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Rahav, the Sea Angel God Crushed in Midrash

When God commanded the angel of the sea to swallow the primordial waters and make room for dry land, Rahav refused, and creation waited on the consequence.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Command That Waited for an Answer
  2. The Foot and What Followed
  3. The Sea That Wanted to Escape at the Exodus
  4. Creation Through Refusal

The Command That Waited for an Answer

Before dry land, before the gathering of the waters into seas, there was the tehom and there was the angel appointed to rule it. His name was Rahav, prince of the sea. When God decided that the world needed form, that the waters needed boundaries, Rahav received the first order in the history of creation: open your mouth and swallow all the waters of the world.

Rahav refused.

"Master of the Universe," he said, "I already have enough."

The refusal stopped creation. The primordial waters covered everything. The earth was without form. The surface of the deep, the tehom, lay unbroken. And the angel appointed to manage all of this had just told the creator of the universe that he was satisfied with his current workload and would not be taking on additional responsibility.

The Foot and What Followed

The Babylonian Talmud, in Tractate Bava Batra 74b, preserves what happened next with brutal precision. God kicked Rahav with a divine foot and killed him. The sea's prince was destroyed for the act of refusing a direct command in the first moments of creation.

But a body the size of a sea cannot simply vanish. The problem of Rahav's corpse was that it would have made the ocean uninhabitable, the smell of a creature that large contaminating the waters beyond any use. Bamidbar Rabbah, the midrash on Numbers, records that God solved this by burying Rahav under the sea. He lies there now, in the depths, the first created being to refuse God and the first to be destroyed for it.

The angels who attend to Rahav, according to Bamidbar Rabbah, are the ones who make the sea move. They administer the waters over the body of the defeated prince. The tides and currents that shape navigation and fishing and the lives of everyone who lives near water are governed by angels doing their work above the buried rebel.

The Sea That Wanted to Escape at the Exodus

When Israel stood at the edge of the sea during the Exodus, the waters did not simply part because God commanded them. The Mekhilta records that the sea argued. It had its own understanding of the natural order, and that order said water covered land, not the reverse. When Moses struck it with his staff, the sea tried to escape. It wanted to run away from the command rather than obey it.

God had to appear directly. Not through Moses, not through an angel, but directly. The sea saw what it saw and had no choice. The waters split. The Israelites crossed on dry ground. And when the Egyptian army entered, the Mekhilta notes that the lower depths, the subterranean waters connected to the tehom beneath the earth, were also involved in drowning the army. The depths closed from below while the walls of water collapsed from the sides. The same tehom that Rahav had once refused to manage cooperated finally at the moment God needed it most.

Creation Through Refusal

Shemot Rabbah connects the month of Nissan, the month of the Exodus, to the original structure of creation, reading the verse about the moon for festivals in a way that folds time back on itself. The freedom of the Exodus is not separate from the act of creation. Both required the waters to be moved. At creation, Rahav refused and was destroyed so that the order could be established by force. At the Exodus, the sea argued and was overridden by direct divine appearance.

The pattern suggests something the tradition finds worth noting: the sea's natural tendency is to resist the boundaries God assigns it. Every boundary the sea keeps is kept against a tendency toward transgression. The angel of the sea was killed for acting on that tendency at the beginning. The sea at the Exodus acted on the same tendency and was forced to behave. The world is not a structure that maintains itself. It is a structure that has to be maintained against the things inside it that would rather operate differently.

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From the tradition

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Bava Batra 74bTalmud Bavli, Bava Batra

And Rav Yehudah said in the name of Rav: At the hour when the Holy One, blessed be He, sought to create the world, He said to the prince of the sea: Open your mouth and swallow all the waters that are in the world. He said before Him: Master of the Universe, it is enough that I remain within my own. Immediately He kicked him and killed him, as it is said (Job 26:12): "By His power He stilled the sea, and by His understanding He smote Rahab."

Rabbi Yitzchak said: Learn from this that the prince of the sea, "Rahab" is his name; and were it not that the waters cover him, no creature could endure his stench, as it is said (Isaiah 11:9): "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, etc., as the waters cover the sea." Do not read "cover the sea (la-yam)," but rather "cover its prince of the sea (le-sarah shel yam)." [The verse's plain sense is "as the waters cover the sea."]

