Who will the earth swallow?

Hebrew

וַיִּקַּח קֹרַח בֶּן־יִצְהָר בֶּן־קְהָת בֶּן־לֵוִי וְדָתָן וַאֲבִירָם בְּנֵי אֱלִיאָב וְאוֹן בֶּן־פֶּלֶת בְּנֵי רְאוּבֵן׃ וַיָּקֻמוּ לִפְנֵי מֹשֶׁה...

And took Korach, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, and Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliav, and On son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, and rose upbefore Moses. (Numbers 16:1)[1] 

What did Korach take?

Even if you read the text of the Torah carefully, you won’t know because it doesn’t say.  “Took” here is a transitive verb without an object. Translators and commentators try to fill in the blank but the lack itself has meaning: it doesn’t matter what Korach took. The opening verb of the story is not intended to advance the plot; it provides background information about Korach. He takes what he wants, when he wants it, because he thinks he deserves it.

Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler (Lithuania, 1892-Israel, 1953) discusses people like this, “Two powers – נתינה giving and נטילה taking – form the roots of all character traits and of all actions.”[2] For Rabbi Dessler the power of giving is the substance of humanity being created in God’s image. Its opposite is “the faculty of taking, by contrast a person aspires to draw to himself all that comes within his reach. This is what people call egotism or selfishness. It is the root of all evil…” 

In the Torah portion, Korach desires political and ritual power. In the Talmud, Korach is known as an especially wealthy person who who took treasures that Joseph had hidden in Egypt (Sanhedrin 110a). It could even be that Korach thought he deserved political power because of his wealth. There’s a hint of this direction in the text itself where it notes twice, “and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, all Korah’s people and all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them….” (Num. 16:32-33).[3] 

Motivated by the power of taking Korach and his allies bring destruction upon themselves. To my mind there is actually a natural aspect to their supernatural demise: the strong connection between humanity אדם and landאדמה . The earth “knows” what to do with people who grab more than their share. But sometimes the natural consequences are delayed. Therefore when Moses proposes-prays “But if the Eternal creates a creation so that the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up…” (Num. 16:30), his intention is not necessarily for an entirely new creation but rather for an instance of an already existing power, here and now.[4] The miracle is in the precision. The earth opened it in mouth and swallowed only the guilty parties. Generally, natural disasters do not distinguish between good people and bad. Or perhaps we are all guilty?

Even if we aren’t all guilty, all humans bear responsibility for the relationship between humanity and the earth. From the perspective of Jewish tradition, this responsibility is derived from being created God’s image, which includes the power of giving described by Rabbi Dessler, but is more expansive and complex. This survey presents a few key sources that can serve as inspiration when the responsibility seems too heavy and convenience beckons us to ignore it.

One of the strongest statements to this effect among the classical commentators is Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (Spain, 1089-c. 1167) on “The heavens belong to the Eternal and the earth God gave to humanity” (Psalm 115:16): “Ignorant people think that the humanity’s rule over the earth is like God’s rule in heaven, but they do not speak correctly because God’s rule is everywhere. The meaning of ‘the earth God gave to humanity’ is that people are like clerks of God on earth, over all that is on earth, but everything is [ruled by] the word of God.”

Contemporary Bible scholar Prof. Tikva Frymer-Kensky (1943-2006) explains that this is indeed the meaning of the word צלם in the phrase “in the Divine Image” (Genesis 1:26):

The essential position of humankind in the cosmos is not the farmer, but the executive. This is spelled out: humans are to be the tzelem Elohim, the image of God. Ṣalmu is a word we know from Mesopotamian inscriptions, where the king is the “image” of the god. It means the avatar of God on earth, the one who keeps everything going properly.[5] 

A person charged with guarding an asset for its owners knows full well that even if they are permitted to use a small portion, it is forbidden to destroy the asset or steal from it. When that asset is the earth, we somehow manage to forget. Already in 1951, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel sounded a warning: 

It is amazing how thoughtless modern man is of his responsibility in relation to his world. He finds before him a world crammed to overflowing with wonderful materials and forces, and without hesitation or scruple he grasps at everything is within his reach… he is gradually changing the face of the earth.[6]

“Without hesitation or scruple he grasps at whatever is within his reach” sounds very much like the “taker” described by R. Dessler, very much like Korach. We’ve already seen what happened to him.

Elsewhere in Man is Not Alone, Rabbi Heschel defines the exploitation of nature as the “way of expediency” and calls for balancing it with “the way of wonder which deepens our appreciation in order to respond” to the world rather than exploit it. More than 70 years have passed, and the situation has deteriorated greatly in a world where consumerism is considered culture and economic growth prevails over growing food or the lives of workers.

A new Hebrew book, Sustainability from Genesis by Dr. Jonathan Aikhenbaum presents an environmentally-oriented reading of the book of Genesis, based Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik’s (Belarus, 1903-USA, 1993) understanding of the different stories about how humanity was created, as reported in the first two chapters of Genesis.[7] Very, very briefly: the human created in God’s image in the first chapter is creative and ambitious, interested in concrete benefits and property. This person asks about how the world operates in order to take advantage of its resources and use them effectively for human benefit. Conversely, the human created from the soil in the second chapter is a person of “experiences and sustainability” (Aikhenbaum’s term) who wonders about the substance of the world and humanity’s place within it. This person guards creation at all cost... Both of these aspects are present within every person and in every society. Humanity’s goal and purpose find the balance it makes the dignified human existence possible without being destructive and while acting responsibly towards future generations. 

Korach sinned by upsetting the balance with an unrestrained urge to take. To avoid his bitter fate we must realize the potential of the Divine Image in which we were created, and strive for responsible, balanced sustainability.

Shoshana Michael Zucker
Kehilat Hod veHadar, 5783

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[1] I have translated this and a few other verses very literally, to support the interpretive points.

[2] Strive for Truth, translated by Aryeh Carmell. 

[3] Rabbi Jonathan Neril, “Passing the Test of Wealth.”

[4] This may explain the contradiction between the usual understanding that Moses is asking for something entirely new and the claim in Pirkei Avot 5:6 that the mouth of the earth was created at twilight of the first Erev Shabbat. 

[5] “Ecology in a Biblical Perspective” in Torah of the Earth (2000). Additional sources and explanations on human responsibility for the earth, based on Tzelem Elohim, may be found here.

[6] Man is Not Alone (1951), pp. 290-91

[7] In Lonely Man of Faith.