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© 2015 John D. Brey.

The sages imply Noah was impotent and that his impotence was an impediment not only to his joy but his ability to fulfill the very mitzvah given him in connection with the covenant established between him and God: the Noahic covenant. God commands Noah and Naamah (in conjunction with the establishment of the Noahic covenant), as he formerly commanded Adam and Eve: Be fruitful and multiply. Noah is a new Adam, Naamah a new . . . Lilith.

And yet not completely unlike Abraham and Sarah, Noah finds it impossible (due to impotence born of senescence) to fulfill the commandment of the covenant to be fruitful and multiply, to father a firstborn in the new world, the new covenant. Noah finds it impossible to replenish the earth with tamim-born offspring abel to undo the stain of the former civilization stained as it were, and was, by the firstborn Cain.

Scripture paints an odd picture of covenants established in order to fruitfully multiply, which are all, every one of them, given to covenant partners seemingly unable to fulfill the covenant. The first human has no partner whereby the adam might be fruitful and multiply in order to fulfill the covenant. The early narrative in Genesis 2 is all about the adam (the first human) searching creation for a partner through which to fulfill the edict of the covenant. The drastic direction the text, and the human (the adam) take, in order to fulfill the covenant commandment (birthing a firstborn in the new civilization), is, in the first case, just like all those that follow, save one, directly associated with sin, death, and bastard firstborn/offspring.

Cain is the result of an inordinate desire to fulfill the covenant commandment apart from the apparent qualifications for fulfilling that commandment. There's a drastic, demonic, interlude between the commandment to be fruitful and multiply, and the birth of the bastard Cain. The Noahic covenant follows the pattern. God commands an impotent Noah to be fruitful and multiply. But like the first human, long before him, Noah is distraught (and impatient) and unable to fulfill the very commandment upon which his covenant is established (Canaan is the result).

The same thing occurs with righteous Abraham. But Abraham proves to be, at least relatively speaking, more patient than the first adam or Noah before him. God promises a senescence impugned Abraham a firstborn son through which a new covenant will be established: the Abrahamic covenant. Nevertheless Abraham, like his covenant partner-peers, breaks a covenant in order to try to establish a covenant with God that only God can truly conceive and give birth to. Like Adam and the serpent, Noah and the bottle (inebriation), Abraham and Hagar go outside the marital covenant to try to do for God what it appears God can’t do for himself.

So what's going on? Why is God commanding covenant partners to enter a covenant they're not qualified to enter? Why is God commanding covenant partners to convene with him in a covenant whose establishment is virtually impossible?

Part and parcel of the selection of the covenant partner is the use of the word tamim, תמים "perfect." In order for the covenant partner to convene with God he must be "tamim." It's peculiar in the extreme that those selected for covenant-partners, partners with God in covenants concerned with "fruitfulness" and "multiplication," are all, to a "man" מת (mat) impotent, or married to impotence?

Hebrew readers would note the further peculiarity that the word for "man" מת (mat) is also the word for "impotence" of the highest order, i.e., "death" (mot). Both are spelled the same way: mem-tav מת. The same word מת means both "impotence" (death) and "man."

. . .Where's this going?

Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch has a thing or two to say about the word "tamim" תמים, here associated with God’s covenant-partners (particularly Abraham). He first notes the peculiarity that the word means both "perfect" and "complete cessation/impotence.” This seems to imply that perhaps the impotence of God's covenant-partners is less a weakness and more a strength of the covenant God has in mind? Justifying this theory is the fact that in each of the cases, the very first instance of phallic-sex (contrary to the original impotence of the covenant partner) leads to bastards of the highest order, Cain, Canaan, Ishmael?

Is it a fluke of the narratives that each covenant partner is first impotent, such that the reversal, or reinvigoration, or establishment of the vigor, leads to bastards of the highest order? Perhaps impotence --- tamim --- is less an impediment and more of a requirement of the covenant?

It seems to us a note worthy peculiarity of the Hebrew language that it uses the same word [תמים tamim] in one and the same form to express the idea of "ceasing to exist" and that of "completion" ("wholeness" or "perfection"). . . In most of the verbal forms, it [תמים tamim] designates a complete cessation of existence . . . At the same time, it denotes the consummate perfection of existence.

Collected Writings, Vol. III, Milah.

Someone might protest that surely the great Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch isn't willingly going down the road here being trod? And yet if anyone actually still reads Rabbi Hirsch they'd know that rather than forcing Rabbi Hirsch down a road he wouldn’t go, these ideas are going down a road paved with Rabbi Hirsch's own words.

We have already alluded in passing to the relationship between our concept of מילה [milah, circumcision] and the תמים-aspect [tamim-aspect] in the preamble to the Scriptural text instituting מילה [milah, circumcision]. In fact, if we consider everything we have cited concerning this idea from its use in the Holy Scriptures . . . it would be difficult to find a more appropriate symbolic act to express the free-willed morality of an enduring self-control as required for the perfection of the תמים-character [tamim-character] than the מילה בשר ערלתו [circumcision of the flesh of the orlah].

Rabbi Samson Hirsch, Jewish Symbolism, The Collected Writings, vol. III.

Before examining the true tamim-aspect, or the tamim-spirit, associated with God's covenant-partners, it's important to note that Rabbi Hirsch states fairly expressly that it's difficult to find a better relationship (two better covenant-partner words) than the two words tamim תמים (impotence) and מילה milah (circumcision), so far as understanding God's relationship to his covenant-partners.

