Ari Levisohn: Welcome to Into the Verse. This is Ari Levisohn, and in just a moment I'll be joined by my colleague Tikva Hecht to talk about Parshat Chayei Sarah.

Before we jump in, I want to share with you that this episode turned out a little different from our usual style. You see, I noticed some really intriguing things in the parsha, certain details that raised a lot of questions in my mind. Plus, I had found a really cool Midrash that I thought might shed some light on these questions, but I wasn't able to work out how all of the pieces went together.

So I sat down with Tikva to try to figure out what all of this meant. Although we didn't manage to answer every question we raised, and even disagreed on some points, Tikva and I had a very rich and thought-provoking discussion, and we're excited to share that with you today.

If these noticings spark any thoughts of your own, we'd love to hear those too. Here we are.

Tikva Hecht: Hi Ari. So tell me, what are we going to be talking about today?

A Perplexing Midrash

Ari: So, today we are going to be talking about Parshat Chayei Sarah, but before we do, I want to open up by looking at what I think is just a really fascinating and perplexing midrash. This is from Bereishit Rabbah, and it begins at the time when God came to create Adam, the first man. Basically, all of the ministering angels split into two camps to argue for or against creating man (Bereishit Rabbah 8:5).

Tikva, if I asked you, “Should we create man or not?” what would you say?

Tikva: I think we'd have to go with “Create.” Create man. I want to be here.

Kindness and Truth Meet Up

Ari: Yeah. Yeah. I think I would be in favor of creating man too. But the ministering angels are split. Some of them say, “Don't create man,” and the rest of them say, “Do create man.” And so it quotes a verse from Psalms here: הֲדָא הוּא דִכְתִיב: חֶסֶד־וֶאֱמֶת נִפְגָּשׁוּ צֶדֶק וְשָׁלוֹם נָשָׁקוּ — Kindness and Truth, chesed v’emet, meet up; and Righteousness and Peace kiss (Psalms 85:10).

What in the world does that have to do with the ministering angels arguing for or against creating man? Well, so it goes on to explain that it seems that the angels split into four camps. Each camp represents a certain one of these values of God — chesed, emet, tzedek, and shalom — and each of these values, and each of these angels going along with these values, are going to argue for or against creating man.

Tikva: Just to be clear, chesed means…chesed is…like, there's one group of angels that are the “chesed angels.” That's what the midrash is implying, almost like this abstract concept, though, is represented by this group of angels. And now those angels are speaking, but they're going to speak from the lens of chesed. That's their primary concern. Okay, cool. Interesting.

Ari: So: חֶסֶד אוֹמֵר יִבָּרֵא — The Divine value of Kindness, or maybe it's the angels representing that value, argue, “You should create man because man does acts of kindness.”

וֶאֱמֶת אוֹמֵר אַל יִבָּרֵא — But Truth says, “Don't create man,” שֶׁכֻּלּוֹ שְׁקָרִים — “Because man is completely lies.”

And then tzedek and shalom, Righteousness and Peace, they also take sides. Righteousness says, “Create man because man does righteous acts.” Peace says, “Don't create man because man is full of strife.”

So basically what you have here is, it's two vs. two. So it's a tie. How are you going to break the tie? What does God do?

נָטַל אֱמֶת — He takes Truth, וְהִשְׁלִיכוֹ לָאָרֶץ — and He throws it to the earth. 

Tikva: So the idea is, He throws Truth to the ground, as if men, who are just full of lies… but if they're created on the earth somehow, that's going to make them truthful…? Is that the implication? And so now they're not full of lies? I'm confused by the logic here.

Ari: I think you might be anticipating the rest of this midrash, because I would've read that and I would've thought, oh, so maybe it got…what that means is that God's basically just ignoring Truth. He's, like, saying, “Fine, Truth, I don't need you. Goodbye. See you never.”

Tikva: Oh, I see.

Ari: And with Truth out of the way, God can continue creating man, and it's a 2-1 vote in favor. But the angels respond to God and say, “Master of the world, how could You disgrace Your very seal?” Implying that somehow emet, Truth, is God's seal. In other words, “This value of Truth, it's extremely important to You, maybe the most important thing to You. How could You do such a thing as to just completely disgrace it by throwing it to the ground?”

