7

THE LANGUAGE OF PLANTS AND HUMAN-WORLD ENTANGLEMENT IN MIDRASH AND WALTER BENJAMIN’S PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE

ALEXANDER WEISBERG

INTRODUCTION

This chapter explores several Amoraic rabbinic exegetical traditions based on Genesis 2:5, found in Genesis Rabbah 13, that offer ontological descriptions of the interdependence and entanglement of the Creation and nonhuman communication and agency.¹ To better understand these traditions, I read them together with Walter Benjamin’s early philosophy of language, which he explicates through readings of Genesis 2 in his essay “On the Language of Man, and Language as Such.”² I highlight the ways Benjamin’s philosophical reading of Genesis and his attendant theological anthropology are similar to and different from the rabbis’ readings and anthropology, and through this comparison, I indicate junctures and disjunctures between rabbinic and philosophical thought. The rabbinic traditions present human prayer as a creative performative act and understand the world as an entanglement of human and nonhuman agency. Benjamin helps reveal this rabbinic depiction through his explanation in “On Language as Such and on the Language of Man,” stating that the possibility of thought through language becomes a possibility only because of humanity’s deep material interconnection with the nonhuman world. However, the rabbinic traditions, as opposed to Benjamin, avoid the widely prevalent subject/object divide, which is a hallmark of the Western philosophical tradition. In Benjamin’s essay, there is a clear-cut distinction between human subject and nonhuman object, even as all of the Creation has linguistic capability.³ For Benjamin, human speech transcends nonhuman language because of humanity’s ability to raise the Creation toward God through prayer. Nonetheless, Benjamin’s narrative of human/nonhuman difference helps us to understand the ontological vision of human/nonhuman difference in Genesis Rabbah. Thus I argue that these rabbinic texts support an alternative discourse about humans and nonhumans that differs in significant ways from the modern dominant philosophical discourse, which, in Aaron Gross’s words, is “correlated with a series of hierarchical dichotomies that not only privilege the human over the animal but also mind over body, transcendence over immanence, spirituality over materiality, spirit over letter, faith over law, modern over primitive, West over East, Christian over Jew, and so on.”⁴ In this rabbinic ontology, the shared linguistic capacity of various entities of the Creation shapes, forms, and shifts the Creation in a multitude of ways. In this respect, Genesis Rabbah provides us with a depiction of the human and nonhuman as entangled in both materiality and language as well as in the capriciousness of rain and sustenance.

This chapter explores how Genesis Rabbah 13, along with parallels found in b. Hullin 60b and a Genizah fragment of an unidentified midrash, understand Genesis 2:5 as depicting the prayer of the first human as the act that brings forth the vegetation of the world. Genesis 2:5 reads:

וְכֹ֣ל ׀ שִׂ֣יחַ הַשָּׂדֶ֗ה טֶרֶ֚ם יִֽהְיֶ֣ה בָאָ֔רֶץ וְכָל־עֵ֥שֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶ֖ה טֶ֣רֶם יִצְמָ֑ח כִּי֩ לֹ֨א הִמְטִ֜יר יְהוָ֤ה אֱלֹהִים֙ עַל־הָאָ֔רֶץ וְאָדָ֣ם אַ֔יִן לַֽעֲבֹ֖ד אֶת־הָֽאֲדָמָֽה

When no shrub of the field was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, because the Lord God had not sent rain upon the Earth and there was no man to work the land.

These rabbinic traditions, analyzed in the following pages, read both parts of the second half of the text “the Lord God had not sent rain upon the Earth and there was no man to work the land” as the reason for there being no vegetation on Earth.⁵ According to this reading, humanity and its prayers were a necessary component in the formation of the Land and its vegetation. These traditions present human prayer as a creative performative act and understand the world as an entanglement of human and nonhuman agency. I elucidate the ontological elements of these traditions not only through reading them with Benjamin’s early philosophy of language but also through Donovan Schaefer’s description of affective economies.⁶

In reading Genesis Rabbah together with b. Hullin 60b and the Genizah fragment, I demonstrate that there is no clear-cut separation between the physical and the spiritual in these related midrashic traditions and that the relationship between humans and the nonhuman—while hierarchical in some respects—does not follow the same logic of ontological distinctions that Gross discusses in the dominant Western philosophical tradition. Rather, these texts display an entanglement of nonhuman and human agency and subjecthood that does not take the subject/object divide as its ground, as well as a shared process of worldmaking involving humans, Land, vegetation, language, rain, and the divine. This is similar to Donna Haraway’s notion of the “material-semiotic net,” in which materiality and language are mutually constitutive.⁷

GENESIS RABBAH 13, B. HULLIN 60B, AND PERFORMATIVE READING

Genesis Rabbah, a late fourth-century Palestinian exegetical midrashic collection, opens its thirteenth chapter with an argument between two rabbis on how to understand Genesis 2:5 in the context of Genesis 2:9:

[וכל שיח השדה] הכא את אמר וכל שיח השדה ולהלן את אמר ויצמח י”י אלהים וגו’ (בראשית ב ט) אתמהא, אמר ר’ חנינא להלן לגן עדן וכן לישובו של עולם, תני ר’ חייא אילו ואילו לא צימיחו עד שירדו עליהן גשמים.⁸

[It is written in Genesis 2:5, “when no shrub of the field (was yet on earth and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted).”] Here you say, “no shrub of the field [and no grasses of the field]” and further on [in Genesis 2:9] you say, “And from the ground the Lord God caused to grow [every tree that was pleasing to the sight and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and bad.]” This does not make sense! R. Ḥanina says, [the verse] later on [refers] to the Garden of Eden [Genesis 2:9], whereas this [verse, Genesis 2:5 refers] to the inhabited world. R. Ḥiyya taught, both here and here nothing grew until rain descended upon them.⁹

In this section, two verses seem to contradict one another, but it is difficult to understand the exact contradiction between the verses. Harry Freedman and Jacob Neusner have suggested that the problem is related to the order of Creation, predicated on the two different creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2.¹⁰ The first verse in the midrash, Genesis 2:5, does not accord with the creation story of Genesis 1, where plants are created before humanity, but the second verse, Genesis 2:9, does correspond with the story in Genesis 1. This suggestion, however, ignores the context of Genesis 2:9. In Genesis 2:9, God causes the trees to grow in the Garden of Eden only after humanity has been created (verses 2:5–8). Therefore, this explanation of the conflict between the two verses cannot stand, and both verses contradict the order of creation described in Genesis 1.¹¹ Theodor and Albeck have similarly noted that both verses contradict the order of creation in Genesis 1.¹² The argument between R. Ḥanina and R. Ḥiyya hinges on different interpretations of Genesis 2:9 and whether humanity’s first prayer was involved in the creation of the vegetation in the Garden of Eden, as it was in the creation of the vegetation in the rest of the inhabited world. While this reading is not explicitly stated in Genesis Rabbah, it is made clear by looking at this tradition along with other parallel traditions found in b. Ḥullin 60b and in an unidentified midrashic Genizah fragment, with the context of their oral transmission and performance in mind.

