18:14-16 - An interesting story... Jethro, Moses's father-in-law, asks Moses what he's doing sitting around dealing with the masses all day. Moses answers "'Because the people come unto me to inquire of God; when they have a matter, it cometh unto me; and I judge between a man and his neighbour, and I make them know the statutes of God, and His laws.'" My question is what "statutes"? what "laws"? The Torah has not yet been given! (I know, I know, midrash invariably explains how the Torah was already revealed to Moses or some such thing. But I found these verses jarring anyway.)
18:17-23 - Jethro tells Moses why his plan isn't a good idea, and suggests instead appointing others to handle all but the most important matters and questions: "Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God be with thee: be thou for the people before God, and bring thou the causes unto God." But who is Jethro to make this kind of suggestion? How does he know what God does or doesn't want? Why in this case has God remained silent, not telling Moses what to do? Perhaps this is because the matter concerns the interpretation of the law rather than its content; the latter is God's job (through Moses), but the former is a human job. Maybe.
19:3 - Trying to picture this: "And Moses went up [עָלָה] unto God, and the LORD called unto him out of the mountain [מִן-הָהָר]..." So Moses climbs the mountain...part way? Then God calls to him from the mountain?!? Not from the heavens, not from the top of the mountain, but from the mountain? Interesting...
19:7-8 - Another minor point of confusion (inconsistency?): God has just finished telling Moses that, if the Israelites keep their side of the covenant, they will be for God "treasure from among all peoples." Moses is then instructed to tell the "children of Israel" about this. First, we read that "Moses came and called for the elders of the people [זִקְנֵי הָעָם]" to give them the message. Immediately thereafter, though, we are told "And all the people [כָל-הָעָם]answered together, and said: 'All that the LORD hath spoken we will do.'" So who got the message? The elders or all the people? (Or does "all the people" refer to just the elders?) The difference is critical, because this is the moment of acceptance before the giving of the Ten Commandments. Did all the people agree, or only the elders?!?
19:14-15 - "And [Moses] said unto the people: 'Be ready against the third day; come not near a woman.' " Oy. Vey. I get it, I really do; things were different back then. Purity was a different ball of wax, as it were. Or was it? Purity laws are still fundamental aspects of Orthodox Judaism, and of all the things in the Torah I have a problem with, this is way up there. I'll keep my powder dry on this for now, but as far as I can tell, this is the first mention about women having the potential for being unpure...
19:16 - A nitpick: "...there were thunders and lightnings [sic] and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of a horn [קֹל שֹׁפָר] exceeding loud" A shofar? Was God blowing a shofar? Hmmmm.....
19:21-24 - Weird. God tells Moses to tell the people not to approach the mountain lest they die. In the immediately following verse, God then says that the priests who do approach should "sanctify themselves" lest they die. Moses, rightly I think, then points out to God that "'The people cannot come up to mount Sinai; for thou didst charge us, saying: Set bounds about the mount, and sanctify it.' " God replies, you and Aaron come up, but "let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the LORD." Huh?!? Did God get confused and miss the part where he told Moses none could approach?!?
20:2 - Ah yes, the Ten Commandments... Here's #1: "I am the LORD thy God..." Not to be nitpicky here, but frankly this isn't a commandment. Proclamations 2 through 10 are clearly commandments -- do this, don't do this -- but #1 is a statement. If the commandment were to know that the Lord is God or to believe that the Lord is God, then why doesn't it say so? (To be fair, the statements that constitute the "official" Ten Commandments are not universally recognized as the same. See this interesting chart.)
There is a strange divergence between the verse numbering in Mechon-Mamre on the one hand, and other sources I have seen on the other. Specifically, Mechon-Mamre incorporates the words "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me" [לֹא-יִהְיֶה לְךָ אֱלֹהִים אֲחֵרִים, עַל-פָּנָי] into verse 20:2, while the other sources I have consulted say that these words make up their own verse, 20:3. This throws off the verse numbering for the rest of this chapter insofar as I am providing links to the Mechon-Mamre site. It seems to me that Mechon-Mamre must be wrong, but to avoid confusion, for the verses that follow, I will provide the link to the verse as numbered in Mechon-Mamre, then include the actual number in brackets immediately after. Weird!
