Encircled in Samekh by Yona

The one letter missing from the account of the Ma'aseh B'reisheit is the Samekh. It first appears in B'reisheit 2:11 "The name of the first [river] is Pishon, the one that encircles the whole land of Havilah, where the gold is" - the first appearance of the letter, in a word that means "surround", describes the very geometry of the letter! Yet, it is the second appearance of the letter in Breisheit 2:21 that defines its essence - "and He took one of his sides and He closed flesh in its place." The Samekh is closed and forever fixed.[i] The Midrash Rabbah to this verse intuits this point in associating the Samekh with the Satan. The Satan is that force in the world which seeks to keep us blocked and constricted, going in circles, and without the opportunity for change and growth.[ii]
 
 Interestingly, throughout all of Tanakh there is almost no Jewish person who has a name beginning with a Samekh. Yet, there are quite a few famous enemies of the Jewish people whose names begin with the letter Samekh: Sihon, Sisra, and Sanheriv.[iii] However, there is one place in the Torah where three Jews have a letter beginning with a Samekh - the names of the Meraglim. The Meraglim include Gadiel ben Sodi, Gadi ben Susi, and Setur ben Michael. Perhaps this is so as the Meraglim personified the Samekh; they were afraid to leave their comfort zone and expand into Eretz Yisrael. "Anxious and Expansive shall be your heart" (Yeshayahu 60:5).
  

[i] To quote G.K. Chesterton (Orthodoxy, Chapter Two): "[T]he circle is perfect and infinite in its nature, but it is fixed for ever in its size; it can never be larger or smaller," and "A man cannot think himself out of mental evil...The moment his mere reason moves, it moves in the old circular rut: he will go round and round his logical circle unless he performs the voluntary, vigorous, and mystical act of getting out..." Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks compares two views on time, cyclical and linear time. The latter view is the basis for belief in Moshiach.  
[ii] Interestingly, the weekday Kel Melech has the Samekh saying "encircles" while in the Kel Adon acrostic that we recite on Shabbos morning the Samekh has disappeared. The letter Sin takes its place, and instead of "encircles" we sing "Happy as they go forth?" This is the happiness of growth and movement (Same’akh, happiness, is related to the word Tzame’kh, growth ). On Shabbos we are freed from viewing the world as a closed set of physical laws and viewing our petty selves as the pinnacle of creation. We have the opportunity to peer behind the curtain to see the Godliness in the world and in ourselves. Thus, we are freed from Safek (another Samekh). 

[iii] I might also add that Sedom also starts with a Samekh and epitomizes the self-centered nature of the Samekh.

Comments

[Meir]

Samech = 60 (6x10) but Shabbos is 7.
Also, Sanballat (Nechemia 2:10) and Sibbecai/Saph (1 Shmuel 21:18) start with Samechs.

[avakesh]

Can it be that samekch is a rare sound in Biblical Hebrew, something like "z" while "sin" is an "s". That's why names of foreign origin, where this sound is much more common, are spelled with samekh.