And then they continue and say: תַּעֲלֶה אֱמֶת מִן הָאָרֶץ — Let Truth rise up from the earth. And then they quote the very next verse in the same chapter of Psalms: אֱמֶת מֵאֶרֶץ תִּצְמָח — Truth will sprout forth from the earth. And it ends here, and God seems to basically give them the last word.

Tikva: Uh-huh. He's saying, “No, actually, this isn't a way of disgracing it.” Somehow, it will grow from the Earth, it will rise from the earth. So my initial…like you were saying, the way I mistakenly read it initially is actually kind of where the midrash ends up, but it is very confusing to think about what does that mean. Almost like these little Truth flowers that are going to sprout from the earth. It's a beautiful image, but I don't know what it actually means.

Throwing Truth to the Earth

Ari: Right. And so I think this really raises a ton of questions for us. What does it mean for God to throw Truth to the earth? And what does it mean for Truth then to sprout from the earth? 

There's one other question that this brings up for me, and I think this actually requires us to read the midrash very carefully, particularly that first verse it quoted when I introduced these four Divine values. It says: חֶסֶד־וֶאֱמֶת נִפְגָּשׁוּ — So, Kindness and Truth, they meet up; צֶדֶק וְשָׁלוֹם נָשָׁקוּ — And Righteousness and Peace, they kiss.

What does that make it sound like? Particularly, let's look at chesed v’emet, right?

Tikva: Yeah, so נִפְגָּשׁוּ…I would read it as a neutral term. I'm not sure. It doesn't have an immediate sense of conflict, but I don't know. I actually would read it almost like they’re meeting up, like they're connected. They're going to collaborate. So I wouldn't…like, knowing the midrash, I know that they're at odds with each other, but if I just read that pasuk (verse), I would not think that these two people are…or these two concepts are going to be combatants now. 

Ari: It certainly doesn't seem like they'd be opposite sides of a fight.

Tikva: Yeah.

Ari: So that's where I want to begin. I mean, that's what's going to bring us to this week's parsha.

Tikva: Yeah, I was going to ask…I had another question, which is, what does this have to do with Chayei Sarah? Fascinating as it is. 

Ari: So sometimes when we look at midrashim at Aleph Beta, we're making the argument that this midrash is actually a commentary on this story. That's actually not what we're going to do here today. I think the two are kind of operating parallel. But the reason why I brought up this midrash in the first place, and the reason why it makes me think so much about this parsha, is because I think, in this week's parsha, emet and chesed…they do meet up. They are nifgashim.

Tikva: Ari, you have me stumped. I am very curious, but I can't, off the top of my head, think about where you're going with this.

Abraham Seeks a Wife for Isaac

Ari: Okay, so let's take a look at the parsha. And just, by way of background, basically, Sarah's just died, and Abraham turns to his servant, who the midrash tells us is Eliezer, and because it's a lot easier to give the guy a name, we're going to refer to him from here on out as Eliezer.

So Abraham turns to Eliezer and says, “I want you to go find a wife for my son Isaac, with one condition.” And Tikva, let me just ask, from your memory, what's that one condition?

Tikva: From what I remember, he doesn't want him to take from the women around him. He wants him to go back to his hometown.

Ari: Of course, we know from the ending that it actually is his relative, Rebecca. But all he really says to Eliezer is, “Look, these women in the land of Canaan where I am right now, they're not good. I don't like them. I don't want Isaac marrying any of them. Go to my homeland, go to the land of Charan, the land, the place that I'm from, find Isaac a wife from there.”

Seemingly, Eliezer could go, find the first woman he sees there, bring her back, and he has fulfilled his quest. He's done exactly what Abraham has told him to do.

Tikva: Yeah, that's interesting. I think we kind of, like, read with the ending in mind and assume, like, almost like Avraham had Rebecca in mind. But you're right, he's just saying he really doesn't want the women who are around them.

Ari: Right, which makes it interesting why, when Eliezer gets to Charan, he actually sets up this test for how to find the right woman for Isaac. Now, I'll just say right here, we could go on a whole tangent about why Eliezer sets up this test at all, why he's not just satisfied with any woman from this land. I don't want to get distracted by that now, but I do want to read the language that he uses when he turns to God and he asks him to help him be successful in fulfilling this test.

