The seventh day of Pesach is the anniversary of the splitting of the sea, and in shul we will read the Song of the Sea, Az Yashir. On the pasuk commonly translated as “This is my G-d and I will glorify Him” (Shemot 15:2), Rashi cites the Mechilta (Beshalach – Shira 3) that what was seen by a maidservant at the [splitting of the] sea was not beheld by Yechezkel the prophet. In one of the essays from his volume on Pesach (Pachad Yitzchak, essay 56), Rav Aaron Hutner asks: Why is this maidservant contrasted with Yechezkel specifically? Naturally, it seems to follow that Yechezkel saw the Divine Presence manifested upon the Merkava (chariot), but it’s probable that other prophets saw this as well and indeed we know from Chazal that Yeshayahu certainly did. (Chagiga 13b). But this midrash references Yechezkel and no other navi.
Rav Hutner explains that just as it’s a mitzvah for us to seek to emulate Hashem and to conform to His example and seek to achieve mastery of the attributes we assign to Him, so too Hashem conforms Himself to us in a fashion. Naturally, it isn’t possible for us to truly be like Hashem and Hashem does not in any meaningful sense emulate us – because our essences and our capabilities are irreconcilable. Nevertheless, we conform ourselves to the best of our ability to the way in which we understand Hashem relating to us in an effort to become more righteous and noble as He is.
So too, when Hashem judges us and confers upon us the things we deserve in this world, our Sages teach, He responds to us middah keneged middah, in a manner befitting the conduct we have exhibited. In this way, Hashem conforms our experience of Him to us in proportion to our desserts. When we succeed in conforming ourselves perfectly to His will and when we become the purest and the best people we can be, then we can say we have emulated Him, and thus when He responds to us with what we deserve – in a manner befitting our conduct – then He is emulating us in this aspect of the manifestation of His plan for Creation.
Rav Hutner cites the Gemara in Shabbat (133b) on the aformentioned pasuk from Shirat Hayam, explaining that the word anvehu (translated above as “I will glorify”) is an anagram of the Hebrew words ani ve’hu – I and Him. This means that when we achieve the awareness signified by this pasuk – my G-d, I and Him – we experience this encounter with the Divine as a direct personal experience of radical transcendence. Rav Hutner explains further that until Israel unified as a collective for the purpose of crossing the sea in anticipation of receiving the Torah, the world was populated only by people who followed their instincts and did what was just in their own eyes, but the Divine Law was not revealed and could not be known. For the people in the generations preceding the Exodus from Mitzrayim, the universe and their lives were preserved purely out of Hashem’s kindness and desire to bestow benevolence. But the splitting of the sea set in motion the series of events that would bring about the possibility of partnership with Hashem in Creation by doing the mitzvot.
I and Him. We complement one another, and I can understand my experience of reality in relationship to His presence and will. Thus, the maidservant upon the sea was one of the first humans to ever truly achieve their spiritual potential and to enter into partnership with the Creator of the Universe. What Yechezkel saw and described that was unique to him was that, upon the heavenly Merkava, there was enthroned an apparition in the likeness of a man. (Yechezkel 1:26). This is the unique vision that is appropriate to the pasuk in the Song of the Sea – this is my G-d, I and Him.
The maidservant saw and experienced the advent of this partnership, this complementarity wherein she could understand Hashem as He makes himself (in an allegorical sense) manlike, just as we strive to be godlike.
