For the source text click/tap here: Sukkah 53
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When David dug the Pits (שיתין), under the altar, he accidentally hit the point at which the Deep (תהומא) was connected to the earth. These subterranean primordial waters threaten to surface and flood the world, (as they did in the days of Noah). David composed the fifteen psalms, (Shir Hama'alos) which caused the waters to subside. The world was preserved.
David dug the Pits, but then saw that he had opened up a conduit whereby the waters of the Deep might destroy the world. Somehow he knew that writing God’s name on a sherd and throwing it into the Pits would cause the water to subside. What he didn’t know was whether this is permitted.
Ahitophel, Saul’s son’s adviser after Saul’s death, a figure portrayed as a wise man in both the Bible and in rabbinic tradition, notes that in the Sotah ritual God’s name is written on a scroll and then the writing is rubbed off into water. This ritual is meant to bring peace between a man and woman by eliminating his suspicion that she was an adulteress. If for such a purpose, God’s name may be erased, all the more so it may be erased to save the world.
We explore the myth of "sealing the abyss" from scholars such as Rav Daniel Sperber (a linguist) to Prof Jon Levenson (a theologian).