Commentaire de citation sur Le Deutéronome 28:45

There can be no question that praising the character of a righteous person is the result of a good nature, one that seeks out the good in a person rather than the negative qualities he may have. This is why Solomon describes the time spent extolling the righteous, the virtuous, as better than the time spent eating honey. The reverse is true of someone who praises good qualities he has found in a wicked person. This reflects bad characteristics of the person doing so and if persisted in will lead to the one who thought he had discovered “goodness” in the wicked person praising him altogether, not just a particular good characteristic he had discovered in such a person. It is a psychological truth that a person is apt to extol the virtues of people whose general characteristics he shares, i.e. when you hear who praises whom you know that they are “birds of a feather.” In chapter 28,45 of his Book Proverbs, Solomon is on record as עזבי תורה יהללו רשע, that “praising a wicked person is typical of someone who has abandoned the path of Torah.” The reason is simply that people have a habit of praising those with whom they have the most in common, or מין במינו, in the parlance of our sages. King David already made the same point in Psalms 15,4 when he said: ואת-יראי ה' יכבד, “but who honors those who fear the Lord;” [He had previously spoken about that same person saying that if he considers himself a הולך תמים, living without blame, he would have to display his disdain for the wicked. Ed.]

This is precisely what makes the declaration concerning tithes so central. The illusion of security brought about by wealth allows one to forget how precarious his existence is, and consequently to simply ignore his obligations to God and to his fellow man. The Torah thus warns that if we cannot remember to serve God when times are good, His only recourse is to take away those good times in order that we will feel we really “need” Him (Devarim 28:45–48). The sort of vicious cycle which forces God’s hand to punish the Jews and elicit a “no atheist in a foxhole” response is exactly what the internalization of the bikkurim declaration is supposed to prevent.

אם לא תשמע בקול ה' אלוקיך לשמור לעשות את כל מצותיו וחקותיו אשר אנכי מצוך היום, with these words Moses introduces his admonitions, the ones which parallel chapter 26 in Leviticus, but are sounding far more devastating. Israel is described as “backsliding,” having, with the help of Torah legislation, been the frontrunner in civilised countries. Whenever the Torah speaks about the Jewish people abandoning the laws of the Torah, the intention is not to make us think that they slid into anarchy, but worse, they slid into adopting the laws of the prevalent cultures and civilisations. Clearly, this is an even greater affront to G’d the Lawgiver, than merely being passive and not carrying out Torah legislation. Social legislation involving tithes was largely ignored, leading to such great scholars as Hillel, and the High Priest Yochanan decreeing legalistic means of circumventing the legislation so that the people would not be guilty of violating such basic social laws as forgiving overdue debts at the end of the Sh’mittah year. The Rabbis, in a number of instances, were forced to preserve the spirit of the law, sometimes at the expense of what may be termed “the letter of the law.” The discontinuance of the examination by the priest of a woman suspected of marital infidelity, Sotah, is one such example, the Rabbis feeling that when infidelity had become the norm rather than the exception, it would not do to demand a miracle from G’d every time such a situation arose. Moreover, the chances were that the husband’s sexual life was not so free from blemish that he could point a finger at his wife. (Compare Shviit,1,3, Maasser Sheyni 5,15, Sotah 46,48,49) Other practices, such as referring disputes to pagan judges of the nation (Greeks or Romans) occupying Israel at the time, made it almost impossible for the Jewish judiciary, even when meaning to preside over Torah law, to be an effective legal instrument. All of these conditions became a self-fulfilling prophecy in the decline of the Jewish people as a holy nation and led to the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of Jewish independence on a land of their own.