!!!

I love it because it is just so... Israelite.

I want to share the opening sentence of an "Introduction to the Proverbs" essay in the Jewish Study Bible Commentary:

And that's a big interest of mine personally; The every-day life of your average Israelite, and I have so many questions!

What did he do? What did he think? How did he greet his friends? What was on his mind on the way to "work?" Did he engage in "small-talk"? About what? Politics? Music?...

The Proverbs collection is unlike anything else that we have in the TaNaKh. It is not lofty, it is not Epic or grand or prophetic or urgent. It is down-to-earth; Realistic; Matter-of-fact and blunt. And of course... wise.

The 20th-century theologian, Billy Graham, once said the following:

If you want to see some of this or yourself - which I highly recommend, note that chapters 1-9 is one long introduction, made up of an anthology of Wisdom-poems. The poems are wonderful in their own right and worth reading; But the proverbs part only actually begins in chapter 10.

Just to give you a taste, I'll leave you with just a few of my favorites.

Note that they are meant to be pondered. So just because you think you get what it is trying to say quickly, turn it over in your mind a little bit. There is oftentimes delightful irony or cleverness concealed beneath seeming simplicity.

How nice to have a clean crib! With no oxen, there is no need for upkeep... right?

"What's the matter! Can't you take a joke?"

It seems like Israelites had a distrust of the sincerity of politicians.

Those are all fun, and contain worthwhile advice. I'll leave you with the one that I think is one of the most important of all, one that is always worth having at the forefront of one's mind:

There is a reason that Wisdom is celebrated in songs and poems and stories throughout the TaNaKh; The Israelites loved it!

And much of the Wisdom they left behind is as worthwhile today as it was 2,500 years ago (or more!) .

If you read through the proverbs, as well as through the other pieces of literature that belong in the Wisdom-genre, you will most certainly encounter precious pearls which are immediately applicable; You will encounter thought-provoking questions; You will encounter insightful observations of human behavior, or of the natural world; You will encounter guidance and advice as far as how to conduct yourself in an upright manner with family, with friends, with colleagues;

And finally, and most importantly, you will encounter the source, YHWH-himself.

For Wisdom to be true, it must come from him, and ultimately lead us back to him as well.