Completing a unit of Clinical Pastoral Education this summer, I saw that every hospital room has its own threshold.
Before walking in, I knocked or announced my presence. On busy days, it would be easy to treat this as nothing more than a protocol to check before entering a patient’s space. From what I saw modeled by my chaplain educators and from the more time I spent at the edge of a curtain—all that separates a patient from the rest of the hospital—I’ve learned to see the knock itself as an act of empowerment. It says: even here, even now, you still have a say over who comes in and how. Being hospitalized strips away so much. The knock is a small way of handing something back.
After Adam and Eve eat from the Tree of Knowledge, they don’t run to God; they hide among the trees of the Garden, fear of what they have done, innocence stripped away. And God, who, of course, already knows exactly where Adam is and what has happened, calls out anyway: “Ayekah—Where are you?” (Bereishit 3:9).
Rashi is careful to head off the obvious question here. God isn’t confused about Adam’s location. Rashi explains that the question is a way of opening a conversation gently, so that Adam wouldn’t be caught off guard and thrown into panic or distrust if judgment fell on him all at once. Rashi draws out two other biblical moments that work the same way: God asking Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” (Bereishit 4:9) and Balaam being asked, “What men are these with you?” (Bamidbar 22:9). In each case, the question isn’t a request for information. It’s a knock on a doorway. It gives the other person room to speak before anything else is said. It gives power back to the one being questioned by allowing them space to tell their story on their own terms.
That, on its own, reframes the whole scene. God isn’t opening with an accusation. God is opening with an invitation to talk.
This moment, the act of invitation, is picked up on by Chazal, our sages. Tractate Derekh Eretz Rabbah, a minor tractate of Talmud on etiquette and morals, teaches that a person should never enter someone else’s home suddenly, and that we learn this from none other than God, who stood at the entrance of the Garden and called to Adam rather than simply walking in (Derekh Eretz Rabbah 5:2). The Creator of the universe, confronting the first transgression in human history, does not barge in demanding an account. God pauses at the threshold and calls out first.
Derekh Eretz Rabbah then makes the idea concrete with a story. Four sages, Rabban Gamliel, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, and Rabbi Akiva, are traveling to a council that includes a philosopher. Twice, Rabbi Yehoshua asks Rabban Gamliel whether they should visit him; twice he’s told no, until finally the answer is yes. When they arrive, the Rabbis don’t just enter without notice. Rabbi Yehoshua knocks. The philosopher, hearing it, thinks to himself that only a sage would knock that way. On the second knock, he rises and washes his face, hands, and feet to prepare himself. Only on the third knock, once he is ready to receive, does he open the door. The philosopher is empowered to answer and join in on his own terms. Rabban Gamliel cites God’s action here from Bereishit as why he commanded Rabbi Yehoshua to wait and then go and knock.
Tractate Kallah Rabbati, an Aramaic commentary on personal ethics, reinforces this by teaching that one should never take leave of a teacher or friend without permission (Kallah Rabbati 9:1). Once again, this traces back to God waiting at the entrance of Eden and calling out. Even in the most consequential encounter imaginable, the confrontation after humanity’s first act of disobedience, God models openness and respect before rebuke.
Rav Joseph B Solvoetchik (1903-1993), quoting Shir HaShirim, a biblical love story, in Kol Dodi Dofek (1956) clarifies this imagery. The beloved approaches: “Kol dodi hineh zeh ba”—“The voice of my beloved! Here he comes” (2:8). Later, the image becomes even more intimate: “Kol dodi dofek”—“The voice of my beloved knocks” (5:2). Rav Soloveitchik draws on this imagery to describe the human encounter with God as one in which God approaches the human being, but does not erase the distance between them. God comes close enough to knock, but the door remains something the human being must open.
That image helps me hear God’s call of “ayekah” differently. The question is not simply “Where are you?” It is what comes after the knock: I have come close. I am here. Will you open the door? The threshold remains real, and so does the person’s freedom to cross it or not. Perhaps that is part of what makes the divine invitation so powerful. God does not force intimacy. God creates the possibility for it. These sources tell us what happens before a question is even asked: a pause, a call, a respected threshold. Together they describe a single unbroken gesture: God stops at the door, waits, calls out gently, and only then asks the vulnerable question.
That is a pattern I hope to carry with me beyond the hospital room. The knock comes first; a small acknowledgment that each person is still the one who decides whether and how I enter their world. Only after that do I get to ask anything close to “ayekah,” “Where are you?” And when I do ask it, I try to ask it the way God does: not as an interrogation, but as an offering. I’m here if you’re ready.
My patients answered that question in every register imaginable: fear, anger, exhaustion, gratitude, silence. My job was never to resolve what they’re carrying. It was only ever to knock, to wait, and then, if invited in, to sit with them wherever they were.
Perhaps this is one meaning of being made in the image of God. We imitate God not only through the acts of clothing the naked, comforting the mourner, but through this more easily missed one: honoring the threshold of another person’s inner world before we ever try to cross it. We knock. We wait. We ask, “Ayekah?” And then, if invited in, we have the privilege of bearing witness to another’s story.
