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Amidah III

4. The First Three Blessings

Once the ear is attuned to the theme of redemption, its reverberations can be overhead in the first and the last triad of blessings as well. Many of these echo out of biblical materials. As we have seen repeatedly, biblical elements are constantly being rearranged into new mosaics with all the richness of their allusions pressed into liturgical service. For the biblically tone-deaf the redemptive notes will surely fall flat.

These notes can be recaptured through the following presentation of the opening blessing:

1. Blessed are You, Lord our God

2. and God of our fathers (Deut. 26:7; Ezra 7:27; 2 Chron. 20:6),

3. God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob (Exod. 3:6,15,16),

4. the God (called) great, mighty, and awesome (Deut. 10:17, Neh. 9:32),

5. exalted God (Ps. 78:35),

6. who bestowing loving kindness (alludes to Isa. 63:7)

7. is creator of all (alludes to Gen. 14:19),

8. who mindful of the piety of the patriarchs (based on Lev. 26:45/Ps 106:45),

9. brings a redeemer to their children's children in love

10. for the sake of his name (alludes to Isa. 63:16/Ezek. 20:9).

11. King (Isa. 33:22), Helper (Ps. 30:11/54:6), Savior (Jer. 14:8), and Shield (Deut. 33:29).

12. Blessed are You, O Lord,

13. Shield of Abraham (Gen. 15:1).

Although the parenthetic sources are not exhaustive, they do indicate the redemptive nots sounded or alluded to in the blessing. The most important of these is the opening three strophes and the closing one (13). In the opening, God is addressed as "Lord our God, God of your fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob." This usage is unique in the standard liturgy, and appears in the Bible only in the burning bush scene of chapter three of Exodus. There God identifies Himself to Moses as "Lord, the God of your Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Exod. 3:15). Afterwards God announces the imminent redemption of the people Israel from Egypt. Identifying the intertext shows how the Amidah sets the tone for the theme of redemption. For the Amidah, the God of the Patriarchs is the redeeming God. By saying "blessed" is such a God, the worshiper is calling upon the God who once redeemed to redeem again. This opening formulation was considered so integral to the Amidah that it withstood all efforts to make it conform to the subsequent standard benedictory formula.

The closing strophe 13 may have once read: "shield of the fathers," a non-biblical expression albeit found in Ben Sira 36. The change adds to the redemptive echo of the blessing by evoking God's reassurance to Abraham that He would remain His "shield" (Gen. 15:1), while continuing to maintain the verbal association with the only other Pentateuchal attestation of "shield", "A people delivered by the Lord, Your protecting shield" (Deut. 33:29). Strophe 9 spells out the redemptive plea of the blessing. The fact that it lacks a direct scriptural correlate underscores its centrality in the blessing. Nonetheless assuming that recalling the piety/loyalty/kindness of the patriarchs is tantamount to recalling the covenant with them, then the promise of redemption that flows from it can be found in verses such as Exod. 6:5, Lev. 26:42, and Ps. 106:45.

Strophes 6-10 makes the case for God redeeming Israel. Both in expression and motif, they recall Isaiah 63 verses 7-9 and 16. There as here, the recital of God's former mercies is not a mere expression of gratitude but a warranty for the future. Here, the argument takes the form of a quid pro quo - as a bestower of kindness, God is entreated to reciprocate the kindness shown by the patriarchs by redeeming their descendants. The worshiper, by being told of the kindness or merit, to use rabbinic parlance, of the patriarchs, is apprised of his warrant for maintaining hope in redemption, as Isaiah states: *From of old, Your name is `Our Redeemer'* (63:16).

The second blessing makes the case for resurrection by elaborating on the theme of God as reviver sixfold:

1. You, are mighty forever, O Lord,

2. Reviver of the dead are You, of great saving power.

3. (causing the wind to blow and the rain to fall).

4. You sustain the living with kindness, reviving the dead with manifold mercies,

5. [You] support the fallen, heal the sick, free the fettered.

6. And maintains His faithfulness with those asleep in the dust.

7. Who is like You, O Powerful One, who can compare with You?

8. A king who slays and revives

9. and causes salvation to sprout,

10. Faithful are You to revive the dead,

11. Blessed are You, O Lord, reviver of the dead.

The arguments rests on culling the intimations of resurrection which punctuate the course of life. By methodically amplifying the wonders which daily attend us, the blessing enables the worshiper to perceive the divine workings behind the natural course of events.

Strophes 1-2 make the point that even death cannot forestall a divine power that is forever and salvific.

