Halakhah zu Schemuel I 16:2

The same author, in his novellae on the Pentateuch, Meshekh Hokhmah, Exodus 4:19, finds an intriguing allusion to this principle in the verse "Go, return to Egypt for the people who sought your life have died." Since God explicitly commanded Moses to return to Egypt, all other considerations would appear to be immaterial. Why, then, does Scripture expressly tell us that Moses was informed that the danger had passed? Meshekh Hokhmah comments that God's command to Moses was inherently no different from any other commandment of the Torah and, despite the fact that Moses' mission was designed to rescue the lives of the children of Israel, Moses was under no obligation to risk his own life in fulfilling a divine command. Hence Moses might legitimately have declined to undertake the mission of rescue.¹⁷Similarly, when God directed Samuel to anoint David as king, Samuel responded, “How can I go? If Saul hears he will kill me” (I Samuel 16:2). In both instances, self-endangerment serves not simply as exemption from performance of a statutory commandment but even as grounds for avoidance of an ad hoc command. See R. Yitzchak of Vilna, Bet Yiẓḥak (Jerusalem, 5733), Parashat Bo. Only divine assurance that the danger no longer existed made it impossible for him to decline on a plea of self-endangerment.¹⁸The comments presented in Or Sameaḥ and Meshekh Ḥokhmah serve to establish that self-endangerment is not required even if the entire community of Israel, rather than a single individual, is endangered. Cf., however, R. Abraham I. Kook, Mishpat Kohen, nos. 142–144; Klei Ḥemdah, Parashat Pinḥas; R. Isaac ha-Levi Herzog, Teshuvot Heikhal Yiẓḥak, Oraḥ Ḥayyim, no. 34; R. Ovadiah Yosef, Dinei Yisra’el, VII, 38–40; and R. Pinchas Baruch Toledano, Barka’i, III, 32.