The Conspiracy of Heaven and Earth

Why Does God Share Secrets With Abraham?

“A base fellow gives away secrets, but a trustworthy soul keeps the thing covered (m’chaseh davar).” (Proverbs 11:13)

Now the LORD had said, “Shall I hide (ham’chaseh ani) from Abraham what I am about to do, since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation and all the nations of the earth are to bless themselves by him?” (Genesis 18:18-19)

Commentators have long puzzled over the causal connection between God’s question—“shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do”— and God’s subsequent statement, “Since Abraham is to become a great and populous nation…” Why should the fact that Abraham’s line is going to be great require God to reveal what God is about to do, namely, destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah? The Talmud (Yoma 38b), in fact, denies any causal link between verse 18 and verse 19. Rather, it says, the mere mention of Abraham’s name leads God to digress on the topic of Abraham’s future rewards. The juxtaposition of the verses teaches only that “the memory of the righteous are for a blessing.”

The Talmud, in other words, punts. For it does not answer the deeper question—why does God feel compelled to reveal something to Abraham that God might just as well have kept hidden? Rashi, by contrast, following Bereishit Rabbah, does find a connection between the verses. As the land of Sodom and Gomorrah will one day be given to Abraham’s descendants, Abraham should be kept abreast of the goings on of the land. God sends Abraham a memo, because it involves Abraham’s self-interest.

Lost in the analysis of why God might choose to reveal God’s plan with Abraham is a more shocking fact. God’s choice to reveal is born by God’s answering God’s own question in the negative—shall I cover this up?? No. I shall not. Why is God thinking of covering it up to begin with? And why does God’s choice to reveal God’s thoughts feel—for God—like a rejection of God’s desire or tendency to remain closed?

The verb l’chasot—to cover or to conceal—is not common in the Torah. This is the only time in the entire Tanakh where God is described as making a choice to cover (or not cover) something up. When Adam and Eve hide in the Garden, a different word is used. But l’chasot re-appears in the story of Yehudah and Tamar, in reference to Tamar’s concealment of her identity under the garb of a prostitute. It also surfaces in the story of Joseph and his brothers. Arguing that the brothers should sell Joseph into slavery rather than kill him, Yehuda says, “What do we gain by killing our brother and covering up (v’chisinu) his blood?” (Gen. 37:26). Finally, the cloud of God is said to cover (va’yachas) the Tent of Meeting (Exodus 40:34)

God’s choice not to conceal what God is going to do thus contrasts with two other moments in Genesis, both moments of deception. It also tracks with a moment in Exodus in which God’s presence is deliberately concealed, and God is described as a mystery.

The heart of the matter is not that God reveals what God is going to do, specifically in Sodom and Gomorrah, but that God reveals at all, and that God’s revelation is presented as a moment of overcoming 1) the impulse to deceive and 2) the impulse to remain hidden. The Torah describes other moments of divine revelation, but none are described as moments of uncovering. None are are described as moments in which God answered God’s own question, refuted God’s own doubt.

No sooner does God reveal God’s plan than Abraham argues with it. There are two ways to read this juxtaposition. One way is to say that Abraham’s response proves God was right to hesitate. Another is to say that it proves God was right to share. After all, God wants the argument. Abraham’s retort proves his worthiness and demonstrates that to be a Jew is to be one who argues with God, and not simply one who says “yes, sir. Perhaps both readings are true. God is right to hesitate—because it’s annoying and challenging to have your plans questioned. But God was also right to share—because nothing could bring God more nachas (joyful, peace of mind) than seeing one’s prophet rise to the occasion of becoming a sparring partner (chevruta).

While Genesis offers two instances of concealment as a kind of treachery, Psalms casts the value of concealment as a kind of discretion. Being able to keep a secret covered is a sign of faith and trust-worthiness. Today, debates about transparency in government and organizational leadership move between these two notions of secrecy. Transparency bulls see the story of Joseph and his Brothers and think “cover up.” Transparency bears see the example of God’s cloud in Exodus and think “modesty.” Or to flip the perspective around: Transparency bulls see a public figure share a vulnerability on social media and think, “Wow. Great use of self. So human. So relatable.” Transparency bears see the same thing and think, “Wow. Is there anything in a person’s life that is personal any more, or must all things be submitted to the panopticon of public opinion. I want to know what this person thinks about tax policy, not see their cat pictures.”