So, Tikva, if you don't mind reading for us Genesis chapter 24, starting in verse 12.

Eliezer Asks for a Sign

Tikva: So he turns to Hashem. He says: The God of my master, Avraham, הַקְרֵה־נָא לְפָנַי הַיּוֹם וַעֲשֵׂה־חֶסֶד עִם אֲדֹנִי אַבְרָהָם — Grant me good fortune this day, and do chesed, do kindness with my master Avraham.

Ari: And so there's that word, chesed, kindness, right, what we saw from the midrash.

Tikva: Yeah, that's true. So he's asking God to do a chesed with him; I guess, help him find this woman. And then this is the sign he's looking for: I stand here by the spring of water, and the daughters and the men of the city are going to come and…to draw water. The young maiden who I say to her, “Lower your jar and let me drink from it,” and she says, “I'll let you drink and also I'm going to give your camels to drink,” אֹתָהּ הֹכַחְתָּ לְעַבְדְּךָ לְיִצְחָק וּבָהּ אֵדַע כִּי־עָשִׂיתָ חֶסֶד עִם־אֲדֹנִי — Then let that be the one who, essentially, God is declaring will be for your servant Yitzchak. And that's how I'll know that God has done kindness with my master.

Ari: So Eliezer is asking God to help him in this quest, and he describes this from God as an act of chesed, an act of kindness.

Tikva: Yeah. It's really interesting because I think we think Rivka…we think of this act that this woman would do as an act of chesed, but he's not saying, “I want to find a woman who does chesed” explicitly. The chesed is that God will give him this sign.

Ari: You're right, yeah. The explicit chesed here is actually not what Rivka does — it's what God does, which is really interesting.

So anyway, the story goes on. Basically, exactly what Eliezer hopes. A woman comes along. That woman, he asks her for water. She gives not just him but his camels water. So, perfect. He's found this amazing woman. That was super easy.

And he asks her: בַּת־מִי, right — Whose daughter are you? In other words, what family are you from? And she responds, in verse 24:

Tikva: וַתֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו בַּת־בְּתוּאֵל אָנֹכִי בֶּן־מִלְכָּה אֲשֶׁר יָלְדָה לְנָחוֹר — I am the daughter of Betuel, the son of Milcah who was born to Nachor.

Ari: And Nachor just so happens to be…?

Tikva: Avraham's brother. So this is right in the family.

Ari: Right. And again, we said, like, okay, knowing the ending, it's like, yeah, of course, this was like it was supposed to be. He marries this woman who's his relative. But if you've never read the end before, this is news. You know, Abraham didn't ask for this. Eliezer didn't ask for this. Seemingly Abraham would have been happy with literally any woman from the land of Charan. And Eliezer would have been happy with any woman from the land of Charan who also passed this test where she gives water to the camels. It just so happens to be that the woman he finds passed this test and is this relative of Abraham and Isaac's.

Tikva: Yeah, it does feel almost too good to be true.

Ari: Yeah. And what do you do when God does something for you that's too good to be true? וַיִּקֹּד הָאִישׁ וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ לַיקוָה, in verse 26 — He bows down to God. And in verse 27, he blesses God. Tikva, can you read?

God Does Kindness and Truth

Tikva: וַיֹּאמֶר בָּרוּךְ יְקוָה אֱלֹקי אֲדֹנִי אַבְרָהָם — Blessed is the God of my master Avraham, אֲשֶׁר לֹא־עָזַב חַסְדּוֹ — who did not withhold His kindness, וַאֲמִתּוֹ, oh! — and His truth!

Ari: Ah, yeah. Here, chesed and emet are meeting up, for whatever that means. He says, “God, you have not abandoned Your kindness nor Your truth from my master Abraham. You have led me on the way to the house of my master's brother.”

Remember, when Eliezer asked God to help him out with this test, he asked for…?

Tikva: Chesed. He just asked for chesed. There was no mention of emes.

Ari: Right, and now, when he's thanking God for it, he thanks God not just for the chesed, the kindness He did, but also the emet, the truth. So that's interesting. It's also interesting, by the way, this is the first time the word emet comes up in the whole Torah.