B. Ḥullin 60b reads:

רב אסי רמי, כתיב: ותוצא הארץ דשא בתלת בשבתא, וכתיב, וכל שיח השדה טרם יהיה בארץ במעלי שבתא! מלמד שיצאו דשאים ועמדו על פתח קרקע, עד שבא אדם הראשון ובקש עליהם רחמים, וירדו גשמים וצמחו; ללמדך: שהקב”ה מתאוה לתפלתן של צדיקים. רב נחמן בר פפא הויא ליה ההיא גינתא, שדי ביה ביזרני ולא צמח, בעא רחמי - אתא מיטרא וצמח, אמר: היינו דרב אסי.¹³

Rav Assi pointed out a contradiction [between verses]. One verse [in Genesis 1:12] says, “And the earth brought forth grass,” referring to the third day, whereas another verse [in Genesis 2:5] when speaking of the sixth day says, “No shrub of the field was yet on the earth.” This teaches us that the plants started to sprout but stopped just as they were about to break through the soil, until Adam came and prayed for rain for them; and when rain fell, they sprouted forth. This teaches you that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, longs for the prayers of the righteous. Rav Naḥman bar Papa had a garden and he sowed in it seeds but they did not grow. He prayed; rain came, and they began to grow. That, he exclaimed, is what Rav Assi had taught!

The Genizah tradition in a synoptic table with the Babylonian Talmud tradition can be found in table 7. 1.¹⁴

According to these two parallel traditions of Genesis Rabbah 13:1, when Genesis 2:5 says that there was no man to work the ground, this means that there was no human to pray for the Land. The vegetation of the Land needed rain that would only come because of the prayers of the first human, which God desired. This understanding is predicated on an earlier exegetical oral tradition, a performance of which can be found in the third-century Tannaitic midrashic collection Sifre Deuteronomy, in which the Hebrew word for work (avodah) is understood as the work of the heart, which is prayer.¹⁵ All three of the Amoraic traditions rely on the understanding of avodah as prayer, and this prayer was a required part of the plan of Creation to bring rain. Thus the best translation of Genesis 2:5 for all of the traditions discussed is “And when no shrub of the field was yet on the Land and no grasses of the field had yet sprouted, for the Lord God had not caused rain to come down on the Land because there was no human to pray for the Land.” This understanding of the verse is fairly explicit in the Babylonian Talmud and the Genizah traditions; however, it is not clear that this exegetical understanding underlies Genesis Rabbah 13:1. Nonetheless, when we look at these traditions together through oral-performative methodology, we can better use the Babylonian Talmud and Genizah to understand Genesis Rabbah 13:1.¹⁶

An oral-performative reading of rabbinic literature assumes oral composition, performance, and transmission of traditions. Rather than assuming the existence of an authoritative and earlier version of any given tradition, this reading suggests that there is a transcript of possible performances that circulated orally. Of any given transcript, what may be currently available are individual performances that have been translated into the media of manuscript. Any given performance may alter the order of a script and combine it with other oral traditions. According to Martin Jaffee, “The oralist textual scholar is in a sense engaged in an effort to ‘restage’ the oral-performative milieu of the textual tradition by comparing various written testimonies to the shaping of the texts and enabling the contemporary reader of the finished texts to ‘rehear’ them in their multiple versions. . . . We should not imagine ourselves to be retrieving any authoritative original version of a text or tradition; rather . . . we may at best offer a . . . representation or reconstruction . . . [of] the living tradition.”¹⁷

Table 7.1 The First Prayer and the Creation of Vegetation

¹ The Venice and Soncino printings have this same reading. The three printings are almost identical, with no significant variants. Manuscript Munich reads רבסי.

² This reading of Genesis 2:5 is also shared with another tradition found in Pesiqta Rabbati §27: ואין טרם אלא עד שלא נברא העולם שנאמר וכל שיח השדה טרם יהיה בארץ וגו’ (בראשית ב’ ה’).

In this context, the rabbis are viewed less as authors of texts and more as creative performers of traditions that existed within an oral-cultural milieu of late antique Jewish culture. The benefit of such a perspective toward rabbinic traditions is that it allows the underlying cultural and conceptual basis of related parallel traditions to come forward. Methodologically, parallel traditions can be presented side by side to enable a better understanding of the shared conceptual concerns involved in the various traditions. Small changes between parallel traditions are understood as alternative performances, and unity between traditions is sought even in the case of larger linguistic changes, provided that the traditions share unified conceptual concerns.¹⁸ In this way, the traditions from the Babylonian Talmud, the Genizah, and Genesis Rabbah can be seen as alternative performances of the same oral transcript and, through this view, make sense of the underlying argument and midrashic exegesis of Genesis Rabbah 13:1.

While the redaction of the Babylonian Talmud is a complicated issue, it likely occurred at least several centuries later than the redaction of Genesis Rabbah and in Babylonia, under the rule of either the Abbasid Caliphate or the Sasanian Persians.¹⁹ If we were adhering to a source-critical methodology, we would be limited in the usage of this Babylonian Talmud tradition in understanding Genesis Rabbah 13:1. However, the oral-performative approach opens a different relationship to tradition, in which we can view the tradition in the Babylonian Talmud as one possible performance of a script that is older and more pervasive than the Babylonian Talmud itself, which relies on the connection between avodah as prayer and rain. The Genizah tradition’s linguistic and exegetical similarities lend support to this analysis.²⁰ Below is a presentation of the Genizah fragment in a synopsis with the significant witnesses of b. Ḥullin 60b.

