Facing > Knowing

On the Levitical Blessing to be Fruitful and Multiply

I will look with favor upon you (u’faniti), and make you fertile and multiply you; and I will maintain My covenant with you. (Leviticus 26:9)

For I will care for you: I will turn to you (u’faniti), and you shall be tilled and sown. (Ezekiel 36:9)

“Come in, O blessed of the Lord,” [Lavan] said [to Eliezer], “why do you remain outside, when I have made ready (finiti) the house and a place for the camels?” (Genesis 24:31)

Then my thoughts turned (u’faniti) to all the fortune my hands had built up, to the wealth I had acquired and won—and oh, it was all futile and pursuit of wind; there was no real value under the sun! For what will the man be like who will succeed the one who is ruling over what was built up long ago? My thoughts also turned (u’faniti) to appraising wisdom and madness and folly. (Ecclesiastes 2:11-12)

In Parashat Bechukotai, God details the care and custody we will receive on condition of our loyalty and devotion. If we keep the covenant God will “turn God’s face” to us. God initiates a virtuous circle by making us the focus of God’s favor and attention. Anthropomorphic, the language of God’s facing suggests that God can turn away, or focus on other things, but chooses not to. When we receive God’s gaze, we receive an existential blessing: fertility and fecundity. The language of God’s promise to the first human beings echoes in Leviticus, but with a twist. God delights in the Jewish people and wants their presence to grow. How do we reconcile this poetic image of a God who turns God’s face with the classical conception of God as omniscient? What does God see by facing?

One way to reconcile medieval theology with Biblical theology is to say that although God is all-knowing, factual knowledge is not the same as existential care. I can know multiple things, but care more deeply about one of them. I can know what the Mona Lisa painting looks like, yet be more compelled by the scribbling of a child. So too, God beholds all things, but the evaluation God assigns in the world of facts is uneven. Most facts are “nothing-burgers,” if you will. Some philosophers distinguish between fact and value. When we speak about God turning God’s face we are in the realm of value. When God’s face is turned the other way, God sees what we are doing, but God chooses to be disengaged, as it were.

If we were thinking about the covenant as a quid pro quo, we might be interested in God’s face only a a means to an end; if God looks at us, then we’ll be blessed with better outcomes. But a more powerful and sophisticated view is that the blessing itself is God’s gaze, the outcome we want is God’s focused attention. Any particular (ontic) blessing we receive will follow from this ontological blessing: divine care. Activated by a sense of God’s presence in our lives, we will be more life affirming. We will choose to have birthrates above replacement rather than follow a path of secular stagnation.

When God faces us, but blazes in anger, it is a sign of God’s covenantal care. God is not angered at the viciousness of the animal kingdom. Plants cannot commit idolatry. The planets do not gossip or cheat. The sea doesn’t labor on the Sabbath. The sky does not steal. Light does not covet darkness. The greatest anguish is not God’s anger, but God’s turning away. God turns towards us when we turn towards God and away from us when we turn away from God. And even then, God creates safeguards like Teshuva (repentance) so that we will not be able to sustain a permanent separation from God. God is invested in humanity in general, and in the Jewish people in particular, because a covenantal relationship makes Creation worthwhile. A world with no covenantal relationship would not be a world and could not be sustainable.

The specific language of facing (paniti) appears first in Genesis in a context of hospitality, opening the door for a stranger. Although Lavan is a deceptive man of wicked intent, the form of his greeting corresponds to the form of God opening the door to us. We are, like Eliezer, searching to complete a sacred mission and make good on the meaning of our lives. Divine favor appears whenever we are helped on our path. By finding Rebecca and bringing her to Isaac, he facilitated the fruitfulness and multiplication of the Jewish people. A matchmaker and a covenant preserver, Eliezer receives, through Lavan’s face, the favor of the divine face. Conversely, Lavan’s face is not aimed at Eliezer, but on the house and the camels. Lavan misses the blessing in his midst as he faces the wrong things.

In Ecclesiastes, the King turns his face to his legacy and to his purpose and concludes that all is vanity. Notably, he doesn’t come to this conclusion as a matter of abstract reasoning, but as a matter of engaged, evaluation. Like God’s esteem for the Jewish people, King Solomon’s attitude to wisdom is personal. The stakes are high. While his conclusion is often taken as melancholic, consider that his face is turned towards the matter. There is love and favor in the attention he gives to the question, “What is the point?” The wise person opens the door to questions, as a host welcomes strangers, and as God receives the yearning of mortals. There is a covenant with truth in Solomon’s questioning. And as we turn to face difficult questions, they are fruitful and multiply.

Maintaining the covenant places the emphasis on preservation. Fruitfulness and multiplication place the emphasis on growth. The two are related. There is no way to maintain the covenant without growing. Growth, to be sustainable, requires covenant. The covenant with God is a multi-generational project, requiring collaboration across ages and epochs. God’s face is manifest through the generations, transmitted from parent to child. Thus, the blessing to be fruitful and multiply is a blessing not just to have children in the biological sense, but to transmit the divine countenance from one generation to the next.

We cannot touch the rains of yesteryear. And our relationship to ancient battles won and lost must be reconstructed from archaeology and testimony. But when it comes to the blessing of cultural transmission, we are not onlookers; we are the living witnesses—the receipts, recipients, and custodians—of an ancient blessing.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh