Bereshit Rabbah

English

“And the spirit of God was hovering” – this is the spirit of the messianic king, as it says: “The spirit of the Lord will rest upon him” (Isaiah 11:2). By what merit will it [the Messianic kingdom] come? “Hovering over the surface of the water” – by the merit of repentance, that is likened to water, as it is stated: “Pour out your heart like water [before the face of the Lord]” (Lamentations 2:19). Rabbi Ḥagai said in the name of Rabbi Pedat: A covenant is made with the water, that even when the weather is hot, the wind blows over it. It happened once that Rabbi Shimon ben Zoma was sitting, entranced in thought. Rabbi Yehoshua passed and greeted him once, twice, but he did not answer him. The third time, he answered him with a start. He said to him: ‘Ben Zoma, where were your thoughts?’ He said to him: ‘I have been contemplating.’ He said to him: ‘As the heavens and the earth are my witnesses, I shall not move from here until you inform me where your thoughts were.’ He said to him: ‘I was looking at the act of Creation, and [I saw that] between the upper waters and the lower waters there were only two or three fingerbreadths. “The spirit of the Lord was blowing” is not written, but rather, “was hovering” – like a bird that flaps its wings, they touch [the nest] but do not quite touch.’ Rabbi Yehoshua turned and said to his disciples: Ben Zoma is gone. Not even a few days passed with ben Zoma still in the world.

The Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022 · sefaria-midrash-rabbah

Hebrew / Aramaic

Bereshit Rabbah 2:4 (Vilna numbering; Theodor–Albeck differs) · cc-by-sa

Notes

Two answers in one section. Resh Lakish: the ruach is the spirit of the King Messiah (Isa 11:2), brought by repentance-as-water. Then the Ben Zoma story: 'blowing' is not written but 'hovering' — like a bird beating its wings, touching and not touching. Note the bird is an unspecified 'of' and the claim is touching-and-not-touching; the Bavli's version has a dove and no touching at all.

Threads

• ← echoes · Rashi
  The Ben Zoma story is in both BR 2:4 and Chagigah 15a; Rashi's wording is the Bavli's, but Rashi elsewhere cites BR by name on 1:1–5.
• ← parallel · Babylonian Talmud
  Same Ben Zoma story, two redactions. BR: bird beating its wings, touching-and-not-touching. Bavli: dove over her young, not touching, three fingerbreadths. Compiled independently from a shared Palestinian tradition.
• ← parallel · Philo of Alexandria
  The midrash makes the hovering spirit the spirit of the Messiah, hovering over the face of the waters by the merit of repentance. Philo makes it the most life-giving thing, named God's for that reason. Both bench readings decline the plain meteorological sense that Onkelos takes, and both do so by asking what pneuma or ruach is for rather than what it is.
• ← parallel · Bruno of Segni
  Phase 4. Both read the whole of Gen 1:2 as a periodization of sacred history running to a final redemption, and neither could have known the other. Resh Lakish: tohu is Babylon (Jer 4:23), va-vohu Media, the darkness Greece, the deep Edom, and the spirit hovering is the spirit of the messianic king (Isa 11:2). Bruno of Segni reads the same clause as the ages of the Church. Written at Phase 4 because `br-2-4` was built for K7 and did not carry this crux until then.