Tikva: If you think about the midrash, it feels like this is the moment, right, that this is where the emes is now starting to sprout. It is very confusing, though, because what is the…when I think about emes, I think about some kind of fact or some kind of truth. But there's nothing here that is…this is all about planning for some future act. This isn't about reflecting on the past, which is where we normally think of truth. Like, did that happen? Did it not happen? 

Ari: So, that's a great point, right? There's nothing here that feels like truth in the way that we think about, you know, factual truth, right? 2+2=4, true. The sky is blue, true. You know, what about this is “truth”?

Maimonides on Truth in the Garden of Eden

I think it's worth probably trying to expand ever so slightly our definition of what emet, what truth actually is. I think the best way to think about this is the way the Rambam describes in Moreh Nevuchim, in The Guide to the Perplexed. He's talking about, in the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, right?

So he says, okay, before Adam and Eve gained this knowledge of good and evil, what existed? What was…how did they…if it wasn't through a lens of good and evil, how did they interact with the world? How did they view the world? Do you know this?

Tikva: He says it was through a lens of truth and falsehood, I believe. That they didn't have, like, a personal, emotional…or a preference invested in their relationship to reality. I think that they were just looking through the lens of “Is it true; is it not true?” without any subjective investment.

Ari: Right, exactly. And what Rambam says is that basically after they eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they actually lose this view of emet, this view of, like, truth versus falsehood. And instead, they have this view of good and bad.

Basically, good and bad is subjective. You know, it's kind of…you feel that there's good and bad. And you might have, like, you know, God's version of good and bad, and your version of good and bad, and someone else's version of good and bad. It is inherently a subjective evaluation of the world that you're looking at, whereas truth and falsehood are inherently objective.

Tikva: Yeah, We want good. We don't want bad. That's inherent in what good and evil are. One is preferred over the other. Where's true and false? I mean, truth is just preferred over falsehood because it's true, but there isn't that same vested interest, right?

You can have, kind of, the “cold mathematician” as a kind of cliche, right, of just stepping back and like, “I'm just a witness here.” Like, you know, “I'm not actually…I have no preference for where this ends up. I'm just following the steps and seeing what is.”

Ari: Right, exactly, and so in that sense, I think that, you know, we can look at truth as not just, you know, factually 2+2=4. Yes, 2+2=4, but kind of more broadly, something that has this objective rightness. Like, it is just the way it is, and there is no way to argue against it. It is just – it's right.

Tikva: Right, and it's right because it's true.

Ari: It's right because it's true, exactly.

Tikva: Right? You don't have to like it. It doesn't have to feel good. Just because it's there. That's its value.

What “Truth” Does God Grant Eliezer?

Ari: Exactly. So the question then is, what is this truth that Eliezer is talking about in the story? And I think we just…we have to do some algebra here, right? Eliezer asks for kindness, God responds with kindness and truth. So what is there that Eliezer didn't ask for and God did respond with?

Tikva: Eliezer asked for chesed, and what he asked for was this particular sign of this woman who would give him water to drink and water the camels. And that's what he got. So let's say that's the chesed, right? That feels nice and neat. And the thing that's left over then is her lineage and her willingness…yeah.

Ari: Right, it's like if you subtract out chesed, right, then what are you left with?

Tikva: The emes is, I guess, would be that she comes from Nachor, that she has this close relationship to Avraham's family. And that would be the truth, which is a truth. It is a fact. I'm struggling with…I could see why Eliezer would be really excited by that fact, because it might feel close, it might feel right. It might feel like, oh yeah, this is definitely the woman that Avraham would want, or there's something nice about it. I'm struggling with why he would still call that truth.

Ari: It is surprising, but it seems to be what the algebra would suggest. And just to support that…like, before any of you listening are like, “This is crazy. Ari and Tikva are like…well, in what way is this truth?”

If you continue reading this story…we won't read through this, but basically what happens next is that Rebecca invites Eliezer to her home. Eliezer gets there, he meets her whole family, and he recounts everything that just happened to him. He gets to this part about how Rebecca told him who she was, and in verse 48, he says: I bowed down to God and I blessed God, the God of my master Abraham. אֲשֶׁר הִנְחַנִי בְּדֶרֶךְ אֱמֶת לָקַחַת אֶת־בַּת־אֲחִי אֲדֹנִי לִבְנוֹ — Blessed are You, God, who has guided me on the path of emet, of truth, to take the daughter of my master's brother for his son.