An alternative version of strophe 3 for the summer reads: "Who brings dew." Similarly, here or in blessing 9, the phrase "King who revives all with rain" was changed in the summer to "King who revives all with dew." Its location here evokes Isaiah's association of dew with resurrection: "Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy? For your dew is a radiant dew and the earth will give birth to those long dead" (26:19 - NRSV).

Strophe 3, as does strophe 9 with its symbolic use of the agricultural metaphor "sprout," associates resurrection with rain and seasonal change. If the "Bringer of rain" can wondrously awaken to life the seed that slumbers in the soil, so can He awaken the dead to new life. It is possible that behind this image lies the comparison of human life with a seed. Such a comparison would allow death, burial, and decomposition to be seen as preparatory stages in the process of rebirth and germination as the paradigm for resurrection.

Strophe 4 draws the connection between the miracle of sustaining life in the present and reviving it in the future. The choice of liturgical terminology creates a continuum between the miracle of the future and that of the present. True, rebirth does require "manifold mercies," but life itself requires the sustaining power of "divine grace." Viewing resurrection as but an extra dose of divine mercy serves to enhance its plausibility. The other assumption is that rebirth is not that much more miraculous than birth. As the Talmud argues: "If what was not can be, all the more so what was can be." Or: "Just as the womb receives and returns, so the grave receives and returns." In this sense resurrection is a re-nascence of the body. The link behind strophes 3 and 4 is reflected in the rabbinic insistence that the keys to life-giving rain, to birth, and to resurrection are exclusively in the hands of God. Only divine power can unlock the heavens, the womb, and the tomb. By harking back to a biblical image of viewing the quickening of nature as life-producing, the strophe is able to compare the awakening of a dormant nature with the process of birth.

Strophe 5 consists of adaptations of expressions from the Book of Psalms, the first two of which have been slightly altered to conform to the liturgically apt third. They appear together only here. They deal with the fallen, the sick, and the imprisoned. If left to languish, all have in common a proximity to death. They may be in a descending order toward death, reflecting in reverse an ascending order toward resurrection. The Bible also compares the taking of life and its restoration with wounding and healing on the one hand, and with bringing down and raising up on the other. In any case, their own reversals represent miniature, if not preliminary, resurrections. A dead person may have fallen prostrate, been overcome by terminal disease, or been entombed forever.

Moves toward death anticipate death as moves toward life anticipate resurrection. The assumption is that God's capacity to cure prefigures His capacity to resurrect, recoveries and revivals being on the same rescue continuum. Establishing a continuum of wonder between rescue from sickness and rescue from death, smoothes the way to affirming that God can engineer that greatest of all rescue operations -- release from death.

It is doubtful whether the notion of national restoration can exhaust the meaning of this strophe. If national restoration were then available as evidence of a reversal of fortunes, an allusion to Ezekiel 37 would have been in order. In actuality, national restoration is, as the Amidah demonstrates, as much in need of reinforcement as resurrection. It is left to the individual condition to account for the resurrection-like character of the whole triad.

Strophes 3-5 cluster a variety of ideas and images that rework the uses of the causative of the biblical CH Y H (`live') with all its associations pressed into liturgical service. The piel form can mean "allow to live," i.e. to continue living as in Exod. 1:7. The hiphil form can mean "restore to health" as in 2 Kings 5:7. With regard to vegetation, the verb can mean "cause to grow," or "produce" as in Hos. 14:8. It can also mean "revive the heart and spirit" as in Isa. 57:15 and, of course, "restore to life" as in 2 Kings 8:1.

Strophe 6 is modelled after Dan. 12:2: "those that sleep in the dust of the earth will awake." The sleep metaphor allows resurrection to be described as a great awakening and death to be imagined as an intensification of sleep. If God can be trusted to return the spirit after sleep, why would He not be considered reliable enough to do so after death? Indeed, the standard prayer upon awakening thanks God for returning the soul to "dead tired" or "lifeless" bodies. The more waking is experienced as an expression of divine renewal, the more a great future renewal becomes believable. It is not surprising then to find that upon awakening one is urged to praise God for restoring life to the dead. Such is the liturgical response to the intimations of immortality, or presentiments of rebirth.

Finally, note that the resurrection is unqualified, unlike 1 Sam. 2:6 and many interpretations of Daniel that limit the resurrection to the righteous. As such, it takes its cue from the aforecited verse from Isaiah as do the aforementioned phrases that God "revives all with rain/dew." Predicating the argument for resurrection on the inclusive phenomenon of nature precludes exceptions on moral or doctrinal grounds.

