Our Gemara on Amud Beis discusses the positioning of the final words of the Shema in the mezuzah. The placement of the phrase “Al Ha-Aretz” (“above the earth”), according to some at the beginning of the final line and according to others at the end, symbolically indicates the vast distance between heaven and earth.
This gap is not about physical distance, nor truly about heaven and earth. Rather, it reflects the gap between God and man. Yeshaiyahu (55:9) states in the name of God:
“But as the heavens are high above the earth, so are My ways high above your ways, and My plans above your plans.”
This is not a matter of geography, but of otherness and disparity beyond imagination. Yet only two verses earlier (ibid. 55:7), God declares:
“Seek GOD where He can be found; call out while He is near.”
Though God is incomprehensible and utterly unlike anything else, He remains available to those who call out to Him.
Ironically, the unknowable quality of God is what makes Him available. There is an absurdity in the idea that an omnipotent being, whose motives are completely unrelatable, would bother to create anything at all—and yet, here we are. We can’t understand why we should have been created yet we were so God must care. This is the paradox of divine transcendence and immanence.
The Gemara (Megillah 31a) states:
Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Wherever you find a reference in Scripture to the might of the Holy One, blessed be He, you also find a reference to His humility adjacent to it…
The Rambam in Hilchos Teshuva (5:5) cites these verses in response to the question of how human free will can coexist with God’s foreknowledge:
The Hasagos HaRaavad criticizes the Rambam for raising a question that cannot be answered, potentially causing confusion. Others argue that the Rambam was indeed offering an answer: stating that God’s knowledge is categorically unlike human knowledge is not a cop-out, but an assertion that divine awareness operates on an entirely different plane and therefore does not negate free will.
The Rambam in the Moreh Nevuchim (III:20) elaborates. Since God is perfect, He cannot change, as change implies movement from imperfection to perfection or vice versa. God therefore knows everything eternally. Humans, by contrast, are separate from their knowledge and acquire it incrementally. God’s knowledge of the future is not predictive but intrinsic—arising from total knowing.
The Rambam illustrates this with the metaphor of a mechanical clock (in his time, a water clock). The designer understands the mechanism entirely because he designed it. Another observer learns its function only by watching it moment by moment. In modern terms, we might compare this to a software developer who writes a program. The developer understands every function in principle, while the user experiences it sequentially and subjectively.
This metaphor, too, ultimately fails, because even the greatest human designer does not possess moment-to-moment awareness in the way God does. Thus we return to the metaphor of heaven and earth: we perceive vastness without fully comprehending it.
One of the Rambam’s lesser-noticed talents is his exegetical brilliance. In Moreh Nevuchim (III:19) he quotes Tehillim (94:6–9):
“They kill the widow and the stranger;they murder the orphans.”
“They say God does not see it…”
Shall the One who implants the ear not hear, the One who forms the eye not see?”
While a simple reading suggests a kal v’chomer—God must see and hear since He created eyes and ears—the Rambam transforms the verses into philosophical argument. If God designed sensory awareness, then His own awareness must transcend any physical limitation.
Ultimately, the metaphor remains imperfect. We now know that the universe contains billions of galaxies beyond observation. Did God need all this just to provide light in the sky? Perhaps that vastness itself humbles us. For the believer, the gap between heaven and earth inspires awe, humility, and trust that the Creator of such immensity also knows and cares about us.