The Song of Moses in this week’s portion is overflowing with flowery, descriptive language. One of most conspicuous images is the metaphor comparing God to a rock or boulder, something stable and enduring. At first glance the verse, “The Rock! God’s deeds are perfect” (Deuteronomy 32:4) is challenging. The Rock is enduring and strong but is God’s creation perfect? Not so much. Alongside magnificent landscapes and tremendous natural resources, and people who are loving, generous and brilliant in many fields, there are horrifying natural disasters, horrendous diseases, murderers, thieves and all sorts of unsavory characters.
The prophet Isaiah confirms the evil in the world and its origin in creation: “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil— I the Eternal does all these things” (44:7). The Rabbis had trouble accepting the strident formulation that attributes evil to God, and they moderated the verse before including it in the blessing for the creation of light. Therefore, we pray, “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create everything.” This move moderates the language but not the facts. If God created everything, God created evil. Therefore, God’s creation is not perfect.
Unless God didn’t actually create the entire world ex nihilo (from nothing).
Genesis chapter 1 tells about a neat, orderly process in which God creates by speaking. When creation is complete, God declares it “very good.” The gap between that and our world is deep and wide. From whence has all the confusion and pain, evil and suffering come? They have always existed. Genesis chapter 1 is a carefully constructed literary work that not only reveals but also conceals. The Torah does not claim that there was creation ex nihilo of a new world in which evil is a foreign implant. The primordial waters are a symbol of danger lying in wait. God never calls the material world into being but rather creates light and imposes order on the water and formless void, to facilitate “the emergence of a stable community in a benevolent and life-sustaining order” (Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil).
The order God imposed in the world might have been perfect, but it wasn’t stable. Consequently, male and female people were created in God’s image and commissioned as human agents to rule the world in the name of the creator God (Genesis 1:38). Therefore, at the end of the poem, Moses challenges us, “Take to heart all the words with which I have warned you this day. Enjoin them upon your children, that they may observe faithfully all the terms of this Teaching” (Deuteronomy 32:46) in order to continue building a world that might, someday, reach perfection.
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