Texts in Conversation
In Matthew 6, Jesus uses birds to show how God cares for creation and people, and Rabbinic tradition in Genesis Rabbah also describes God caring for birds and people. Both use a kal va'chomer argument, moving from a simple example to a greater one.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Matthew 6:26
New Testament
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Isn’t there more to life than food and more to the body than clothing? 26 Look at the birds in the sky: They do not sow, or reap, or gather into barns, yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Aren’t you more valuable than they are? 27 And which of you by worrying can add even one hour to his life? 28 Why do you worry about clothing? Think about how the flowers of the field grow; they do not work or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed like one of these! 30 And if this is how God clothes the wild grass, which is here today and tomorrow is tossed into the fire to heat the oven, won’t he clothe you even more, you people of little faith?
Genesis Rabbah 79:6
Aggadah
Rabbinic
“And he encamped [vayiḥan] before the city” – he graced [ḥanan] the leadership of the city, he began sending them gifts. Another matter, “and he encamped [vayiḥan] before the city” – he began establishing markets and selling at low prices. That is what they say, that a person must show gratitude to a place from which he benefits. Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai and Rabbi Elazar his son were hiding in a cave for thirteen years during the days of persecution. They would eat withered carobs until they broke out in sores. After thirteen years, he [Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai] emerged and sat at the cave entrance. He saw a certain hunter standing and hunting birds. When Rabbi Shimon would hear a Divine Voice from Heaven: ‘Freedom, freedom,’ it would escape. But when he would hear a Divine Voice saying: ‘Killing,’ it would be hunted and trapped. He said: ‘Were it not for Heaven, a bird would not be hunted; the soul of a person, all the more so.’ He went out and found that matters were calm, and that the edict had been abrogated. They came and bathed in that heated bathhouse in Tiberias. His son said to him: ‘Tiberias has afforded us so much benefit, and we are not purifying it from the dead?’ He said: ‘We must perform an act of good just as our ancestors would, as they would establish markets and sell at low prices.’ He said: ‘We need to purify Tiberias.’ What did he do? He took a mandrake. He would cut the mandrake, cast the cuttings, and scatter them in the street. Every place where there was a corpse, it would rise, and they would move it and take it out of the city. And every place where there was no impurity, the mandrake would remain, and it would indicate which was a place of purity and which was a place of impurity until the time that they purified it from all the corpses. A certain Samaritan ignoramus saw him and said: ‘Will I not go and mock this Jewish elder?’ Some say it was in the wicker basket market, and some said it was the sack market. He took a corpse and concealed it in one of the streets that had been purified. In the morning, he went and said to them: ‘You said that ben Yoḥai had purified Tiberias. Come and see this corpse.’ <Variant reading: He went to him, he said to him: ‘Did you not purify such and such street?’ He said to him: ‘Yes.’ He said to him: ‘And if I produce corpses after you?’ He said to him: ‘Pull and show it.’> Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai saw through the Divine spirit that he placed it there. He said: ‘I decree that the one who is above shall descend, and the one who is below shall ascend,’ and so it was. He ascended and sat in his house. He passed by the Tower of Colors and heard the voice of Nakai the scribe. He said: ‘Did you not say that bar Yoḥai purified Tiberias? But they say that they found a corpse.’ He said: ‘Let him come to me, if I do not have at my disposal halakhot as numerous as the hair on my head regarding Tiberias, that it is pure, with the exception of this-and-that place. You were not with us in the quorum when it was purified. You breached the fence of the Sages, and in your regard it is written: “One who breaches a fence, a serpent will bite him”’ (Ecclesiastes 10:8). He [Nakai the scribe] immediately became a pile of bones. He [Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai] passed in the Beit Nekofa Valley. He saw a person standing and gathering the sefichin of the Sabbatical year. He said to him: ‘Is this not the sefichin of the Sabbatical year?’ He said to him: ‘But is it not you who permitted it? Did we not learn: Rabbi Shimon says: All the sefichin are permitted except for the sefichin of cabbage, as there is nothing like it in the vegetables of the field.’ He said to him: ‘But do my colleagues not disagree with me? You breached the fence of the Sages, and “one who breaches a fence, a serpent will bite him.”’ And so it was for him. Another matter, “and he encamped before the city” – he entered on Friday near sunset, while it was still day, and established Shabbat boundaries while it was still day. That is to say: Jacob observed Shabbat before it was given.
Date: 500 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... Jesus has selected a creature that is valued very cheaply by humans, of course on the basis of its limited usefulness to them. Even a creature that humans think so unimportant is important enough to God for it never to escape his caring attention. Matthew’s and Luke’s versions of the saying make the point in slightly different ways. Matthew’s is the more specific and relates to the capture of sparrows for food. The sparrow’s fall to the earth is not, as modern readers often suppose, its death, but what happens when the hunter’s throw-net snares it and brings it to the ground (compare Amos 3:5). It will then be sold in the market. The sparrow’s capture cannot happen ‘without your Father’ (Matthew 10:29), i.e. without his knowledge and consent. There is a remarkably close parallel, not only to this point but also to the moral which Jesus draws from it with regard to God’s care for the disciples, in a later rabbinic story, which must show that Jesus is drawing on traditional Jewish teaching. The story concerns Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai (mid-second century CE), who at the end of the second Jewish war spent thirteen years hiding in a cave with his son. Rabbi Simeon realizes that his fate is in the hands of God, to whom he can therefore entrust himself, when he realizes that this is even true of each bird. If Jesus drew on traditional Jewish teaching, this teaching was itself rooted in the Old Testament ..."
Bauckham, Richard
Living with Other Creatures: Green Exegesis and Theology
(pp. 92-93) Baylor University Press, 2011
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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