Commento su Deuteronomio 13:6

סרה [BECAUSE HE HATH SPOKEN] סרה — i.e. something that is strange in the world (more lit., removed from the world), something which never existed and was never created (a pure invention), and which I never bade him say; detournure in O. F.

'יומת, כי דבר סרה על ה, even though he had claimed to speak in the name of the Lord and not in the name of some other deity, something which had convinced him that his crime was not subject to the death penalty. We encounter such a scenario in Jeremiah 26,16 where the elders of Jerusalem do not want to convict Jeremiah to the death penalty because he had spoken in the name of the Almighty G’d, i.e. had not denied His sovereignty, although he was perceived as a false prophet, no one accepting his predictions of doom and his call to repentance.

והנביא ההוא או חולם החלום ההוא, "And that prophet or the dreamer of that dream, etc." The Torah had to make reference to the prophet and to the dreamer separately; if the Torah had mentioned only the prophet I would have concluded that the death penalty which is the subject of this verse applies only to someone who had already enjoyed the reputation of being a true prophet. After all, the Israelites have been commanded to hearken to the words of a prophet in Deut. 18,15 where the Torah writes "to him (the prophet) you shall hearken." There is no command in the Torah obligating us to hearken to someone who proclaims that G'd appeared to him in a dream and ordered certain things; in fact many dreams are totally without spiritual significance. I would have reasoned that such a person has not misled the people sufficiently to warrant death. By including the dreamer in our verse the Torah makes plain that such a dreamer is equally guilty in the eyes of the law. If, on the other hand, the Torah had legislated the death penalty only for a person described as having had an appearance of G'd in a dream, I would have deduced from this that only the dreamer is guilty of death but that the words of a prophet who has been known to be a legitimate prophet must be taken seriously even when he asks us to violate the commandment and asks us to temporarily violate the commandment involving idolatry because of some emergency.

Uttered a fabrication. This includes any speech which removes Divine Providence from the lowly world. Therefore it states afterwards, “Who took you out of the land of Egypt, and Who redeemed you from the house of bondage.” Through this the concept of Divine Providence over the world and human actions became well known throughout the world..

Even if He had done nothing for you but redeemed you, etc. Otherwise why is the phrase, “Who redeemed you from the house of bondage,” necessary? For Scripture had already written, “Who took you out of the land of Egypt.” And when He took them out, they had already been set free [i.e., redeemed].

V. 6. יומת והנביא וגו׳ ,יומת וגו׳ ,להדיחך וגו׳: nach den הכמים (Sanhedrin 89 b), ebenso wie der מסית ומדיח des folgenden Gesetzes (V. 11) בסקילה.

כי דבר סרה, “for something perverse;” he falsified the message he claimed to have received from Me,” What he did was to lead you astray from revering Me. Where is the warning to such a false prophet not to practice his perversion given? It has been spelled out in the words of the Torah, with which he his familiar, “do not listen to him!” (Exodus 23,13) (Compare Torah sh’leymah by Rabbi Menachem Kasher item 182 on that verse.)

והפדך מבית עבדים AND WHO RELEASED YOU OUT OF THE HOUSE OF SERVANTS — even though he had no other claim on you but that He delivered you, it would be sufficient for Him to claim your obedience (Sifrei Devarim 86:5).

להדיחך מן הדרך, even though he had never asked you to abandon G’d, and had only presented an “updated” version of this same G’d’s commandments. He had, however, asked you to depart from “timeless Torah,” making G’d’s laws something that could be changed from time to time, thus making Moses the father figure of all prophets irrelevant. [my words. Ed.]

החלום ההוא יומת כי דבר סרה, "of this dream, will be executed for he spoke falsely, etc." The Torah had to write this as whereas we would have rejected a prophet who told us that G'd had spoken to him openly asking us to perform some kind of idolatry, we might have believed a man who claimed to have had a dream of this kind. Many strange and incomprehensible things occur in dreams, after all. At least we would have believed that the person claiming to have had a dream in which say the deity itself, i.e. the miracle he had performed invited us to perform certain acts, had in fact dreamed such a dream. Moreover, I would have reasoned that seeing all that person did was to tell us his dream without editorial comment, the Torah had to make it clear that such a person too must be executed. The Torah explains the reason by saying כי דבר סרה, that even if it turns out that what the dreamer foretold came true, he had no business to tell us of such a dream since by doing so he created a false image of G'd in our minds. G'd' goes on record that He could never give any such instructions which would involve acts of idolatry.