Strophe 8 refers to God as "King," as does blessing 1. There only the sovereign over history could assure redemption; here only the sovereign over death can assure resurrection. Neither the future nor the grave are barriers to God's providential care. In fact, God is first called "King of the universe" in a prayer on resurrection.

Strophe 10 refers to God as "faithful" as do some versions of blessing 8 on recuperation. Both allude to its biblical use where God is called "faithful" when maintaining the covenant and when effectuating redemption.The point is that past faithfulness serves as an indicator of future faithfulness.

In all, the blessing succeeds remarkably in condensing the preponderance of rabbinic arguments for resurrection into about fifty words. As a précis exclusively of rabbinic reflection on resurrection, there are no references to extra-rabbinic arguments for resurrection such as that based on the change of the daily cycle ("night dies, day rises") of the Roman writer Clement, or the argument based on "resurrection" of the moon after its monthly waning of the Church Father Theophilus, or the argument from cosmic renewal of the Stoic philosopher Seneca, or the argument based on the restorability of glassware as opposed to earthenware of The Gospel of Philip 63, an argument that also appears in Genesis Rabbah 14. There is not even a reference to the argument based on creation, found in 2 Maccabees.

The rhetoric of the blessing aims at increasing the plausibility of the not yet available resurrection by grounding it in experiences that are available such as seasonal revival, birth, life, raising the fallen, healing the sick, freeing the fettered, and awakening, all of which can be conceived of as diminutives of resurrection. Still, as strophe 7 notes, resurrection remains an incomparable event performable only by an incomparably powerful God. Whatever the original formulation of the blessing, the emphasis on God's wonders and salvations have been made integral to the resurrection motif.

The third blessing is concerned with the establishment of God's kingship on earth as it is in heaven. It contains the Qedushah which opens by citing both Isaiah (6:3) and Ezekiel (3:12), who portray angels acclaiming the divine sovereignty above, and closes with Israel proclaiming God's kingship below, saying: "The Lord shall reign forever, your God, O Zion, through all generations. Halleluiah" (Ps. 146:10). The blessing creates such a convergence between terrestrial and celestial liturgies that both angels and Israel may have been meant by the second strophe, "the holy ones praise You daily." Such ambiguity conveys the simultaneous realization of divine kingship in both earthly and heavenly realms as is common in Midrashic and Heikhalot literature.

The blessing continues:

1. You are holy and Your name is Holy,

2. the holy ones praise You daily,

3. [for (God), king, great and holy are You].

4. Blessed are You, O Lord, holy God.

The resounding notes of the holiness of God reverberate with redemptive sounds. The two prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel, cited in the Qedushah, emphasize the holiness of both God and His name. Isaiah, who refers to God's name as "Holy" (57:15), uses the divine epithet, "the Holy One of Israel," as a designator of God as redeemer. Indeed, Isa. 47:4 can be construed as "Our redeemer is Lord of Hosts, His name is Holy One of Israel." For Ezekiel, God's name, albeit for other reasons, becomes holy through the redemption of Israel. The use of "great and holy" in the third strophe recalls Ezek. 38:23: "Thus will I manifest My greatness and My holiness, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations, and they shall know that I am the Lord." The same verse informs the opening of the Qaddish: "May God's name become great and holy." Instructively, the theme in each is redemption. For Isaiah and Ezekiel, the holy God is undeniably the redeeming God. In the same vein, the Musaf Qedushah links the Shema` verse with the final verse "The Lord shall reign forever... (Ps. 146:10) with the following: "He is our sovereign, and He is our saviour. He will redeem us a second time ... in the sight of all living."

Even in the alternative version of the Qedushah where God's name is called "Awesome," a redemptive note is struck, as it says: "He sent redemption to His people ... His name is `Holy' and `Awesome'" (Ps. 111:9). Still, the peals of redemption rings more loudly by formulating the first strophe as "You are holy and Your name is Holy" in a manner paralleling the strophe "You are one and Your name is One" of the Sabbath afternoon service. There as here, an allusion to universal redemption is sounded, as its says, "When the Lord shall be king over all the earth, on that day the Lord shall be one and His name One" (Zech. 14:9).

In sum, the opening triad of blessings (1-3) presents a tripartite thesis: it argues for God bringing a redeemer, followed by the case for resurrection, and ends with Israel's acclamation of the kingship of God on earth. All three contain the affirmation that God is King. Perceiving of God as Lord over history, Lord over nature and death, and Lord over all, heightens the expectation of being redeemed. Such an affirmation of divine kingship triggers the expectation of redemption, as Isaiah says: "Since ... the Lord is our King, He will deliver us (33:22)."