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Bamidbar Rabbah 18:22Bamidbar Rabbah

The Bamidbar Rabbah, a collection of rabbinic teachings on the Book of Numbers, dives into this very question, and what it reveals is both awe-inspiring and, well, a little unsettling.

In it, in the very beginning, God commanded the angel of the sea to swallow all the primordial waters. Now, this angel wasn’t exactly thrilled about the task. In fact, he protested, saying he could barely handle his own immensity! He wept, apparently, and that's when things took a turn.

"He kicked him and killed him," the text says, citing (Job 26:12): “With His power, He calmed the sea, and with His understanding, He crushed Rahav.” So, the angel of the sea’s name was Rahav, and things didn't end well for him.

The Bamidbar Rabbah goes on: God crushed Rahav and trampled him, and the sea received him. Then, as (Amos 4:13) states, He "tramples upon the heights of the earth." To keep the waters in check, God set sand as "doors and a bar," as we find in (Job 38:8). And, as (Jeremiah 5:22) puts it, God set "the sand as a boundary for the sea."

But what about the mixing of fresh and saltwater?

The sea worried that its sweet waters would mingle with the salty. God reassured it: "No, each and every one has a storehouse of its own," echoing (Psalms 33:7): "He places the depths in storehouses.": we ourselves are miniature worlds. The text then shifts to a fascinating analogy: the human face. It’s just a small area, “the size of a span,” yet it contains so many different fluids, each with its own unique character. Tears are salty, earwax is fatty, nasal mucus is, well, foul, and saliva is sweet. Why?

Each serves a purpose. Salty tears prevent us from blinding ourselves with endless grief. Fatty earwax protects us from being overwhelmed by harsh news. Foul nasal mucus stops us from being poisoned by bad smells. And sweet saliva, as well as aiding in digestion, connects us to the sweetness of Torah, "sweeter than honey" (Psalms 19:11).

If such differentiation exists in something as small as a face, how much more so in the vast sea, teeming with life, as (Psalms 104:25) reminds us: "There is the sea, vast and broad; an innumerable swarm is in it."

It’s all interconnected.

The Bamidbar Rabbah emphasizes that God accomplishes His mission in all sorts of ways, sometimes through the most unexpected creatures. Rabbi Hanin of Tzipori tells stories of scorpions, snakes, even a stray bone, all carrying out God’s will, often in ways we can’t possibly foresee. One story tells of a scorpion needing to cross the Jordan River on a mission. God appointed a frog to carry it across!

These stories remind us that even the smallest, seemingly insignificant things can play a crucial role in the grand scheme of things.

And what about those who exalt themselves? The text gives the example of Titus, the Roman emperor who desecrated the Temple. He was ultimately defeated by a tiny gnat that entered his nose. The gnat, a “lowly creature” because it ingests but does not egest, brought down a powerful ruler.

The passage concludes with a powerful image: In the future, God will exact retribution from the nations through slight entities, as (Isaiah 7:18) says: “It will be on that day that the Lord will whistle for the fly that is at the edge of the rivers of Egypt and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria.”

So, what do we take away from all this? Perhaps it's a reminder that the world, from the vast oceans to the smallest creatures, is interconnected and purposeful. Everything, in its own way, is part of a divine plan, even when we can't see it or understand it. And perhaps, too, a dose of humility. Even the mightiest among us are ultimately subject to the will of something far greater, and sometimes, the smallest things can have the biggest impact.

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Shemot Rabbah 15:22Shemot Rabbah

"This month shall be for you" – that’s how the Torah introduces the month of Nissan, the month of Passover, the month of freedom. But what does it really mean? The text connects this to a verse in Psalms, "He made the moon for festivals; the sun knows its setting" (Psalms 104:19). According to this interpretation in Shemot Rabbah, the verse hints at a deeper understanding of God's actions as they are recorded in the Torah. the text suggests that some of Moses's descriptions are, shall we say, a bit cryptic, leaving room for later interpretation. And who steps up to the plate? None other than King David, the sweet singer of Israel, who clarifies these mysteries!