While these traditions are similar, there are differences (both minuses and plusses; the latter are indicated by underlined text in tables 7.2 and 7.3). The Genizah tradition is attributed to an early Palestinian Amora rather than a Babylonian Amora, as in the Babylonian Talmud tradition. While all of the Babylonian Talmud versions ascribe some of the traditions to Rav Assi, a first-generation Babylonian Amora, he is noticeably absent from the Genizah tradition. Rabbi Ḥananya bar Papa, a third-generation Palestinian Amora, to whom the Genizah fragment is attributed, however, is found in some of the Babylonian Talmud traditions. This may indicate an earlier dating of the Genizah performance, as some of the Babylonian Talmud versions may have been influenced by the Genizah tradition. However, shifting focus to an oral-performative approach reveals that an oral tradition might have circulated independently of all of the available manuscript performances and that this tradition served as the underlying conceptual frame and transcript for all three of these traditions.²¹ Through comparing the three available traditions, it can be proposed that the underlying conceptual transcript for the shared exegesis among the three Amoraic traditions of Genesis 2:5 is that humanity’s prayer was necessary for the creation of the vegetation of the Land. This conceptual link relies on the understanding of avodah as prayer, first attested in Sifre Deuteronomy. While this exegesis and understanding of avodah as prayer is certainly more explicit in the Babylonian Talmud and the Genizah performances, it is implied in Genesis Rabbah as well. This is the case because it makes sense of the argument between R. Ḥanina and R. Ḥiyya. Without this exegetical understanding of Genesis 2:5 and the underlying conceptual frame attested to in Sifre Deuteronomy, their argument is still unclear.

Table 7.2 Synopsis of b. Hullin 60b & Genizah Fragment

¹ The Venice and Soncino prints have this same reading. The three prints are almost identical with no significant variants. Manuscript Munich reads רבסי.

² Venice and Soncino prints and manuscript Munich have this same reading.

³ Manuscript Vatican 120–21 also shares this reading.

⁴ This is the only manuscript that has this reading.

Table 7.3 Translated Synopsis of b. Hullin 60b & Genizah Fragment

¹ This is the only manuscript that has this reading.

² This error is corrected within the manuscript.

³ This is the only manuscript that has this reading.

By reading Genesis Rabbah 13:1 with the understanding that it relies on this shared exegetical transcript, it is clear that the argument between R. Ḥanina and R. Ḥiyya is over the role of humanity in bringing forth the vegetation of the Land. According to Rabbi Ḥiyya, who reconciles Genesis 2:5 and 2:9 by saying that “in both the inhabited world and the Garden of Eden nothing grew until rain descended upon them,” humanity’s prayer was necessary in both locations in order for the vegetation to grow. According to his reading, Genesis 2:9 is ambiguous because it excludes the prayer of humanity as the reason God caused rain to descend. R. Ḥiyya relies on the order of the verses in Genesis 2, understanding that Genesis 2:9 follows the creation of humanity, and the explicit statement in Genesis 2:5 that there was not yet rain, vegetation, or humanity on Earth. However, R. Ḥanina, who says that “Genesis 2:9 refers to the Garden of Eden, whereas Genesis 2:5 refers to the inhabited world,” explains that humanity’s prayer caused the vegetation to grow in the inhabited world, while God alone caused the vegetation to grow in the Garden of Eden. He interprets Genesis 2:9 in isolation from the rest of the chapter. Without re-creating the underlying conceptual transcript that humanity’s prayer was necessary for the creation of the vegetation and its reliance on the understanding of “work” as prayer, first attested to in Sifre Deuteronomy, this Amoraic argument is much too terse to make sense of.

It is easy to see why Freedman and Neusner suggested that the argument in Genesis Rabbah 13:1 hinged on the order of Creation. They were correct to identify the Babylonian Talmud tradition as related, but they read b. Ḥullin 60b into Genesis Rabbah 13 rather than comparing the two traditions through a contiguous reading that maintains their integrity. The scriptural problem in b. Ḥullin 60b does rest on two different temporalities of Creation and is reconciled by suggesting that the vegetation waited under the surface until the first rain fell. However, this is not an issue in the Genesis Rabbah tradition. By attending to the underlying exegetical tradition shared among b. Ḥullin 60b, the Genizah fragment, and Genesis Rabbah, we can understand Genesis Rabbah 13:1 without removing the differences among the various traditions and, in the process, identify both the shared and different ontological dimensions of these traditions.

Thus we can see that the same conceptual idea that humanity needed to pray for rain for the vegetation to grow underlies all three of the Amoraic traditions. However, each of these traditions deploys this concept differently. To reconcile the two different creation stories found in Genesis 1 and 2, the Genizah and Babylonian Talmud performances add that the vegetation was sitting just below the surface, waiting for Adam to pray for rain and that God set up the Creation in this way because he desired the prayers of humanity.²² Genesis Rabbah, which is concerned with a different contradiction in verses, specifies which part of Creation humanity helped create. The Genizah fragment also adds an interesting dimension of ontological entanglement to these traditions by explaining that the vegetation did not yet have a fixed form until the first prayer was said and rain fell on it. According to this tradition, the performance of prayer and human desire give form to the vegetation of the Creation.

GENESIS RABBAH 13:2–3, WALTER BENJAMIN, AND THE LANGUAGE OF THE WORLD

Genesis Rabbah 13:2–3 reads:

2. וכל שיח השדה כל האילנות כאילו מסיחין אלו עם אלו, כל האילנות כאילו מסיחין עם הבריות, כל האילנות להצוותן שלבריות נבראו, מעשה באחד שבצר את כרמו ולן בתוכו ונשבה הרוח ופגעתו, וכל שיחתן שלביריות אינן אלא על הארץ, עבדת ארעא לא עבדת אתמהא, וכל תפילתן שלביריות אינן אלא על הארץ, מרי תעבד ארעא מרי תצלח ארעא, כל תפילתן שלישראל אינן אלא על בית המקדש, מרי תבני בית מקדשא, ואימתי תבנה בית המקדש.

3. כי לא המטיר י”י אלהים על הארץ מזכיר שם מלא על עולם מלא, כך הוא מזכיר שם מלא בירידת גשמים, אמר ר’ שמעון בן יוחי ג’ דברים שקולים זה בזה ואילו הן ארץ ואדם ומטר, אמר ר’ לוי בר חייתה ושלשתם מן שלשה אותיות ללמדך שאם אין ארץ אין מטר ואם אין מטר אין ארץ ואם אין שניהם אין אדם.