Which, by the way, is the same line he uses before when he thanks God for the chesed and emet, right? He says: אָנֹכִי בַּדֶּרֶךְ נָחַנִי יְקוָה בֵּית אֲחֵי אֲדֹנִי — I'm on the way. God has led me to the house of my master (Genesis 24:27). And now he's repeating that same line. He's spelling out explicitly that the path that God led him on towards the house of his master's brother, that is the path of emet, the path of truth.

Tikva: Right. I'll tell you what I find so funny about it is, it just makes me think of nepotism. And, like, if there's a family bond, I think that's the place where we immediately say someone's actually blinded to the truth, right? Or like, nobody sees their family through clear eyes. So it feels like, just additionally, kind of funny that a family connection, which can be wonderful and has lots of value to it, it's funny to see it tied to truth. I would think that's the one place where people often don't have clear vision.

Ari: Right. Except, right, this isn't an objective…a subjective human boss who's hiring their relative. This is God Almighty making this decision. And in fact, no one, no human even asked for this to happen. God basically intervened and made it such that these two people ended up together, right? God was the Matchmaker here.

Tikva: Yeah, it's very funny. It's not even what Eliezer asked for. Like, he didn't, you know… that wasn't the sign. He didn't say, “Can you,” you know, “send me to Avraham's relatives and that's how I'll know.” So, you're right. This is totally like God's little insertion in this whole drama.

What’s So “True” About This Match?

Ari: So what the text seems to be saying is that what Eliezer asked for…somehow, that was chesed, this test of this woman who gives the water for the camels. But when God responds and God makes this match between Isaac and Rebecca, that is somehow emet. That is…somehow, it is true.

And at this point, you know, I guess it's really…it's up to us to try to figure out how to understand what about that is true, because it's not immediately obvious. But if I could, you know, float a suggestion — and tell me what you think of this — I wonder if chesed is doing something for someone that they want, and maybe emet is doing what they actually need. Right, so in the context of the story, Eliezer asks for God to do something for him. If God responds and God does what Eliezer asks, that's chesed. It's kindness. He did what Eliezer wanted from Him.

But God doesn't stop at what Eliezer wants. God also does something else, something that seems to have needed to be. Something that is right, was meant to happen, is supposed to be this way. And it seems like that is described as emet. That is truth.

Tikva: So, let me see if I can say this back to you, because what I hear you saying is: Here's Eliezer, he is on this mission, and like you pointed out before, Avraham actually doesn't give him a lot of direction. He doesn't give him, you know, an address to go to. He doesn't give him a list of top contenders. He says, basically, “Go to a city and find a wife for my son.” So Eliezer's on this journey without a lot of direction, and he turns to God, and he says to God, “You know what? Like, do me a solid. Like, just do this favor for me. I have no idea how to pick, out of this entire population, some woman who's going to be, you know, be the right person for Yitzchak. There's a sign. Can you just give me a sign? This is the sign I'd like. Give me the sign and basically take the burden off of me. Put the burden on God. You know, help me out here.”

And so that happens, and at that point Eliezer…let's say we just stopped there. He feels like God is watching out for him. He…God has done this kindness for him. But it seems like you're saying, in a sense, God is saying to Eliezer, “Yes, kindness is important,” or, “Yes, that sign was a great sign, but there is something maybe as important, which is her lineage or her connection to Avraham.”

Kindness in Abraham’s Family

Ari: Yeah, it seems like Eliezer was asking for a “good” match, and God provided a perfect match. We could probably go into a whole other episode just about why this match was so perfect. I think a lot of that has to do with a whole 45-minute-long video that Rabbi Fohrman does have. It’s, I think, one of his Shavuos videos where he talks about Abraham's origin. And basically, to make a long story short, Abraham and Nachor had a third brother. His name was Haran, and he died leaving behind three children whose names were…two daughters, Milcah and Yiscah, and a son, Lot.

