In the Ten Commandments God insists that: “Thou shall have not other gods before Me” because the Lord is a jealous God who “visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of them that hate me” (Ex. 20:3-5), By contrast another biblical teaching clarifies that “every person shall be put to death only for his own sin” but no child for the father’s nor a father for a child’s sin. (Deut. 24:16). How are these apparently contradictory descriptions of the divine behavior to be reconciled?
God’s Word is Opaque
Does prophetic revelation mean that the divine message is clear and unambiguous? According to the Psalm writer, “the words of the Lord are pure words, silver purged in an earthen crucible, refined sevenfold (shivatayim),” It would seem that all one has to do is listen to or read, the sacred text well, and the message will be as clear as pure silver. How surprising then Rabbi Yannai’s comment that “the words of the Torah were not given as clear cut decisions.” For with every word which God spoke to Moses, He offered him forty-nine plausible arguments by which the duty to carry out the precept may be confirmed and forty nine no less plausible arguments by which it could be negated. “When Moses asked: how shall we know what to do? God replied that the majority is to be followed.” When the majority confirms, you carry it out, when it does not, you do not. (Midrash Psalms 12:7). He arrives the number forty nine by cleverly playing with the word “shivatayim” which actually means fourteen (two times seven, shiva is seven) and reading it as if it says “seven times seven” which shouldn’t be taken literally. It means many arguments. This means that unless God’s word is much discussed and debated, it remains like raw unrefined silver, unusable. From this we can get an idea of the role of the Jews (through their learned sages as representatives) in mediating what the intent is of sacred scripture as the written testimony of God’s communication. Without their mediation, God’s word remains opaque.
The Rabbi is not a Prophet
At the same time this opens the door to a lot of different views, each vying for legitimization in the life of the community, in particular regarding its practices, for which it needs to have a standard that is accepted by all. Unlike a prophet, the rabbi is not pronouncing absolute truths. Unlike the clear cut distinction between true and false prophets (Deut. 18:15-22), rabbis can disagree without being “false” rabbis. “The utterances of both are the words of the living God” (Talmud Erubin 13b) even when for practical issues we choose as community to follow one view setting it as the norm. .
What does that majority think of the minority which disagrees with them? Traitors? Heretics? Disbelievers? Not at all!. Only “disagree-ers- bar p’lugta” which is a dignified status, so long as the “disagee-er” follows the ruling of the majority, in practice, if he is part of that community. Even while conforming in practice, he may continue to advocate for change. Should he persuade his colleagues, at a later occasion, they could change the decision. Freedom of thought and speech, coexist together with the practical rule of common law in the rabbinic reality.
Is not the word of the Lord likened to the sparks that flit from the the fire, each spark a gem in its own divinity. “`Is not My word like as a fire?’ says the Lord; `and like a hammer that breaks the rock in pieces?’” (Jer. 23:29). Concerning this biblical text the Talmudic sages comment: “Just a a hammer is divided into many sparks, so every single word that went forth from the Holy One, Blessed Be He, split up into seventy languages.” (Talmud Shabbat 88b). Just as the hammer disintegrates the rock into different pieces, so does the Word of God, itself remaining firm and unchanging, generate different sparks in the minds of its disciples. The medieval French Talmudic -sage, Rabbenu Tam, goes further. “Just as the hammer, when it smites an extraordinary hard object, may itself be split,- so may the Biblcal verse, when subjected to the scrutiny of a very keen intellect, split up into different meanings” (Soncino trans. of Talmud Sanhedrin 34a, p. 215, note 9). God’s word itself is split, not only are the opinions that it generates divided.
Read the study How do jews read the bible?
Tags: Bible study, jewish roots, Torah study
678 views