On the same page of Rabbi Hirsch’s Collected Writings, where he implies tamim (impotence) and milah (circumcision) form perfect partners, when speaking of God's covenant, we read:

You must learn from Him how to say "די" [die] to the forces of sensuality [phallic-sex], making His will your own. You must measure all the endeavors of your sensual being [sexual life] by the standards of His will. With the knife of His "די" [die], His "Enough!", you must apply the מילה [milah], you must set limits to בשר צרלתו [basar orlah, the flesh that's a barrier to spiritual birth], the physical aspect of your body which otherwise you would not control. Only if you impose these restraints upon your physical self can you expect His blessings and His aid.

Repeatedly Rabbi Hirsch speaks of the מילה בשר ערלתו, "the circumcision of the flesh of the uncircumcision." "Perfection," as required for a covenant partner, is about מילה בשר ערלתו, "the circumcision of the flesh of uncircumcision." So what's "the circumcision of the flesh of uncircumcision," such that it creates the "impotence" (tamim) required to enter the covenant with God? Rabbi Hirsch shows that the word for "circumcision" (milah מלה) in all places other than when used for circumcision means "opposition." So circumcision is opposition to a particular flesh. The flesh of uncircumcision. 

What's the flesh of uncircumcision? Obviously the flesh that's uncut, unopposed, prior to the cutting opposition of bris milah.

The Hebrew word used to speak of the "flesh" of uncircumcision is basar בשר. The first letter is a beit ב, a "house." The last two letters are shin-reish, "seor," or as fate would have it "chametz" . . . that is, "leaven." The flesh "opposed to the limit" (Hirsch) is the "house of leaven" ב–שר.

This is not a small thing (so to say), it's large in this case, since broken down into individual letters the same word, basar בשר (beit-shin-rosh) speak of the "house" ב of the "imposter" ש, "firstborn" ר. In Rabbis Munk and Ginsburgh's books on the symbolism of the Hebrew letters, Rabbis Munk and Ginsburgh teach that the ש (shin) is the symbol of the "imposter" the "falsehood." And since the ר (reish) represents the "first," the "head" of all, the "firstborn," the word basar בשר symbolizes not only the "house of leaven," but the "house" where the "false" "firstborn" is conceived.

It's this flesh, this basar, this בשר, that's "opposed to the limit" (Hirsch) in the מילה בשר ערלתו, "the circumcision of the flesh of the uncircumcision." The circumcision of the flesh of uncircumcision (milah מלה) is, per Rabbi Hirsch, part and parcel, covenant-partner, with the word "tamim" תמים.

The word tamim תמים is from the root tam תם. This is no small thing either, since the word tam תם reverses the word for "death" מת, which word for "death," mot מת (mem-tav), circumscribes the word for the place where "leaven" שר resides. The basar of uncircumcison, the "house of leaven" ב–שר, the flesh of uncircumcision, is spelled another way than merely בשר. It's spelled משארת (miseret) which is mem-shin-alef-reish-tav. . . In other words, not only does the word for "man" מת (mat) circumscribe the word for "leaven" שאר (when speaking of the "house of leaven"), and not only does the word for "man" spell "death" מת, the ultimate impotence, such that reversing מת becomes תם, death becomes "perfection," "man" מת becomes "perfect" תם, but if you make a "man" מת "perfect" תם by reversing "death" מת to תם, not only does the mem-brane ם remain intact, signifying the birth of the true firstborn, as opposed to the false firstborn, but the careful Hebrew exegete will note that if similarly the "leaven" in the belly of the "man" מ–שאר–ת is similarly reversed (when מת becomes תם) the word that results is the word not for "leaven" שאר but the word for the true firstborn ראש.

Not only is "man" מת made "perfect" תם by reversing "death" מת to תם, but if you reverse "death" the "seor" שאר ("leaven") in the "man"  מ–שאר–ת, it, the "leaven," שאר becomes the "firstborn," ראש. -----The word for "death" puts the womb, the mem, before the cross (the ktav ivri tav was a "cross"). The word for "perfect," or "whole," puts the cross (the tav) before the womb, the mem. Anyone born before the cross is born dead. Anyone born after the cross is born perfect, or whole.

מת = "death."

תם = "perfect, whole."

Though the two words use the same two letters, an unlettered Hebrew reader might think otherwise since the mem in the word "perfect" is a final mem, a closed mem. And since the mem is generally acknowledged as the letter representing the "womb," phonetically "mom," the closed womb at the end of the word "perfect" (tam) segues too nicely with Moses' making the "opening" of a closed womb the sign of the sanctified firstborn.

Only the firstborn is "perfect" since only he comes out of a closed mem to signify his "perfection." ----- Those who are born from a previously opened mem, a mem that comes before the cross, a mem placed ahead of the tav "death" מת, are not "perfect," but contaminated with the evil inclination. . . "But that implies that everyone born before the cross is born into death"? ------- That's the doctrine of the original sin. Those born before the cross are born dead, born into "death" מת. Those born after the cross are born-again, born "perfect" תם, precisely because the word associated with their birth, תם has the cross (the ktav ivri tav) come before the closed-womb ם. They're conceived apart from the natural opening mechanism that is phallic-sex.

They're born of the spirit, the blood (נפש) rather than the flesh (בשר). . . Which is to say if the cross comes before the womb, such that the womb remains closed in the conception related to re-birth, then one is said to be born-again of the "blood" or "death" of the natural mechanism, therein justifying Rabbi Hirsch's notation of the peculiarity of the fact that the word for perfect means "cessation" and "perfection." The word is literally a reversal of the word "death" implying that a particular death creates perfection, the death of the natural mechanism for opening a womb during conception (phallic-sex). The opening of the womb associated with the conception of the living dead remains closed in the conception of the first born from out of the dead.