And Abraham and Nachor, both in this great act of kindness of their own — again, kind of speaking of acts of kindness — they both marry their deceased brother's daughters. And, you know, today that might sound kind of creepy and not okay, but at that time everyone married family members. And certainly for them to basically take these two orphaned women and bring them under their wings and protect them; and not just, you know, take them and make the members of the house but marry them and elevate them to be their wives and the matriarchs of these two households. That was really an amazing thing for them to do, and it's interesting the way that Rivka describes herself here. She doesn't just say, “Oh, I'm Bethuel's girl.” She says, “I'm the daughter of Bethuel who was born to Milcah, to Nachor.” And this is actually the second of three times that the Torah describes Rebecca in this way; not just her immediate family, but that she specifically was the offspring of this marriage between Nachor and Milcah, this marriage of kindness.

The Midrash tells us that Yiscah and Sarah were actually the same person, which means that the other offspring of this parallel act of kindness was the child of Abraham and Sarah, who was…?

Tikva: Yitzchak.

Ari: Yitzchak. So this is actually the coming together of these, like, these two parallel stories of acts of kindness. And Isaac and Rebecca are these two offspring that kind of happened from these parallel stories and are now coming together. I wonder if that is possibly what makes this match, you know, really so beautiful and perfect — and not just great, but true.

Tikva: What it makes me think about is, Eliezer's sign was about generic kindness. It was, “I want the woman who's going to see a stranger and just give to them.” And what you're pointing out now is that what God is saying is, “That's great, but there's something else that maybe you need, which is someone who not only comes from your own…” It's not just that she's coming from his family. She's coming from a situation where she experientially knows something that maybe Yitzchak knows.

They have some kind of similarity in their family, in their psychology, in their view of themselves, in their identity. There's something particular to who they are as people that really makes them unusual and could…they could connect over. Something about it instinctively rings very true, though I'm still having a hard time articulating it.

Ari: I wonder if the reason why it…like, a match like this, it feels right. It feels like there's something about that that is true, but it's hard to articulate. It's because it's really what the Midrash was saying. Like, when God came to create mankind, half the angels said, “Are you sure you want to create mankind? Mankind's really bad at truth. Mankind is full of shekarim, is full of lies.” Because truth is something that's actually…it's really hard for us as humans to grasp. Especially when we're talking about, like, this Divine-level truth, you know? Like, the truest of the true things, right? The things that just are, as the angels say, are God's seal. It's really hard for our human minds to even understand that, let alone to identify it and act on it.

The First “Truth” in the Torah

Tikva: It seems like…you brought us to the first place in the Torah where truth comes up, and it's a place where it comes up that is confusing on a peshat level; like, on a simple level, it's confusing why this would be called “truth.”

Then you're showing another layer to this, which is, not only is the Torah bringing up truth in this confusing way with, somehow, this match, it's truth or it's God's great act of truth, but it's in contrast to a chesed which is much more on a face value, just simple. Like, Eliezer asked for a sign; God gives him a sign. All of that is chesed, and then truth is a totally different thing. Truth is when God kind of enters into our lives and sets things up by his own calculations. Maybe He knows what's going on. This is where God comes in and takes the reins. 

And then you put that next to the midrash and you see that, in the very creation of humanity, what it means to be human is to, in a sense, be in tension with truth, and we are just full of lies. We are just full of falsehood. And what I kind of hear you saying is, God went ahead and created man, but in this story, where He first, in a sense, introduces emes in the Torah, you can kind of see all of these complications playing out. There's a truth beyond us that maybe, like the midrash says, is in the earth and will sprout from the earth, and hopefully we'll find this on our paths, but it's not…we don't always recognize it. Or I guess, Eliezer did recognize it after the fact, but it doesn't look the way we might expect.

Ari: Before we go on, I want to pause for a moment and take stock of our conversation so far. Tikva and I looked at the very first time the Torah mentions emet in the hopes that this story might give us some definition of what the Torah means by “truth.” But as it turns out, it wasn't that simple.

When Eliezer uses the word emet, he doesn't spell out exactly what he thinks is true. It sounds as if he's talking about the extra thing God did for him, on top of the chesed he originally asked for. His request was, “Please God, do chesed for Abraham and show me a kind young woman to marry Isaac.” And God does that, but God does something else too and points out a woman from Abraham's own family.

Then Eliezer thanks God for granting him both chesed and emet. Plus, Eliezer tells Rebecca's family that God led him on the “road of truth” to find them. So Tikva and I both felt pretty clear about what the text is telling us. This particular match is somehow emet, true.

