Our Gemara on Amud Aleph quotes one of my most favorite verses in the Torah, from Melachim I:19:11 as one of the inspirations that kept Rabbi Akiva safe when he entered the dangerous mystical zone of the Pardes. The content and context of this pasuk is powerful. The context is that Eliyahu is dispirited. Baal worship is still rampant and King Achav and Izevel remain with a strong power base. Eliyahu declares after a difficult journey : 


“Enough!” he cried. “Now, O LORD, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers...⁦for the Israelites have forsaken Your covenant, torn down Your altars, and put Your prophets to the sword. I alone am left, and they are out to take my life.” 


Shortly after, God appears to Eliyahu, and this is what he experiences:


“⁦And lo, the LORD passed by. There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by the power of the LORD; but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the earthquake.


⁦After the earthquake—fire; but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire—a quiet soft sound.


The pashut peshat in the Gemara is that from these verses Rabbi Akiva was able to understand what was the abode of God, and therefore did not get confused like Acher. However, I hear something deeper. The message is God’s simplicity. Even though God commands all these great powers; thunder, earthquakes, hurricanes and storms, his essence is pure simplicity, even humility as we saw in psychology of the Daf Megillah 31a:


So said Rabbi Yochanan: Wherever you find a reference in the Torah to the might of the Holy One, Blessed be He, you also find a reference to His humility.


Rabbi Akiva would not be confused by seeing a giant powerful master angel such as Metatatron because this entity was missing the humility and simplicity of God. Returning back to Acher, Acher’s internalization of God was a petty, angry and exacting taskmaster (as we analyzed in the last daf), and he created a false God in Metatron who, not coincidentally, had those same features. But a true understanding of God would be that after all the power and storm, and the grandeur, there is the quiet still voice within that tells us what God is really about.

 

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation cool

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