2. [It is written in Genesis 2:5,] “No shrub of the field.” [This means that] all the trees were as if conversing with each other; all the trees were as if conversing with humanity; all the trees were created for humanity’s companionship. [For example,] A man was once picking grapes in his vineyard and slept in it, and the wind blew and affected him. All the conversation of humanity is only about the Land: Has the earth produced, or has the earth not produced? And all of humanity’s prayers are only about the Land: May my Lord make the Land produce. May the Lord make the Land succeed. All the prayers of Israel [, however,] are only about the Temple, “May my Lord build the Temple. When will it be until you build the Temple?”

3. [It is written in Genesis 2:5,] “For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth.” The full Name [of God] is employed in connection with a full world; it is similarly employed in connection with the fall of rain. Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai said: Three things are equal in importance, and what are these: Land, Adam, and rain. R. Levi bar Ḥiyyata says, and the three of them are each made of three letters to teach you that if there is no Land, there is no rain, and if there is no rain, there is no Land, and if the two of them are not, then there is no Adam.

This section opens by stating that “all the trees were as if conversing with each other; all the trees were as if conversing with humanity; all the trees were created for humanity’s companionship.” While scholars, including Theodor and Albeck, have not read this tradition ontologically, I understand Genesis Rabbah’s reading of Genesis 2:5’s wording as an ontological statement about the metaphysics of plants and communication.²³ Not only does this way of reading this tradition fit with the larger concerns of Genesis Rabbah 13—which will be further explored throughout this chapter—it also makes sense of the implicit exegesis of this tradition. According to this tradition, when the Hebrew Bible says siah, it is actually speaking about trees (האילנות) and thus could have chosen various other words for tree. In the understanding of Genesis Rabbah, this word choice is significant and reveals something about trees and their capacity for communication. Based on the meaning of the Hebrew word for shrub used in Genesis 2:5, siah., which means both “conversation” and “shrub,” the midrash suggests that plants somehow communicate with one another and with humanity. However, the midrash signals that the communication of plants is not exactly like that of humanity by using the word כאילו. It is “as if” the vegetation of the world speaks among itself and communicates to humanity, but it is not exactly a conversation between two people. The precise meaning of what the midrash interprets as plant communication and what it means by “as if” in this scenario, however, is not clear. Walter Benjamin’s theory of language makes sense of this problem in Genesis Rabbah 13:2, aligning with this rabbinic tradition and drawing out its ontological assumptions. In the process, suppositions about differences and similarities between rabbinic and later philosophical thought can be made.

Walter Benjamin explains in his early essay “On the Language of Man, and Language as Such” that, on one hand, the nonhuman world partakes in language, but, on the other hand, it relies on humanity for its full enunciation.²⁴ Benjamin suggests that the nonhuman world both has language and does not have language. This means that animals, plants, and nonanimate things all have a communicative ability, but their communicative capacities do not allow them to fully communicate themselves in their communication—part of themselves and their interior essence evades communication. Humans are the opposite: they have the capacity to fully communicate themselves, and the nonhuman world, through human language. Benjamin writes, “All communication of the contents of the soul is language. . . . The existence of language, however, is coextensive not only with all the areas of the expression of the human soul in which language is always in one sense or another inherent, but with absolutely everything. There is no event or thing in either animate or inanimate nature that does not in some way partake of language, for it is in the nature of each one to communicate the contents of its soul.”²⁵

Nonhuman entities have language, but it is a language that cannot fully express the completeness of their inner being. Benjamin’s claim that all entities in the world have a soul can be understood in the same way that many indigenous people attribute interiority or soul to nonhumans.²⁶ Elements of Benjamin’s philosophy in this chapter are rooted in the ontology of the Hebrew Bible, as he quotes Genesis 2 throughout, even as his explanations and theories are not intended to be faithful to the biblical text. This is why I believe that Benjamin’s philosophical discussion can be used to shed light on Genesis Rabbah 13 and its ontological characteristics. However, Benjamin differs from Genesis Rabbah in his drawing of an ontological divide between human and nonhuman communication. While his theory helps to shed light onto Genesis Rabbah 13:2, Genesis Rabbah 13, as we shall see, avoids any sort of firm divide between human and nonhuman communication in its attribution of greater-than-human communicative capacities to nonhumans such as rain.

Benjamin continues by explaining that even for humans, “within all linguistic formation a conflict is waged between what is expressed and expressible and what is inexpressible and unexpressed.”²⁷ It is not that humans communicate their full selves through language at all times but rather that they have the capacity to do so. Benjamin goes on to say that language itself is the conflict between what is expressed and what is not expressed, nonetheless explaining that “name as the heritage of human language therefore vouches for the fact that language as such is the soul being of man; and only for this reason is the soul being of man, alone among all soul entities, communicable without residue.”²⁸ Thus while all beings have a soul, or interiority, only humans are able to communicate their whole soul through language, even if the highest expression of language is not always reached. For Benjamin, this is what makes human language distinct from the language of the nonhuman world. The difference between humans and nonhumans is in degrees, not in absolute ability.

Benjamin argues later that the nonhuman world is only fully expressed through human language. This is why the whole world is in constant communication with humans. Benjamin explains: “All nature, insofar as it communicates itself, communicates itself in language, and so finally in man. . . . God’s creation is completed when things receive their names from man, from whom in name language alone speaks.”²⁹ According to Benjamin, the world gains completion through the language of humanity, which bestows meaning to the nonhuman world, but for this to happen, the nonhuman world must be in communication with humanity. In this respect, Benjamin describes a nonhuman world full of soul and linguistic potential. He summarizes “On the Language of Man, and Language as Such”:

The language of an entity is the medium in which its soul is communicated. The uninterrupted flow of this communication runs through the whole of nature, from the lowest forms of existence to man and from man to God. Man communicates himself to God through name, which he gives to nature and (in proper names) to his own kind; and to nature he gives names according to the communication that he receives from her, for the whole of nature, too, is imbued with a nameless, unspoken language, the residue of the creative word of God, which is preserved in man as the cognizing name.³⁰

Benjamin’s world is one alive with life and communication.³¹ For him, the whole of the Creation is alive with agency and potential for communication because of “the residue of the creative word of God.” Thus the difference between the human and the nonhuman, and among various nonhuman entities, is not which entity has interiority or a soul but rather how much of any given entity’s interiority or soul is able to be communicated. Regardless of the level of consciousness of a being, each communicates a spiritual content. As Benjamin says, “we cannot imagine a total absence of language in anything.”³² While humanity stands in the middle of the cosmos as the conduit between the physical world and God, this does not mean that the nonhuman world does not have its own existence or potency outside and separate from humanity. For humanity to be able to communicate the nonhuman to God, through naming or prayer, the nonhuman must be able to communicate with humanity. Even though humanity is an integral part of the world, it remains entangled with the linguistic communication and needs of the nonhuman.