But while the abstract debate about privacy and surveillance, about discretion and disclosure, is an important one, God’s choice to share with Abraham cuts across these poles. God isn’t sharing God’s plans with everyone. God is sharing with one person only. God makes Abraham a conspirator—literally, one who breathes (from con-spirare) with God. God overcomes total non-transparency, but the fact that God has the question—should I share?—suggests that Abraham is exceptionally privileged to gain access to God’s thoughts. It is a milestone in human and religious history not just for Abraham, but for God, as it were.

“It is not good to be alone.” This is the ultimate driver of God’s sharing with Abraham. But as we know from what follows the story of the Creation of humanity, it wasn’t so good to be together, either. Adam finds a helpmate, but his helpmate also brings about his exile from the Garden. Perhaps it is the same for God: the establishment of a covenant with Abraham also brings about, as it were, God’s exile from a kind of self-sufficiency. Does Abraham lead God astray? Can God go astray? Not quite. God listens to Abraham’s arguments, but does not succumb to the temptation to forgive the evil cities.

Yet, structurally, I’d like to propose the shocking possibility that Abraham plays the role of Eve to God. The mere fact that Abraham gets a hearing at all is incredible. God’s listening to Abraham, much like Adam’s listening to Eve, should provoke our familiar ambivalence. A God who is non-relational maintains perfection at the price of being removed. But a God who is relational and personal sacrifices power and authority so as to remain connected. That the result of Abraham’s argument with God ends in God’s favor may offer some relief to those who cling to a classical notion of God, but the crack in the foundation cannot be undone. This is why God hesitates: God knows that sharing power with humanity is a kind of limit on divine sovereignty.

The story of the Garden of Eden and the Tower of Babel present humanity as antagonistically seeking to appropriate knowledge from God. God is man’s rival. The story of Genesis 18, by contrast, is one in which God grants that long sought after knowledge, freely. No need to steal it. Here. Have it.

The knowledge bestowed on Abraham is a moral burden. It is the burden of justice in a world that is terrible. There is no easy answer to the problem, because whether Sodom or Gemorrah is destroyed, the world will remain a terrible place, at least in the short run. Neither strict justice nor exceptional mercy will feel good. Lot and his daughters escape the fate of their compatriots, and yet no sooner do they survive than they engage in one of the great Biblical taboos. To forgive the unforgivable is unforgivable. Yet to not forgive is equally untenable. Derrida writes that if you forgive something forgivable you haven’t forgiven. Only the unforgivable can be meaningfully forgiven. In sharing with Abraham what God is about to do, God confronts Abraham with a moral dilemma.

It is often said that Abraham proved his virtue by arguing on behalf of the sinners of Sodom and Gomorrah. In fact, Abraham proved his discomfort with the moral dilemma, trying to wring free from it by playing a numbers game. Quantification—will you save the city for 50 righteous souls? 40? 30? 20? 10?—turns a “wicked problem” into a “kind one”; it reduces the strategic question of how to improve human flourishing into a tactical one. The reason Abraham stops arguing is not because 9 is a tipping point, but because the question of what to do with the reality of human evil is a metaphysical problem, not an engineering or social engineering one.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge was initially forbidden from us because awareness of “wicked problems” is too burdensome, too terrible. The Garden of Eden was not just a place of abundance, but one where all problems were kind. You could practice chess, get better, and that was that. Wicked problems, by contrast, are those where book learning and skills gained through repetition are of little help. We were exiled when kind problems became wicked; or, as Marty Linsky would say, when technical challenges became adaptive ones. Yet by the time of Abraham, God Godself has reconsidered. At least for some, wicked problems are ennobling. Those who seek to walk with God must walk from the ease of the tactical to the difficulty of the strategic, from the clarity of right and wrong answers to the uncertainty of untested world making.

God does not share this secret—that the great problems have no answer—lightly. For it can lead to nihilism or despair. But God shares it with Abraham, for Abraham is to be the initiator of a great tradition. Abraham leaves a familiar place to begin a journey and a lineage that sees the Godly path not as one that is tried and true, but that is untried and in need of our truth: the truth we make, and discover, only by walking it.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins @ Etz Hasadeh

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Etz Hasadeh is a Center for Existential Torah Study.

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