Take the very beginning, the act of Creation itself. Genesis tells us, "In the beginning God created [the heavens and the earth]" (Genesis 1:1), and then, "God said: Let there be light" (Genesis 1:3). But David, in Psalm 104, offers a different sequence: "He covers Himself with light like a garment" (Psalms 104:2), and then, "He stretches the heavens like a curtain" (Psalms 104:2). According to this understanding, light came first, then the heavens. It's like God wrapped Himself in light and then unfurled the universe!

Wait, there's more! The Midrash continues, "Three creations preceded the world: Water, air [ruaḥ], and fire." Ruaḥ, that amazing Hebrew word that can mean air, wind, or even spirit! Each of these elements then gave birth to something else: water to darkness, fire to light, and ruaḥ to wisdom. With these six creations – spirit, wisdom, fire, light, darkness, and water – the world is sustained. It’s a beautiful, interconnected web of existence.

This leads to a profound sense of awe. "May my soul bless the Lord. Lord my God, You are very great" (Psalms 104:1), David proclaims. The text then poses a thought-provoking analogy: "A person sees a beautiful pillar and says: Blessed is the quarry from which this was quarried." The world is beautiful, so blessed is the Omnipresent who brought it forth!: We marvel at human creations, but how much more should we marvel at the ultimate Creator?

The Midrash contrasts human creation with Divine creation. A human artist etches an image on a tablet, but the tablet is always larger than the image. God, however, is different. God’s image, so to speak, is greater than the world itself! As it says in Isaiah, "For the Lord is God, an everlasting Rock [tzur olamim]" (Isaiah 26:4). Tzur olamim – the Rock of the Ages. Relative to Him, the two worlds – olamim, this world and the World to Come – are as nothing. That's why David exclaims, "Lord my God, You are very great."

The text goes on to describe how God fashioned the world, building upon the atmosphere, installing His chariots of clouds, and placing His dais on the storm. And who reveals all this to us? Again, it's David, who explains the deeds of God to inform all humanity of His might.

The Midrash then draws another contrast between human and Divine construction. A person builds a house and then adds an upper story. But God? He built the roof, then the upper story, and then positioned it all on the atmosphere of the world, on nothing! It’s mind-boggling! And these upper stories aren't made of stone, but of layers of water.

Consider chariots, too. We build strong chariots of iron or bronze to bear burdens. But God makes clouds His chariots, light and ephemeral as they are. And while we walk on solid ground, God walks on the invisible wind.

The text even explores the creation of angels and Gehenna, often translated as hell. On the second day of creation, the day that lacked the phrase "that it was good," God created Gehenna. Why? So that if people sin, they will have a place to descend. It's a sobering thought, but it emphasizes the importance of our choices.

The narrative then shifts to the third day, the creation of dry land. God gathered the waters, exposing the earth and covering the depths. But the waters protested! Where would they go? So, God kicked Ocean, personified here as a monstrous being, and crushed Rahav (Job 26:12). Some say Ocean cries to this day. But God is destined to heal even the Dead Sea, as it is written in Ezekiel: "To the sea it will flow, and the water will be healed" (Ezekiel 47:8).

The waters, scattered and confused, were eventually directed to their proper place, the place of leviathan, the mythical sea monster. God set a boundary, a line in the sand, that the sea may not cross. It's a powerful image of divine order and control.

Finally, the Midrash returns to the moon and the festivals. "He made the moon for festivals," David declares. The sun and moon travel through windows in the firmament, but the moon doesn't enter all of them. The sun is considered greater, because the solar year is longer than the lunar year. But the moon, with its waxing and waning, serves as a reminder of Israel's own cycles of growth and decline, always ultimately returning.

So, what does all this mean for us? It's a reminder that the world around us is not just a random collection of objects, but a carefully crafted masterpiece, infused with Divine wisdom and purpose. It invites us to look beyond the surface, to see the hand of God in every aspect of creation, and to appreciate the profound interconnectedness of all things. As we celebrate the festivals, let us remember the moon, the sun, and the light that shines within us all.

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