From this explanation, the term as if in Genesis Rabbah 13:2 can be interpreted similarly to Benjamin’s suggestion about the language of the nonhuman world. It is only as if the nonhuman world has language. It does have the ability to communicate, but it does not have the language of prayer like Adam and the rest of humanity, which have the capacity for a fuller degree of communication. We should read Genesis Rabbah 13:2 as directly in communication with 13:1, in which humanity’s capacity for prayer is so potent that it participates in the very creation of the vegetation of the Land. Genesis Rabbah 13:1 establishes the foundation for this tradition by ontologically defining the highest capacity of language in the Creation as Adam’s prayer, which literally created the vegetation of the Creation. It is in relation to this powerful creative capacity of human language that it is only as if trees communicate. Even though Benjamin points to a different capacity of humanity, the power to name, rather than what we find in the rabbinic traditions, which point to humanity’s prayer, in both cases, humanity is needed to communicate the nonhuman world to God. Furthermore, in these traditions, like in Benjamin’s ontology, humanity does not communicate with God in isolation from the nonhuman world. The difference between human and nonhuman communication for Genesis Rabbah is also in degrees, not in absolute ability. For humanity to be able to pray for the needs of the nonhuman world, the nonhuman world must be able to communicate with humanity. Thus Genesis Rabbah 13 presents an ontology in which nonhuman communication is assumed.

Genesis Rabbah differs from Benjamin, however, by being concerned not with whether plants or humans can communicate their interiority through language but rather with what level of material creative potential is inherent in the linguistic capacities of each entity. Thus a picture of an entangled ontology emerges in these various traditions as Adam’s first prayer is directly tied to a lack in the Creation. The Babylonian Talmud and the Genizah fragment tell us that this is precisely what God desired in the way he formed the Creation. This reading of Genesis Rabbah 13:2 assumes the reading previously suggested for 13:1, that the first prayer of humanity was instrumental in the completion of the creation of the Land. For the rabbis, the nonhuman world was incomplete without humanity and was waiting for the first human to listen to its cacophony of sounds, to make sense of what it was lacking, and to pray for it. Genesis Rabbah 13:2 follows Genesis Rabbah 13:1 with an implicit ontological question and answer: If the nonhuman world could not communicate with humanity, how could the first human know what to pray for? To answer this question, Genesis Rabbah 13:2 explains that “all the trees were ‘as if’ conversing with humanity; and all the trees were created for humanity’s companionship.” Genesis Rabbah 13:2 thus explains that the first human knew what to pray for because the nonhuman world was communicating its needs, but only in a way that can be deemed as if in relation to the power of humanity’s language, which has the power to create and give definition to the Creation.³³

AN ENTANGLED RABBINIC AFFECTIVE ECONOMY

These rabbinic traditions provide performative textual materials that can be read as an ecology of affect, like the one Donavan Schaefer outlines in his book Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power: “Affect suggests the complexity, clunkiness, inefficiency, and heterogeneity of bodies themselves; rather than a compact metaphysical circuit, affects are jagged, uneven, and fluid; rather than a linear system, affect points us in the direction of analyses of laterality; rather than a predictable hierarchy assembled under the sovereign sign of logos, affects coalesce to form regimes of accidents. . . . Affect is better understood as sketching bodies that are much more complex, much fuzzier, and all around less predictable than determinist or adaptationist models can accommodate.”³⁴

In Schaefer’s terms, these rabbinic midrashic performances present a world that is made up of material and affectual entanglements. According to b. Ḥullin 60b, there would not be a vegetal world if it were not for affect—God desired the prayers of humanity and structured Creation in such a way that humanity would have to pray for rain to ensure life-sustaining vegetation on the planet.³⁵ This prayer is a work of the heart, as understood through the tradition from Sifre Deuteronomy, and an affective stance that sets in motion the life process of the Creation.³⁶ In the conceptual ontology of this tradition, the nonhuman world, far from being a separate and efficient domain of functional and linear interlocking pieces, begins from a divine desire that turns the affects of the human heart. The Genizah tradition similarly depicts the ontological makeup of the Creation as filled with gaps, such as the vegetation lacking form. These gaps can only be filled by the affective economy among God, Land, rain, and Adam. For the vegetation of the Land did not have a form until Adam prayed for it. According to the Genizah fragment, this was not because it was waiting under the ground fully formed but rather that its form was cocreated by Adam and God in Adam’s prayer. The fragment explicitly states that “even its form was not created until rain fell upon it.” The form that the vegetation of the Creation would take was interactively determined through humanity’s prayer and the rain that it brought. The very fabric of the Creation, according to this Genizah fragment, is potentiality and entanglement.³⁷

Genesis Rabbah 13:2 adds the rest of the nonhuman Creation into this affective economy by showing how humanity’s prayers are predicated on the communicative ability of trees and the rest of the vegetal world. Genesis Rabbah 13:2 also suggests a genealogy of desire, showing how the later prayers of humanity for the Land and its productivity are rooted in the prayer of the first human and his awareness of the lack of the Creation and its need for rain.³⁸ This tradition makes clear, however, that the particular role of humanity to pray to God on behalf of the Creation does not preclude nonhumans from partaking in language or communication and is in fact predicated on this ability of the nonhuman world. Speech is never isolated from the Creation but rather participates in the affective economy of life.

