Until Whenever

Preface

All those days with the window closed, and even then The Venerable Noah chooses a raven.

He should have known that old bird would just go out and fly around, back and forth, until whenever.

If the result doesn’t suit you, I guess you can just keep trying—doves are better than ravens for that.

Still, it doesn’t pay to be too sure, it’s better to wait until even the trustworthy dove has left for good.

Main Case

Genesis 8:6-22

⁶ After forty days Noach opened the window of the ark which he had built; ⁷ and he sent out a raven, which flew back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. ⁸ Then he sent out a dove, to see if the water had gone from the surface of the ground. ⁹ But the dove found no place for her feet to rest, so she returned to him in the ark, because the water still covered the whole earth. He put out his hand, took her and brought her in to him in the ark. ¹⁰ He waited another seven days and again sent the dove out from the ark. ¹¹ The dove came in to him in the evening, and there in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf, so Noach knew that the water had cleared from the earth. ¹² He waited yet another seven days and sent out the dove, and she didn’t return to him any more.

Appreciatory Verse

Forty days or not; or even another forty;

the raven still flies back and forth.

There’s a dried up olive leaf on the floor—

it looks like somebody stepped on it.

Stamping and hollering “anybody home?”

in this empty old ark, brings me no answer.

Faint and high above,

that snide old raven flies by and says,

“Arrk.”

(I’m not sure if there is any point to making a further commentary, but I think there might be value in doing so as an act of trust. In koan study, the point is often made that it’s really important to pay attention to every detail, and investigate every aspect thoroughly. In reading Scripture as Koan, I realized that I had already been heading in that direction. So here goes.)

Commentary

In this case the first thing I did was to wonder about the significance of Noah releasing the raven, because the text clearly states that the raven “flew back and forth until the waters had dried up from the earth.” It never says the raven ever came back at all. So what’s the point here? Did Noah know the raven would do that when he let it go? If so, what other reason could he have had for letting it go, when he knew that it wouldn’t provide him with any news about the state of the world?

Then he sends out a dove. The text doesn’t say that he waited any time at all between the raven and the dove. Then, the text says the dove “found no place for her feet to rest” and so flew back to the ark. Noah draws a conclusion from this, that the “waters still cover the earth.”

At this point I went back to the beginning of the passage to examine the very opening words “after forty days.” I found a rabbinical source online that talks about the significance of the number forty. One rabbi said that it symbolizes change, transformation, and renewal. Another source said that it symbolizes times of trouble, hardship and testing. So those bits of information got thrown into the mix.

It also seems clear to me that there is a purpose behind the juxtaposition of the raven and the dove. Noah was supposed to be wise, right? Tuned in to the God channel, and paying close attention, right? I think we as human beings have a general tendency to ignore things that don’t make sense; things that don’t fit into our program; things that don’t produce results. So, I think that it’s quite significant that the first thing that Noah does is not intended to make sense, or produce any comprehensible results.

I also looked into the biblical symbolism of ravens. They represent God’s love and care for us (Job 38:41; Luke 12:24) and for creation. They feed prophets (1 Kings 17:4,6) in the wilderness, but they are also pitiless and scary, and go right for the eyes (Proverbs 30:17) of people who are mean to their parents.

I concluded that we are intended to notice that Noah did both. He sent out the pointless, independent raven without any hope or expectations, and he also sent out the timid, reliable dove with a particular purpose in mind. What can we conclude from this?

Noah deliberately made a forty-day space to allow for transition, change, and renewal. He also surrendered himself to a forty-day space of difficulty and testing. He both took control, and abandoned control. He did a purposeless thing, because, well, what’s the point, after all? He also did a purposeful thing, because he had a need to make choices, and to do that he had to make inferences and draw conclusions. Both approaches, both ways of being, are necessary.

A note regarding the extra seven days that Noah waited after the dove brought him the olive leaf: Seven days signifies completion and perfection. So, when you are doing things for a reason; to produce results; when you are investigating something with the purpose of drawing a conclusion; then it is absolutely imperative that you verify that conclusion. So, Noah waited seven more days to verify; to make certain that he wasn’t jumping to conclusions.

A final note about the olive leaf in the dove’s mouth: The peace inference was apparently not what was intended. It was the Greeks who came up with that symbolism, apparently much later. An ancient Talmudic source provided this quote: “The dove said, ‘Better, let my food be as bitter as an olive from the hands of G‑d and not as sweet as honey from the hands of flesh and blood.’” My take on that would be that it’s never a good idea to be sentimental; or to believe, just because a crisis is over, that everything will be just perfect from now on.

In other words, what comes from God is what it is. It might be bitter; it might be sweet, but it’s always genuine.

On the other hand, our notions about what’s real and what’s true often let us down. We get sucked into the delusion that things ought to be the way we wish they were. We grip our opinions hard even when they are burning our fingers to the bone.

That’s when it’s time to open the window and let the raven out.