But that brought us to a harder question. Why does the text call this match emet? It's not something factual like 2+2=4. It doesn't fit with our usual ways of thinking about truth. This is where our discussion became more speculative, because we didn't feel like we had a solid answer from the text.

We looked back at the verse about truth sprouting forth from the land at the end of the midrash. What does that even mean? Maybe it means that emet isn't just up in God's world. Emet could be showing up in our lives as well, but it's hard for us to recognize. That might explain why Eliezer only mentions emet after God sends him Rebecca. He didn't know to ask for her ahead of time, but now that it's happened, he recognizes that this match is right on a deeper level. 

I felt like we'd made some progress on the meaning of emet in this story, but I had one more place in the parsha to show Tikva; a place where chesed and emet “meet up” for the second time.

I wasn't sure it would tell us more about what was so “emet” about this match, but for me it raised another possible answer to what the midrash means when it talks about truth sprouting forth from the earth. Here's the next part of our conversation.

How Does Truth Sprout from the Earth?

I think we still haven't figured out…what does that mean, for “truth to sprout forth from the earth”?

Tikva: Yeah.

Ari: But to me, this speaks to the next time in this story where truth and kindness meet up. So as we said before, Rebecca brings Eliezer back to her home. He meets her family, he recounts the whole story. He tells them about how God led him on this path of truth. And then, in verse 49, he finishes the story and he turns to them and says…Tikva?

Tikva: וְעַתָּה אִם־יֶשְׁכֶם עֹשִׂים חֶסֶד וֶאֱמֶת (oh, chesed v’emet again!) אֶת־אֲדֹנִי — And now, if you mean to treat my master with chesed and emes, kindness and truth, הַגִּידוּ לִי וְאִם־לֹא הַגִּידוּ לִי וְאֶפְנֶה עַל־יָמִין אוֹ עַל־שְׂמֹאל — So, basically, tell me what your decision is one way or the other so I can go on my way.

Ari: So now, Tikva, what is the chesed v’emet that he is asking from Rebecca's family?

Tikva: Yeah, so that’s where this verse just tripped me up a little bit. I'm not sure if the chesed and emes is giving Rivka to the, like, letting her go with him and approving this match… but it also seems like just telling him, one way or the other.

Ari: Right, so, curiously, Eliezer never actually spells out his request. He tells the whole story, and then he says, “And now let me know if you're going to do chesed v’emet with me.”

Tikva: Yeah.

Ari: Which is kind of weird. And not just does he never explicitly ask to bring Rebecca back for Isaac, but in their quote unquote “answer,” they also don't just say “yes,” right? Look at what they answer in verse 50.

Tikva: וַיַּעַן לָבָן וּבְתוּאֵל וַיֹּאמְרוּ מֵיְהֹוָה יָצָא הַדָּבָר לֹא נוּכַל דַּבֵּר אֵלֶיךָ רַע אוֹ־טוֹב — So Lavan and Bethuel, Lavan the son of Bethuel, answers and they say, “This matter comes from God. We can't speak to you good or bad.” Which sounds like they're kind of agreeing and saying, almost like, “This is not even our call. We're not making this decision. God has decreed this. We're just going to sit back and be silent here.”

Ari: Right, they're basically saying, like, “We, it's…yeah, it's not our call to make.” Instead of actually making the request outright, Eliezer kind of just lays out the facts. And then they look at the facts and respond and say, “This is from Hashem. We can't say anything about it.”

I wonder if this is really what that second part of the Midrash is about, right? Eliezer asks them to do chesed v'emet. And, you know, I think it's easy to understand what chesed would mean, right? If they help him on his mission, they're doing chesed. They're doing a good, they're doing a nice thing, an act of kindness. But what does it mean for him to ask them to do emet?

And this, to me, kind of brings me back to the end of the midrash. And look, this is…at this point, I'd say this is speculation. Look, as we were saying, you know, truth is something that us human beings, you know, have trouble with. I don't know what's true. I don't know what the true understanding of this story is. I don't know what was going through Eliezer's mind. I don't know what was going through Lavan and Bethuel's mind. But here is my stab at it.