While humanity may have a greater degree of agency in these rabbinic traditions, the nonhuman world has value and agency as well. Benjamin and Schaefer explain that it was through meeting the rest of Creation, in understanding the speech of the nonhuman world and what it needed, that humanity first prayed. The story in Genesis Rabbah 13:2, “a man was once picking grapes in his vineyard and slept in it, and the wind blew and affected him,” in context, functions to show that the nonhuman world has agency and can impact humanity. Genesis Rabbah 13:3 builds on this theme: “Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai said: Three things are equal in importance, and what are these: Land, Adam, and rain. R. Levi bar Ḥiyyata says . . . if there is no Land, there is no rain, and if there is no rain, there is no Land, and if the two of them are not, then there is no Adam.” Land, rain, and Adam are of equal importance because they rely on one another for their existence. We have already seen how there is no rain without humanity’s prayers and no vegetation on the Land without rain. Genesis Rabbah 13:3 adds that, just as the nonhuman world is created through its interaction and entanglement with humanity, humanity is also constituted by the nonhuman. This tradition presents an entangled reality where the existence of each of these entities depends on the existence of the others. The Land and rain are dependent on each other for their existence, and in accordance with the Genizah fragment, they also provide each other with definition. While the end of this statement could be understood as simply implying that humanity relies on the Land and rain for food, in the context of the rest of the chapter of Genesis Rabbah 13, it has a much deeper significance. If humanity gives definition and delineation to the Creation through the enunciation of prayer, then this same act of delineation also shapes what humanity is and will become. Genesis Rabbah 13:3 presents us with a world that is constituted not only through humanity but also with a humanity that is constituted by the nonhuman world. Through the first prayer, the Land, rain, and humanity were all given definition and completed in tandem, remaining entangled even in their definition.

While the Babylonian Talmud only presents God’s desire for the prayers of humanity, Genesis Rabbah describes a more expansive view of creation in which God is given full enunciation in the Creation only when the entangled dependence of everything is presented and delineated. This is why Genesis Rabbah 13:3 connects God’s full name to rain when it states: “The full Name [of God] is employed in connection with a full world; it is similarly employed in connection with the fall of rain.” This fullness is signified in the biblical text by the use of the two names for God, which is His full name. Reading Schaefer’s affect theory and Benjamin’s theory of language, we can understand that in this iteration of a rabbinic ontology, the world is full because of the entanglement of needs and existence of all of the Creation. The first rain of Creation found in Genesis 2:5 is the act that embodies the worldly entanglement between language and Creation most for the rabbis. For in the biblical text, the first human is created from the admixture of Land and water, both of the elements that he is charged to pray for in the rabbinic traditions. Humanity is formed from these elements of the lacking universe, and perhaps it is because of this material entanglement that the first human knows what is lacking in the entities from which he is made.³⁹ Genesis Rabbah, in its explication of an entangled and mutually constitutive universe, presents a metaphysics that, unlike Benjamin, does not rely on the subject/object divide for its ground. While human prayer may have a greater level of affect and intensity than some forms of nonhuman communication, this does not set humans as subject and nonhumans as object because nonhumans also have agency and the ability to affect humanity. In our rabbinic traditions, nonhumans do not exist only for the sake of humanity or humanity for the sake of their redemption, as is found in Benjamin’s essay. This metaphysical supposition is further elucidated in the continuation of Genesis Rabbah 13.

GENESIS RABBAH 13:4–5: THE AGENCY OF THE RAIN

The continuation of Genesis Rabbah 13 in 13:4–5 sets the devotional genealogy of the Creation within a tripart flow of materiality, energy, and care among humanity, rain, and Land:

4. אמר ר’ הושעיה קשה היא גבורת גשמים ששקולה כנגד כל מעשה בראשית מה טע’ עושה גדולות עד אין חקר (איוב ה ט) במה בנותן מטר על פני ארץ ושולח מים על פני חוצות (איוב ה י), ר’ אחא מייתי לה מן הכא עושה ארץ בכוחו וגו’ (ירמיה י יב) לקול תתו המון מים בשמים וגו’ (ירמיהו י יג) ואין קול אלא גשמים היך מה דאת אמר תהום אל תהום קורא לקול צנוריך (תהלים מב ח)

5. ר’ יצחק [אמר] מרצה בקורבנות רצית י”י ארצך (תהלים פה ב), ר’ סימון אמר מכנסת את הגליות שבתה שבות יעקב (תהלים פ”ה ב), ר’ יוחנן אמר אוספת העברה אספת כל עברתך (תהלים פ”ה ד), ר’ תנחום בר חנילאי אמר מכפרת על החטאים שנ’ נשאת עון עמך וגו’ (תהלים פ”ה ג)

4. R. Hoshaya says, “Strong is the power of rain, that it is measured against all of the work of Creation.”

What is the reason? [It is written in Job 5:9:] “Who performs great deeds which cannot be fathomed, wondrous things without number.” And what are these? [It is written in Job 5:10]: “He gives rain on the Land and sends water on the field.” R. Aḥa brings it from here [where it is written in Jeremiah 10:12]: “He made the earth by His might, [established the world by His wisdom, and by His understanding stretched out the skies],” and [from Jeremiah 10:13]: “At the call of His giving a multitude of waters in the heavens”

And there is no meaning for “call” other than rain. And from where do you say this? [It is written in Psalms 42:8]: “deep calls to deep in the call of your channels [all Your breakers and billows have swept over me.]”

5. R. Yitsḥaq [says], “[Rain], like sacrifices, appeases the Land, [as it is written in Psalms 85:2]: “It, Oh Lord, has appeased your Land.” R. Shimon says, “[Rain] gathers in the exiles, [as it is written in the end of the same verse]: It has returned the exiles of Yaakov.” R. Yoḥanan says, “[Rain] contains divine wrath, [as it is written in Psalms 85:4]: “It contains all Your anger, [it turns you away from Your rage.]” R. Tanḥum bar Ḥanilai says, “[Rain] atones for sins as it is written [in Psalms 85:3]: “It forgives Your people’s iniquity, [it pardons all their sins; Selaḥ]”

Genesis Rabbah continues describing the language and agency of the nonhuman by looking at the powers and language of rain. Through biblical verses from Jeremiah and Psalms, rain is depicted as a form of divine communication, and, at the same time, the various bodies of water of Creation are shown to express themselves linguistically. They are both divine portents and agents in themselves that speak and act on the Creation. In these traditions, the deep calls to the deep, and the call of the rain is an actual language that resounds throughout the Creation. In this depiction of the rain, which is both a material entity and a linguistic phenomenon, there is no clear-cut distinction between the semiotic and the material. Materiality is entangled in language, and vice-versa. We can see in this tradition an example of Benjamin’s description of the nonhuman as expressing itself in language through itself, and an example of Haraway’s semiotic-material net in which the semiotic and the material are tied up in one another in the processes of worldmaking and becoming. This tradition differs from Benjamin, however, in the capacity for rain’s communication to directly impact humanity and the history of the Creation through its agency.

