Plant, Animal, & Spirit Inhabitance
How do animals inhabit their dwellings -- dens, nests, caves and shells? The same Hebrew verb (רבץ) to lie down, is used to describe the inhabitance of an array of animal creatures. When the flocks of the forefather shepherds inhabit the well to drink, as in, “There before his eyes was a well in the open. Three flocks of sheep were lying about it (רבצים עליה) (Genesis 29:2). The same word is used for a mother bird who broods and hovers over her eggs and chicks (והאם רבצת על אפרחים), an image beloved to the kabbalists. But lying down is not always gentle, inhabitance can burdensome or forced, as in, “When you see the ass of your enemy lying under its burden (רבץ תחת משאו).” And when sin inhabits, it takes the same verb as the animals. God asks Cain, “Why has your face fallen, if you do well you will be lifted, but if not, sin crouches by the doorway (לפתח חתאת רובץ) (Genesis 4:7).
Where animals stand as metaphors for the untamed impulses of human beings, the plant kingdom offers gentler models for inhabitance. The root is (שתל), to be set or planted, as in, “Happy is the one who avoids wicked counsel, she is like a tree planted beside streaming water (כעץ שתולֹ על פלגי מים), giving fruit in season, her leaves never withered (Psalm 1).” This vegetal poetics is not entirely foreign to human beings. The righteous flourish like palm trees and tower as cedars because they are planted (שתולים בבית יהוה) in a garden of spirits (Psalm 92). Who was this, ask the sages? Noah, whom God planted in the ark.
Finally, the residence that is not dependent any physical place, (שכן) is the verb for an inhabitance of spirit. God of the sky is called (שוכן במרומים) dweller of heights. The command to build the temple, “Make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among you (ושכנתי בתוכם). We call god’s indwelling presence, when she comes to hover over your shoulder, the Shechinah, the one who dwells. Precursor of the holy ghost. The Tabernacle is the place of inhabitance (משכן). And when we mortals accept the deathly aspects of life, Isaiah calls us (שכני עפר) dwellers of dust. “Your dead will live, your corpses rise. Wake and sing you who dwell in dust — for your dew is the dew of lights, shadows giving birth. (Isaiah 26:19)
Sometimes spirit does not so much take up residence, but hovers from the root (שרת) to minister, serve, or attend. King David up with his harp and the north wind composing in the midnight hours. Sometimes spirit would dwell with him (שרתה עליו שכינה) and he would sing, other times he would sing, and only then would she take up residence. David at night was a sign of the metaphysics of spirit. The divine presence comes and dwells not (שאין השכינה שורה) through laziness or wallowing, not in dumb jokes, an untamed mind, or empty conversation, but in the joy of good works.