Have you ever stopped to consider how hard it is to just... exist? To be provided for? We often take for granted the very things that sustain us, but our tradition teaches us that even the simplest provision is nothing short of miraculous.
Our Sages, delving deep into the Torah, grapple with this very idea in Bereshit Rabbah 97, a section of the ancient Midrash. They begin with a verse from Genesis (48:16), where Jacob blesses his grandsons, Ephraim and Manasseh: “May the angel who redeems me from all evil bless the lads, and let my name and the name of my fathers, Abraham and Isaac, be called upon them, and may they proliferate like fish in the midst of the land.”
But what does it really mean to be "redeemed from all evil?" Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥalafta offers a surprising comparison: Sustenance, he says, is actually twice as difficult as childbirth! Think about that for a moment. Childbirth, with all its pain (be’etzev in Hebrew), is explicitly described in the Torah. Yet, sustenance, the daily grind of making a living, is described with an even stronger word: be’itzavon, interpreted by the Midrash as the plural of be’etzev, implying double the difficulty.
Rabbi Elazar and Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥman take this idea even further. Rabbi Elazar points out that redemption and sustenance are constantly linked. Just as God performed multiple miracles in redeeming Israel, so too is sustenance a constant, daily miracle. Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani then makes a startling claim: Sustenance is greater than redemption! How can that be? Because redemption is often carried out by an angel, while sustenance comes directly from the Holy One, blessed be He. As it says in Psalms (145:16), "You open Your hand and satisfy everything living."
Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi adds another layer, comparing the difficulty of earning a living to the splitting of the Red Sea! He connects the verse "Who split apart the Red Sea" (Psalms 136:13) with "He gives food to all flesh" (Psalms 136:25). In other words, the very same power that parted the waters is at work in providing our daily bread.
The Midrash doesn’t stop there. It connects Jacob's blessing, "May…bless the lads," to Joshua and Gideon, descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, to whom angels appeared. We're reminded of the powerful image of Joshua encountering an angel, the "commander of the host of the Lord" (Joshua 5:13-14). Rabbi Yehoshua, in the name of Rabbi Ḥanina bar Yitzḥak, even says the angel cried out from his toenails! The angel essentially tells Joshua, "Everywhere I am seen, the Holy One, blessed be He, is seen."
And then comes a fascinating little digression, where the angel explains that he had initially been sent to Moses, but Moses refused him, preferring God's direct presence. The angel warns Joshua not to make the same mistake!
Finally, the Midrash returns to the blessing, "May they proliferate like fish in the midst of the land." Just as the eye has no dominion over the fish, hidden beneath the water, so too, the evil eye will have no dominion over Jacob's descendants. Just as fish are only caught by their throat, so too will the descendants of Joseph be vulnerable only in that specific way.
The Midrash beautifully illustrates this with stories of the tribe of Ephraim, who were identified by their inability to pronounce the word Shibolet correctly, leading to their demise.
The Rabbis even delve into the sheer number of Israelites, claiming that when the Israelite women conceived six hundred thousand babies in one night, all cast into the Nile, but they ascended by Moses’s merit! Rabbi Zakkai Rabba then connects this back to the fish, saying just as in the midst of the land they were six hundred thousand, so, in the milieu of the fish they were six hundred thousand.
The passage concludes with a clever play on words: One whose name is like the name of fish (Nun, meaning fish in Aramaic), his son (Joshua the son of Nun) will take them into the Land of Israel.
So, what does it all mean? This passage from Bereshit Rabbah isn't just a dry commentary on a biblical verse. It's a profound reflection on the hidden miracles that sustain us, the constant interplay between redemption and provision, and the enduring power of blessing. It reminds us that even the most mundane aspects of our lives are touched by the Divine, and that perhaps, just perhaps, earning our daily bread is a miracle on par with the splitting of the Red Sea. Next time you sit down to a meal, take a moment to appreciate the extraordinary effort—seen and unseen—that made it possible.