Genesis Rabbah 13:5 continues to portray rain as an active agent in the affective economy of the Creation, extending beyond communication and bringing redemption and expiation from sin. The rabbis read the beginning of Psalm 85 as an ode of the rain directed to God, and the rain as the subject of the deeds listed in Psalms 85:2–4, not God, which is how it is typically understood and translated.⁴⁰ The rabbis in this tradition are extolling the agency of the rain and the greatness of its effects on the Creation. In this respect, Genesis Rabbah 13:4–5 is a performance of human prayer: the Psalmist hears the call of the rain and communicates it to God by praising its various deeds. Genesis Rabbah also understands rain as an agent and actant that has an impact on both the terrestrial and the divine realm, appeasing the Land and driving away divine wrath. It forgives human sin and is implicated in the ingathering of the exiles. Acts that were typically associated with God are attributed to the rain and its capacities. This is a prime example of a rabbinic ontology that gives agency to the nonhuman world. Furthermore, in this description, we can see how humanity, Land, vegetation, and rain are entangled in one another, bound up in a material-spiritual-discursive reality. Far from there being a separation between the physical and the spiritual, there is only enmeshment and entanglement among all the actors involved. For the rabbis, it is not only humanity that can bring redemption to a silent world, even though it was humanity’s first prayer that gave the Creation its final delineation. Rather, the nonhuman world acts without humans and can even bring redemption to humanity. In this entanglement, the rabbis move beyond Benjamin in positing a more robust, more entangled, and more balanced vision of creation in which nonhuman communication and agency have the potential to exceed those of humanity.

GENESIS RABBAH 13:8: A COVENANT WITH THE LAND

Genesis Rabbah continues its depiction of nonhuman agency and the decentering of the human in 13:8 to explain that while the Creation was completed by humanity’s prayer in the Primeval History of Genesis 1–11, sometime after that, the ontology of Creation shifted so that the Land and vegetation would no longer depend on humanity:

המטיר י”י על הארץ אפילו אדם אין, ברית כרותה לארץ שנ’ להמטיר על ארץ לא איש מדבר לא אדם בו (איוב לח כו).

[It is written in Genesis 2:5], “The Lord God caused it to rain upon the Land,”—Even if there is no human [for] a covenant was made with the Land, as it says [in Job 38:26], “To rain down on uninhabited land, On the wilderness where no man is.”

Genesis Rabbah reads a verse from Job in conjunction with Genesis 2:5 to mean that God made a later covenant with the Land stipulating that God will bring rain to the Land even if there is no human to pray for it. This exegetical tradition establishes agency and subjecthood of the Land.⁴¹ Genesis Rabbah 13:8 presents the Land as an actor that has its own covenant with God, which stipulates that He will bring rain even if there is no humanity. In the flow of the chapter of Genesis Rabbah, this tradition explains that even though humanity was instrumental in the creation of the original vegetation and the completion of the Land, the relationship among God, Land, and rain that was set in motion by that first prayer will continue with or without humanity because of a later covenant that God made with the Land, recorded in the book of Job. So even though in Genesis Rabbah 13 we initially see an affective economy that relies on the emotions of the human heart, this economy is later changed to encompass a world that no longer relies on humanity for its existence. In fact, Genesis Rabbah 13:8 marks a shift in this chapter of Genesis Rabbah from the affective origins of the Creation that relies on humanity to an understanding of the Creation that continues with or without humanity.

Thus, according to Genesis Rabbah 13:8 in a postbiblical world, even without humanity, God’s affectual ecosystem continues functioning. In this picture, humanity is decentered, and God stands in the center of this future affective economy of which humanity is just one part. The ontology of the first half of Genesis Rabbah 13, correlated with the Garden of Eden, is a world in which the proper functioning of the Creation depends on humanity. According to this reading of Genesis Rabbah 13, it is only later in the unfolding of biblical history that the metaphysics of the Creation shifted and resulted in a Creation in which the Land would have a covenant with God separate from humanity. In this respect as well, Genesis Rabbah differs from Benjamin’s metaphysics, which affords humanity an essential role that the universe could not exist without. While humanity is also given a central and important role in Genesis Rabbah, humanity is also decentered not only by affording great powers to the communicative ability of rain but also through describing a covenant that God has with the Land independent of humanity.

ALEXANDER WEISBERG is an independent scholar, rabbi, and environmental philosopher. He has previously published articles in the Journal of Ancient Judaism and Jewish Studies Quarterly, and he has edited a special journal issue, New Approaches to Jewish Environmental Ethics, in Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology.

NOTES

1. By entanglement, I refer to the notion that entities in the world rely on other entities for their existence and being. See Hodder, “The Entanglements of Humans and Things.”

2. I focus especially on Benjamin, “On the Language of Man.”

3. As discussed by Rodolphe Gasché (“Saturnine Vision,” 79), this chapter envisions an “Adamic naming language”: language is expressed by a person’s act of naming each thing as it calls out to them in its singularity. Language is thus both in the world and in things. Yet humanity retains a distinct, necessary role in its “communication,” an anthropocentric premise. See Section 3. It has been argued that Benjamin’s theory of language goes beyond Kant’s subject/object distinction, developing Kant’s idea of “intensity” to reimagine a pure and “transcendental” Language existing only in translation (Hamacher, “Intensive Languages”). This seems to go beyond the non/human ontological boundary, yet I am not convinced that, even in Benjamin’s later theory of language, he avoids anthropocentricism. He contrasts “life of works of art” with “life of the animal species,” again defining human consciousness as what can “recognize” the gap between the two (Benjamin, “The Task of the Translator,” 71). Here, we can still see the early essay’s Adamic structure of naming.

4. Gross, The Question of the Animal and Religion, 13.

5. For modern treatments of this verse with similar exegetical outcomes, see my discussions in Weisberg, “Before There Was Nature,” 102–18; see Swenson, “Care and Keeping East of Eden”; Jørstad, “The Ground That Opened Its Mouth.”