20:3-5 [20:4-6] - #2 = No idols... But the verse reads differently than I had always thought: It doesn't say no idols of other Gods...it says no idols or graven images whatsoever "of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." What?!? The commandment is no sculptures or pictures of anything at all, even if they are not intended to be worshipped?!? The next verse says "thou shalt not bow down unto them, nor serve them," but if the intention was to allow likenesses of things but not to allow their worship, why not say 'thou shalt not worship idols or graven images'?
20:6 [20:7] - Commandment #3, not to take the "take the name of the LORD thy God in vain." Yet another instance of the Torah leaving out the key details of something supposedly of critical importance. I hope I don't do this without realizing!! : (
20:7-10 [20:8-11] - Commandment #4 - remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. See, here we get some specific instructions, viz. don't work. Of course, what constitutes work isn't said here, but at least we get direction. (Of special note: look at the list of who shouldn't do work: "thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." So why, then are shabbas goys all right?)
20:11 [20:12] - Commandment #5, to honor mom and dad. Ugh. I'll get to this in my Mitzvah of the Week project at the proper time, but it's worth pointing out here, again, that the Torah offers no explanation of what this means. The other interesting thing is the second half of this verse: "that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." This is the only one of the Ten Commandments to offer an explanation of why one might want to do it. Is it possible that honoring father and mother wasn't so self evident? ; )
20:13 [21:14] - Commandment #10 (6-9 are pretty self-explanatory) - 'Do not covet...' This is also an interesting commandment in that it seems to prohibit an emotion rather than behavior or belief. How is one supposed to stop one's self from feeling something?!?
20:15 [20:16] - In this verse, the people of Israel say to Moses after hearing the Ten Commandments "'Speak thou with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.'" Uh, but in verse 20:1, we read "And God spoke all these words, saying..." Didn't they already hear God's voice, then? The last verses of Chapter 19 relate God telling Moses to go tell the people "So Moses went down unto the people, and told them," but 20:1 doesn't say 'Moses spoke to the people, saying'; it just says "God spoke all these words." Who said what to whom?!? The verses that follow are more confusing. First Moses reassures the people they won't die ("'Fear not; for God is come to prove you, and that His fear may be before you, that ye sin not.'") Then "Moses drew near unto the thick darkness where God was" at which point God tells him: "Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel: Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven." So here it is implied that the people did hear God talking to Moses, in which case they did hear God's voice. Which way is it?
20:20 [20:21] - Neat idea here: "in every place where I cause My name to be mentioned I will come unto thee and bless thee" [בְּכָל-הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר אַזְכִּיר אֶת-שְׁמִי, אָבוֹא אֵלֶיךָ וּבֵרַכְתִּיךָ]. We need no set, "special" place to worship God; wherever we are, there God is.
Thursday, February 4, 2010
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> My question is what "statutes"? what "laws"? The Torah has not yet been given!
ReplyDeleteAccording to the Gemara, Moshe Rabeinu gave over a number of rules shortly after they left Egypt, during the Marah stop.
Alternatively you have to remember that these people didn't come out of nowhere. They certainly had a pre-exisiting common law, probably based on Egyptian culture, that they were using to handle legal matters before the Torah was given.
> Why in this case has God remained silent, not telling Moses what to do?
Yisro goes further and also says God will agree with him! However, here the answer is easy. "Justice delayed is justice denies" is not a recent concept. It was very clear to Yisro that for the system to work, people had to have access to judges and that wasting Moshe's time with petty complaints was stupid.
> Then God calls to him from the mountain?!? Not from the heavens, not from the top of the mountain, but from the mountain?
Actually it's a standard style in the Biblical text. Sometimes the second part of the action will come in the first part of the verse. Just transpose how you read it, that's all.
> So who got the message? The elders or all the people? (Or does "all the people" refer to just the elders?)
