When, O Lord, When?
Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. Exodus 2:23 NASB
Cried out– Do you suffer from the Egyptian disease? Does the Church in the West suffer from the same thing? Oh, I suppose you want to know, “What is the Egyptian disease?” It is galuth hadibur. Let Avivah Zornberg explain:
“With an unnerving symmetry, the Israelites, too, are described as apathetic and affectless in their misery; they are not fit for redemption, incapable of breaking out of their stony silence, of listening, of knowing. This is the Egyptian disease, it seems: in cabalistic sources it is termed galuth hadibur—the exile of language.”[1]
The Egyptian disease is the exile of language. It is the inability to communicate with God, not because He isn’t available but because we are not redeemable. We are apathetic in our commitment to His ways. We lack emotional fervor. We complain without gratitude. We still want it our way. “Yes, Lord, rescue me, but don’t ask me to do anything. Just give me peace on earth while I wait to be raptured to heaven.” It isn’t God who is in exile (although we may have put Him there). It is us. We have demonstrated our incapacity to hear, to listen, to know, to act accordingly. The despair of the world is a raging bone cancer that destines us for silence. When we cry out, we don’t know anything but our hurt.
And yet God listens and responds.
The people want life, but life comes with responsibility. “God’s gift of the Torah is no gift, . . but a loan. That means responsibility: who will be able to stand at the time of repayment?”[2] Who, indeed? That’s the problem, isn’t it? We know, deep in our bones, that if we are healed, if we are heard, if God redeems us from this traumatic despair that leaves us with only a scream, we know that someday we will have to repay for the life that we have been given. Some day the bill will come due. Yes, of course, there is grace. The Hebrew word ḥēn, “a heartfelt response by someone who has something to give to one who has a need,”[3]without strings attached. It expresses the willingness of a superior to show compassion, mercy to the inferior simply because of the desire to do so. So, yes, there is grace—without reciprocal expectation. But grace isn’t the end of the story, is it? Once accepted, grace changes things. It moves from benevolence and blessing to ḥesed, and ḥesed is filled with responsibility, not just to God but also to all those others I encounter. So I pay. As Luzzatto said, I become responsible for the “infinite debt of being.” And that, it seems, is the opportunity to be invaded by the Egyptian disease, by the stony silence of language in exile, of not having anything to say in the face of the unimaginable gift of life itself. The Egyptian disease. Taking life for granted. Refusing the obligation that comes with gratitude because I have been blinded to being grateful. The cancer that destroys my soul. “A kind of psychosis pervades Egypt. Healing, redemption are fuled out by the nature of the disease. Without the Shabbat reverie on the scrolls of redemption, there is no germ of possibility, no inner energy to moderate the frustration of reality.”[4]
I’m afraid a great number of us are sick. Me too, unless I stop long enough to recognize that my being at all is an act of divine grace. Unless I wake up with appreciation on my lips. It’s so easy to cry out when all I have is my pain. But, of course, that is never all I have, is it?
Topical Index: life, fear, galuth hadibur, exile, Exodus 2:23
[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus(Schocken Books, New York: 2001), p. 45.
[3]Yamauchi, E. (1999). 694 חָנַן. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr., & B. K. Waltke (Eds.), Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament(electronic ed., p. 302). Chicago: Moody Press.
[4]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus(Schocken Books, New York: 2001), p. 117.