Figuring Out God’s Truth

The angels object to God creating man because they say, “Man is full of lies. Man is not good at truth. Man is not good at judging objectively what is right and proper and how things are meant to be.” But at the end of this midrash, they raise this other possibility of, truth can actually sprout from the land, which I think might mean it actually sprouts from human beings. There is an opportunity and a possibility for us to actually try to figure out the truth.

And so I wonder if that's what Eliezer is really presenting to Lavan and Bethuel here. Eliezer, after experiencing God treating him with emet and now appreciating the value of emet, wants to bring emet from the world. He wants truth to sprout forth from the earth. He wants that to be a part of what's going on. He turns to Lavan and Bethuel, and says, like, “Look, here's all the things that happened to me. It would be really great if you could do not just chesed, but also emet, right? If you could not just do what would be nice and kind and good for me, but, like, also what is objectively, like, the thing that is supposed to happen.”

Tikva: I think what I'm seeing in this story is, it's like Eliezer has this insecurity, right? He wants to make this right. He wants to make the right choice. He wants God to help him. Now he's turning to Lavan and Bethuel, which, I mean, he has to do, right? Like, he can't just run away with Rivka, though in the end it is her decision. And he's saying, “Look, I got my sign from God. I got my extra sign from God where God seemed to, like, have this truth and really say, ‘Hey, this is really the right person.’” Now, he's going to Lavan and asking them to give their seal of approval on this match.

Ari: It's interesting, then, that their answer would be, “Well, we don't know. We can't really say anything, but this seems to be from God,” right? Like, “It seems to be this is what God wants, and so, like, you know, who are we to put our subjective opinions of good and bad on top of this?”

Tikva: I think maybe they know something. Maybe they know the Midrash in a sense, or intuit that they really can't help him out in that role. They are subjective beings. They are invested, but the truth is coming from another source. And that's what the idea of it springing from the earth kind of seems to me. It's like…and it kind of takes a weight off our shoulders. Like, we're not made to be good at recognizing truth, but maybe we're supposed to be humble enough to know that about ourselves. We're acknowledging it. We're trying to describe it. We're trying to recognize it, but we aren't able to control it.

Ari: Tikva, this went somewhere I wasn't expecting. This was a ton of fun. Thank you very much.

Tikva: Yeah, this was really fun. It's very meta when you have experience…I know for me, and there's a sense of, I feel like we've gotten somewhere, and you definitely show me something in these verses I didn't see before. And I also still feel like there's so much this connection and this idea of truth that is elusive and beyond us. But I love that, seeing how many different ways there are to read, how many different questions can come up. And it really does feel like we're humans in this endeavor trying to understand ourselves.

Your Turn: Help Answer Our Questions

Ari: At the end of our conversation about the meaning of emet in Chayei Sarah, Tikva and I were left with two unanswered questions. So now, we're turning to you, the listeners, to chime in. One question is: What exactly is the emet Eliezer is asking Rebecca's family to do? Maybe he's just asking them to let Rebecca make this match with Isaac — but then why doesn't he say that? Instead, he lays out the story and doesn't actually make the request. 

So we came up with another idea: Maybe he is asking them to recognize that this match is objectively true and right, and the way the response seems to fit with that…instead of immediately saying “yes” or “no,” their answer is, “This is from God.” That answer made us feel like our theory could make sense, but we didn't feel like we had the evidence to prove it.

Our second unanswered question is the one we asked at the very beginning: What does this midrash mean when it says that truth will sprout forth from the earth? Tikva and I had different theories about this. Tikva suggested that truth isn't something just found in Heaven. It does get revealed in our lives, just not the way we might expect. My idea was that truth can sprout forth from the earth when human beings push themselves to recognize what God would see as true, and to act on it. And Eliezer was giving Lavan and Bethuel an opportunity to do just that.

To me, that has a really powerful implication. No one expects us, as human beings, to have a perfect understanding of what is true and right in this world. But at the same time, we have an opportunity, maybe even a responsibility, to do our best to seek out that truth and to act on it.

Now it's your turn. If you have any ideas, please drop us a line. We can't wait to hear from you. Just click the link in the episode description.

Credits

This episode was recorded by Ari Levisohn together with Tikva Hecht.

This episode was produced by Sarah Penso.

Our audio editor is Hillary Guttman.

Our production manager is Adina Blaustein.

Our senior editor is Ari Levisohn. 

Thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you next week.