Way pre Spiderman fame: Spinning its seductive web, the first spider in the Bible shows up in today’s chapter, a figment of Isaiah’s imagination, and not exactly as a guest of honor. This spider doesn’t crawl alone - four living creatures show up today to illustrate Isaiah’s visions of the woeful state of affairs in Jerusalem. The spider is accompanied by venomous serpent, a howling bear and a cooing dove. Serpent, bear and dove have several and sometimes puzzling scenes throughout the Hebrew Bible but the spider’s debut - it will only show up once more, in Job - deserves a bit of focus. This mysterious creature, with important roles to play in many of the world’s mythologies, is not a big deal in the Jewish written or oral traditions. But does its presence here hint at its earlier, forgotten symbolic role and purpose?
In chapter 59 Isaiah is busy chastening the people again for failing to live kindly, their hands full of innocent blood and their lips smeared with lies. The truth is absent, he laments, and it’s the people’s fault. To what shall I compare these evil people, he asks and responds with this zoological imagery:
The evil serpent is a known entity in the near-eastern folklore, represented in the Hebrew Bible as the bad guy from the very start in Eden. In previous cultures the serpent is often associated with goddess and magic, which is why even the generic names for snakes ‘nachos’ means ‘soothsaying’. It’s clear to see why the snakes becomes identified with evil in this patriarchal context. But the spider’s web is used here, for the first time, as a way to embody fleeting and flimsy webs of lies and false behavior. What use is a spider’s web for someone who needs warm clothes?
Throughout world cultures, the spider’s web often represents the very stuff of which life’s meaning and secrets are woven and cherished, and sometimes - the web is creation itself and the spider The Creator. In multiple stories spiders symbolized patience and persistence thanks to their hunting technique of setting smart webs to patiently await they prey. “Numerous cultures attribute the spider's ability to spin webs with the origin of spinning, textile weaving, basket weaving, knotwork and net making. Spiders are associated with creation myths because they seem to weave their own artistic worlds. Philosophers often use the spider's web as a metaphor or analogy, and today terms such as the Internet or World Wide Web evoke the inter-connectivity of a spider web.”
What mythic information may have Isaiah had about the spider and why is his so negative?
In ancient Egypt spiders were associated with the goddess Neith, depicted as the spinner and weaver of destiny. Uttu, the ancient Sumerian goddess of weaving, was envisioned as a spider spinning her web of the world, and In Babylonian lore Ishtar the great goddess was sometimes depicted as a great spider, possibly morphing into the GreekArachne and later into the Roman goddessMinerva.
But for Isaiah in Jerusalem - the spider’s web comes along with the snake - that other subverted symbol of the goddess, rising from the underworld, an ancient ancestor of ours, sometimes feared, and maligned as evil, and as temptation.
By the time the Talmud thinks about this verse, the spider’s web becomes the motif of the evil inclination - slowly ensnaring the human souls into its/our evil plan. One of the rabbis suggest the evil thoughts start off as thin spider webs and then thicken into ropes that can carry carriages. Another rabbi responds - at first the evil though is like a guest, but then it takes over your home.
So while Isaiah’s rebukes echo true today as they must have been bothersome to his listeners, it’s maybe meaningful to flip the spider from a source of sorcery and sinister intentions into the wise weaver of wisdom it once stood for in so many mysteries. The spiders, often seen as teachers on the spiritual journey, can teach us to be patient, creative and persistent, reminding us that these journeys, like our dedication to the repair of self and society, are never easy but require dedication. It’s this sort of primal patience, more animal than human, that Isaiah indicates when mid-chapter he laments how far the people have to go towards relief and redemption:
“We’ll growl like bears, and moan like doves, in our hope for justice while there isn’t any, redemption still so far away.”
The spiders and the snakes will be left behind to weave webs and lay eggs, the bears too will be left growling, but the doves, cooing memories of the aftermath of floods, will be back in the next chapter, pointing the way inwards, the way home.
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Goodbye Isaiah, Hello Jeremiah
Please join me on Zoom for our next Monthly Conversation, as we wrap up the Book of Isaiah, venture into Jeremiah’s world and explore what these ancient prophets have to offer our inner and political lives - just in time for a new Jewish year and continued political challenges - everywhere.
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