Shofetim has two very famous verses. They are both concerned with justice.
Deut 16:20 “Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”
And 19:21 “Nor must you show pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.”
I have two not-particularly-related things to say about these verses, and if I were disciplined and professional and all that, I'd pick just one. But I'm going to say them both. First: Yes, you must show pity, and no, we don't take an eye for an eye. The rabbis made sure of that. Second: To pursue justice is to accept the burden of free will. This is the essence of being commanded. This is what it's all about. So those are my two big ideas, here's how I get to them:
Showing posts with label blesssing and curse. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blesssing and curse. Show all posts
Monday, August 16, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Re'eh -- On gods whom you have not experienced
Sorry, devoted readers (hi Mom!), I was offline for a whole week in Vermont, and so I missed posting Re’eh on (late) time.
In Re’eh, we get admonitions to follow only Adonai, our God, and not to follow any other Gods, “whom you have not experienced.” We also get some of the classic Deuteronomic admonitions to only worship and sacrifice to God at His Temple in Jerusalem, and not to sacrifice at ‘high places’ all around the land of Israel, as had been done in the past. These admonitions reflect a priestly concern during the time of King Josiah to consolidate worship at the temple, and to root out practices like sacrificing at stone pillars that bring Israelites, so the priests worried, perilously close to idolatry. (No matter that all the earliest ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob among others, are specifically recorded to have erected stone monuments at sacred places all over Canaan, and sacrificed to their God at those places. Such is no longer to be countenanced, in this Temple phase of Israelite religion.)
It’s easy to be flippant about the ulterior motives of the authors and collectors of the Torah, this oddest of collections: Well, this guy was making a power grab. This was an old ‘just so’ story about how a place came to be named what it was named. These are records of wars; these are myths that came from Babylonia; everyone tells this story of a great Flood; lots of nations had legal codes with language just like this one. What’s so special about all this, that I should read it still and think about it still and struggle still with its words, infuriating, evocative, repetitive, inexplicable, dull, ridiculous, contradictory words?
In Re’eh, we get admonitions to follow only Adonai, our God, and not to follow any other Gods, “whom you have not experienced.” We also get some of the classic Deuteronomic admonitions to only worship and sacrifice to God at His Temple in Jerusalem, and not to sacrifice at ‘high places’ all around the land of Israel, as had been done in the past. These admonitions reflect a priestly concern during the time of King Josiah to consolidate worship at the temple, and to root out practices like sacrificing at stone pillars that bring Israelites, so the priests worried, perilously close to idolatry. (No matter that all the earliest ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob among others, are specifically recorded to have erected stone monuments at sacred places all over Canaan, and sacrificed to their God at those places. Such is no longer to be countenanced, in this Temple phase of Israelite religion.)
It’s easy to be flippant about the ulterior motives of the authors and collectors of the Torah, this oddest of collections: Well, this guy was making a power grab. This was an old ‘just so’ story about how a place came to be named what it was named. These are records of wars; these are myths that came from Babylonia; everyone tells this story of a great Flood; lots of nations had legal codes with language just like this one. What’s so special about all this, that I should read it still and think about it still and struggle still with its words, infuriating, evocative, repetitive, inexplicable, dull, ridiculous, contradictory words?
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