Generally it's held to be the elders who are acting as the representatives of the people. The elders would then transmit the message to their constituents and bring their response in turn to Moshe Rabeinu.
> Purity laws are still fundamental aspects of Orthodox Judaism, and of all the things in the Torah I have a problem with, this is way up there.
It's not the first mention, actually. Remember that Rachel refuses to arise for her father Lavan when he was searching her tent because "the way of women is upon me". He also doesn't go near her or try to search under her either.
Now there is a concept of ritual purity in Torah law that we don't observe any longer because in the absence of a Temple there's no practical use for it. One of the things that makes a person ritually impure is discharging semen. Halachah teaches us that a women discharges semen for 72 hours after intercourse (interesting medical fact only discovered millenia later: semen remains viable and capable of impregnating an ova for 72 hrs!). Thus any woman who'd done the nasty in the previous 72 hours would be ritually impure and ineligible to stand at Har Sinai. By avoiding women for 72 hours, neither the men nor the women would have to worry about this.
> Was God blowing a shofar?
ReplyDeleteRead the verse again: the sound of a shofar. Who says there had to be one actually making the noise? And if all our ancestors could hear it over the sound of thunder, it couldn't have been a regular physical one anyway.
> Not to be nitpicky here, but frankly this isn't a commandment.
That's right. Rambam says it's the first commandment but lots of others say it's a statement of fact, along the lines of "I'm God and on that authority, here are the big 10!" Sort of like how "We the people" isn't actually the declaration of independence but is just recording who was making it.
> God replies, you and Aaron come up, but "let not the priests and the people break through to come up unto the LORD."
For various suggested reasons, the entire episode of the giving of the Torah is broken up over two parshas and not presented in chronological order. At the end of the next parsha, we go back to the day before the giving of the Torah and some of the preparations made for that event. Thus at one point only Moshe was allowed up, at another Aharon and the priests were too and the verses get jumbled together.
> The commandment is no sculptures or pictures of anything at all, even if they are not intended to be worshipped?!?
This is a complicated piece of halachah. There are some who forbid all sculptures and pictures as part of the prohibition. When the first photographs were invented, some authorities forbid them based on this verse. Generally the rule is that you can't reproduce anything that might be worshipped. If you look at the later legal codes, some images are allowed if there's no confusion about it. For example, if you live in a culture where no one worships the sun, you can make pictures of the sun, etc. This is the most common approach today.
> Yet another instance of the Torah leaving out the key details of something supposedly of critical importance.
Taking someone's name, swearing in that person's name is what is being referred to. Hence the concept of swearing an oath in God's name. This is what is being forbidden.
> So why, then are shabbas goys all right?)
First, they're not in many cases. Only in certain limited circumstances are we able to get a non-Jew to perform labour for us. something most people don't realize. Secondly, you have to read the verse very specifically. Any non-Jew in my employ is under the obligation to rest. A non-Jew I have no power over isn't. So my butler would be covered, my neighbour who wants me to do a favour isn't.
> "that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee."
ReplyDeleteLook at modern culture for many examples of how dishonouring parents isn't considered so terrible anymore. At any rate, this is a hint at the great reward a person gets for fulfilling this commandment. The Talmud tells us that God compares the honour we give Him to the honour we give our parents, that's how important it is. Also consider the effect on society of children behaving in moral ways because they learned it from their parents who learned it from theirs, etc.
> This is also an interesting commandment in that it seems to prohibit an emotion rather than behavior or belief.
Someone who believes in God and believes He created and controls the world accepts that what I have is mine because God wants me to have it. What you have is yours because God wants you to have it. The act of coveting means I think God made a mistake giving it to you instead of me! Thus this final commandment demands complete faith in God's ability to determine what goes where in the world.
> So here it is implied that the people did hear God talking to Moses, in which case they did hear God's voice. Which way is it?
Remember what I said before, these verses are NOT in order. Secondly, according to the Talmud, the people heard the first two commandments from God directly and the other 8 from Moshe as told to him directly by God.