6. Schaefer, Religious Affects.

7. Haraway, “Situated Knowledges,” 585, 588.

8. All text from Genesis Rabbah in this chapter is according to Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba.

9. All translations are my own.

10. Freedman, Midrash Rabbah, I:99–100; Neusner, Genesis Rabbah, 135.

11. Neusner and Freedman arrive at this suggestion only by reading b. Hullin 60b into this tradition. The difference in approach between their reading and an oral-performative reading that seeks the shared underlying transcript without erasing difference will be made evident through my reading.

12. Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, I:113–44.

13. Reading according to the Vilna Babylonian Talmud. See the following presentation of the various mss. The Vilna reflects the same manuscript tradition as ms. Munich as well as the original Soncino and Venice printings.

14. Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached, 53.

15. Sifre Deuteronomy Parsha Eqev §Piska 41:8, text and translation according to ed. Jaffee:

“And to serve Him” (Deut. 11:13)—this refers to prayer (tefillah). You claim this refers to prayer! Perhaps it simply refers to the sacrificial service? The Teaching states: “With all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 11:13)—Now, is there a sacrificial service in the heart? What, then, does the Teaching mean by “And to serve Him?” (Deut. 11:13). This refers to prayer. And so David says: “Let my prayer be equivalent to incense before You, And my uplifted hands like a sweet offering” (Ps. 141:2). And He says [of Daniel]: “And he knelt upon his knees three times a day and prayed” (Dan. 6:11). And He continues: “O, Daniel, servant of the Living God! Is the God whom you constantly serve able to save you from the lions?” (Dan. 6:21). Now was there a sacrificial rite in Babylonia? What, then, does the Teaching mean by “And to serve Him?” (Deut. 11:13). This refers to prayer! And just as the work of the Altar is called service, so, too, prayer is called service.

16. I show how these traditions are linguistically and conceptually related in the following passages. These traditions can be considered alternative performances of the same underlying transcript.

17. Jaffee, “What Difference Does the ‘Orality,’” 18.

18. See Alexander, Transmitting Mishnah, 1–34. For more on orality studies and rabbinic literature, see Rosen-Zvi, “Orality, Narrative, Rhetoric.” See also Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law, 97–111 for a comparison between the textualist and performative approaches to rabbinic literature.

19. For different recent treatments of this issue, see Halivni, The Formation of the Babylonian Talmud; Vidas, Tradition and the Formation of the Talmud; Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia; and Secunda, The Iranian Talmud.

20. The Genizah fragment is Palestinian in origin but contains the same basic exegetical understanding as the Babylonian Talmud of Genesis 2:5; namely, the reason there was no vegetation on Earth was because the first human had not yet been created to pray for rain.

21. The Genizah fragment, in tandem with the various Babylonian Talmud versions, supports an oral-performative analytic as a way to understand what is at stake conceptually in all of these traditions because of the similar concerns and Amoriam across the traditions.

22. See later in this chapter for more on the significance of God’s desire for Adam’s prayer.

23. Theodor and Albeck, Midrash Bereshit Rabba, I:114 do not understand Genesis Rabbah in this way. Instead, they understand Genesis Rabbah 13:2 as simply speaking about the sound of trees when wind blows through them.

24. Benjamin, “On the Language of Man.”

25. Ibid., 62. Translation slightly altered.

26. Benjamin’s ontology of nonhuman interiority and soul is similar to Phillipe Descola’s Analogist dispositif in Descola, Par-delà Nature et Culture, in which everything has interiority and exteriority, but everything is also different from everything else. Various indigenous groups hold this type of ontology. Out of Descola’s four-fold ontological map, only the modern Naturalist dispositif does not have the capacity to afford nonhumans interiority like that of humans.

27. Benjamin, “On the Language of Man,” 66.

28. Ibid., 65.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid., 74.

31. It has been suggested that Benjamin’s early ideas should be correlated not only with the Hebrew Bible but also with the ideas of Jakob Boehme for whom everything in the world, including inert objects, has a divinely bestowed life force or soul. Boehme, like Benjamin, affords agency and interiority to all nonhumans. See Hanssen, “Language and Mimesis.”

32. Benjamin, “On the Language of Man,” 62. Translation slightly altered.

33. While such is the task of the first human, Genesis Rabbah 13:2 portrays Jews as having an additional capacity for their prayer. While the rest of humanity is always concerned with praying for the Land and rain, Genesis Rabbah 13:2 explains that “all the prayers of Israel are only about the Temple, ‘May my Lord build the Temple. When will it be until You build the Temple?’” In praying for the Temple rather than sustenance and the productivity of the Land, they are also praying for the elevation of all of these elements to God and for their redemption. For the Temple lies at the heart of a unified and functioning world in other midrashic traditions in Genesis Rabbah and elsewhere in rabbinic literature. For example, Genesis Rabbah 1:2 portrays the destruction of the Temple as the unhinging and split of the whole world, while its rebuilding is akin to the reunification of the Creation. We also find in Genesis Rabbah 56:2 that the Temple is associated with one of the last stages of the redemption and elevation of the world, directly before the resurrection of the dead.

34. Schaefer, Religious Affects, 149.

35. In this description of affect, I closely follow Schaefer and the phenomological line of affect, which sees emotion and affect as coinciding. This differs from the Deleuzian school of affect. For more on the two branches of affect theory, see Schaefer, Religious Affects, 23–27.

36. Genesis Rabbah 13:7 also reinterprets avodah to mean service of the divine.

37. Even Benjamin, who suggests that the nature of the nonhuman is to be nontransparent in communication, leaves room for this understanding. Rather than reading this nontransparency of the soul of things as an epistemological lack, this nontransparency could be reread as an ontological lack—in the sense that things are not fully delineated until they are brought into definition through the naming language of humanity, much in the same way that Adam’s prayer gives form to the biosphere in the rabbinic traditions.

38. The rest of humanity fulfills an important role in communicating what is and what has happened and its upkeep by praying for the Land to continue to produce. In the same way, the Creation can continue to function, and Israel speaks an even higher need to God through the Creation: the rebuilding of the Temple and the redemption of existence.

39. This picture of the entanglement of the Creation is conceptually rooted in the biblical presentation of Genesis 1–4.

40. For example, according to JPS translation, Psalm 85:2–4 reads: “O Lord, You will favor Your land, restore Jacob’s fortune; You will forgive Your people’s iniquity, pardon all their sins; You will withdraw all Your anger, turn away from Your rage, Selah.”

41. See my discussion of Land as agent and subject in Leviticus 25:2 in Weisberg, “Before There Was Nature,” 168–71, 418–28.