סור .כי דבר סרה bezeichnet sowohl das Abweichen von dem Pflichtgemäßen, als auch das Fortgehen aus der Reihe der Existenzen, wie ושבט מצרים יסור ,הבמות לא סרו (Secharja 10. 11), das Anderssein als gewöhnlich, Abweichen von dem Normalen, מה זה רוחך סרה (Kön. I. 21, 5). סרה, Substantiv, drückt daher sowohl den sittlichen Abfall, das Weichen von dem rechten Wege aus, תוסיפו סרה (Jes.1, 5), als auch das Aufhören einer Tätigkeit, מכת בלתי סרה. (Als Objekt einer Aussage bezeichnet es etwas völlig von der Wirklichkeit Entferntes, allen Grundes Entbehrendes. So Kap. 16, 16 von dem כי יקום עד חמם באיש לענות בו סרה ,עד זומם, worin Mackoth 5 a das völlig Unberechtigte der Zeugenaussage, die Nichtanwesenheit der Zeugen an dem Orte des angeblichen Vorganges ausgedrückt ist, שתסרה גופה של עדות. Ja, die Form תסרה scheint auf die Wurzel סרא ,פרה faul sein, hinzuweisen, eine Bedeutung, die der Wurzel סור ebenfalls nicht ferne liegen würde. סר סבאם (Hosea 4, 18): ihr Trank ist abgestanden, faul geworden. Ganz speziell aber kommt ׳דבר סרה על ד oder ׳אל ד wie hier noch zweimal von dem Missbrauch der Prophetie zur Lügenaussage im Namen Gottes vor, ׳כי סרה דברת אל ד und ׳כי סרה דבר על ד (Jirmja 28, 16 u. 29, 32). Aus beiden Stellen ist evident, dass in diesem Ausdruck סרה, nicht eben Abfall von Gott bedeuten und ׳דבר סרה על ד zum Abfall von Gott auffordern heißen könne. Abgesehen davon, dass sprachlich die Konstruktion mit. על und אל nicht entsprechend wäre, so haben auch dort Chananja und Schemaja keineswegs zum Abfall von Gott aufgefordert. Sie haben vielmehr im Namen Gottes etwas verkündet, wozu ihnen von Gott der Auftrag nicht erteilt war, אני לא שלחתיו ,לא שלחך ד׳ lautet bei beiden der Vorwurf. Sie befanden sich Gott gegenüber ganz in der Stellung eines עד זומם, sie bezeugten etwas von Gott und waren doch gar nicht zur Bezeugung in dieser Sache berechtigt, weil an sie gar kein Gotteswort ergangen war.

המוציא אתכם מארץ מצרים, "Who takes you out of the land of Egypt, etc." The Torah justifies the death penalty for the aforementioned dreamer. It recalls that when the Israelites left Egypt all of them were granted the vision of mind-boggling miracles in their waking hours. All of these miracles testified to the fact that only G'd was a power and only He had created nature, i.e. the universe. (compare what I have written on Exodus 20,2 in this connection). By what crooked kind of reasoning would the dreamer accept as truth something he merely saw in a dream which contradicted what he had seen when awake when he came out of Egypt? He should have discounted the dream instead of telling you about it! Surely, what he related to you could not have been the truth! The fact that he nevertheless told you about his dream makes him guilty of the death penalty.

להדיחך מן הדרך וגו׳: in dem Ausdruck מן הדרך wird Sanhedrin 90 a die Andeutung gefunden, dass in Beziehung auf ע׳׳ז selbst אפילו מקצת הדרך auch schon die Aufforderung zur geringsten, bloß momentanen Übertretung todesschuldig mache.

מן הדרך אשר צוך…ללכת בה, "from the path…He commanded you to go." The Torah further explains the severity of the sin of the "prophet" or dreamer. We have explained repeatedly that the violation of the second of the Ten Commandments is equivalent to violation of all the commandments just as observing this commandment is accounted for a person as if he had embraced all of the commandments. By suggesting that you violate this commandment, the "prophet" or dreamer has in fact become responsible for violating all the commandments. This also explains why if said "prophet" had suggested the temporary violation of any of the other commandments the Torah did not decree the death penalty. The reason is that such a sin did not involve the basic elements of the Torah. The difference of how we are to relate to the message by the prophet and dreamer respectively is as follows; if the prophet has been a true prophet up until now, we do what the people did when Elijah built the altar on Mount Carmel, i.e. we do not question it. On the other hand, we do not accept the message purporting to have been dreamed by someone who has no history of G'd communicating with him as we apply the principle that many dreams are meaningless.

ובערת הרע מקרבך, "and you shall destroy the evil from your midst." Perhaps the word רע refers to the evil urge which G'd describes as רע in Genesis 8,21 when He speaks of man's inclination to be רע from his early youth. This would account for the use of the letter ה before the word רע, as the reference is to an already well known רע. The Torah tells us that by sentencing and executing sinners such as the false prophet, this evil inclination will be removed from being an integral part of you, i.e. מקרבך.