신명기 4:19의 유대 사상

Instead, according to my humble understanding, the apparent contradiction stems from a fundamental question: Why did the verse use the terms “the great luminaries,” “the great luminary,” and “the small luminary,” which require explanation? It is true, the explanation is obvious, but still the verse could have been worded in a manner which did not require any explanation. Scripture could have simply referred to the luminaries by name, i.e., Scripture could have referred to the luminaries as “the sun” and “the moon,” as Yosef did, in the verse:¹Bereishis 37:9. “Behold, the sun and the moon bowed to me,” and as Moshe Rabbeinu did in Parshas Va’Eschanan, in the verse:²Devarim 4:19. “and you see the sun and the moon,” and in Parshas Shoftim, which speaks of serving other gods including³Ibid. 17:3. “the sun or the moon.” Similarly, here, the narrative should have stated, “God made the sun and the moon, the sun to rule during the day and the moon to rule during the night.” It cannot be said that Scripture intends to teach the concept that the light of the sun and the moon is greater than that of the other luminaries, and that the light of one is greater than the other. That would certainly be of no purpose. Why would Scripture need to tell us something that is obvious?

Since the effort expended on creating anything that is known not to endure is wasteful, (compare chapter 58) and since we cannot ascribe activities to G'd that are wasteful or vain, we are faced with the problem why G'd extended Himself to take the Jewish people out of Egypt, lead them to the holy land, had them build a Temple by Solomon and achieve unheard of glory, only to let it all collapse four hundred years later. Philosophers offer two explanations. One is that G'ds prescience, foreknowledge, was inadequate, and that G'd involved Himself in all these efforts because He had not foreseen the end. The second explanation is that G'd lacked the power to forestall certain events. Since either of these explanations assumes a lack of perfection on G'ds part, they are inadmissible. Some Jewish philosophers including Gersonides, wish to describe G'ds foreknowledge of events as limited to the type of events which are not subject to decisions made by humans. They claim that G'd knows human decisions before they have been made, only when the latter correspond to the laws of nature as formulated at the time of creation. In other words, those human decisions that are only apparently free, such as the food intake necessary for survival, sleep necessary in order to function normally, wearing of protective clothing against the rigours of the weather, are things G'd knows all about in advance. Decisions of man which are truly free however, G'd does not know about until such a decision is actually made. In this way Gersonides explains why Moses wanted to refuse the appointment to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt, since he felt that the ultimate success could not be known beforehand. He thought that this had been the reason G'd had had to bring the deluge or to destroy Sodom. Following this line of reasoning, we could understand why G'd is described as vayinachem, He reconsidered. This kind of philosophy however, is opposed to our traditional concept of G'ds perfection. Maimonides teaches that G'd has full knowledge of the Past and the Future, being fully aware of any combination of events that will or might occur. Any other view would conceive of G'ds perfection being flawed somehow. If a deluge became necessary at a certain moment in human history, this was not due to inadequate foreknowledge by G'd, nor to inadequate planning by Him, but was inherent in the character of man himself. G'd had constructed man in a way that makes attainment of his ideal state an extremely difficult task. It is only through the passage of time and the lessons learned from history that man will ultimately achieve the ideal state that is his purpose. The Zohar Parshat Lech Lecha, 125, states that the reason the tzaddik, righteous person is compared to the date palm (Psalms 92,13) is, that once it is cut down it may take seventy years for another palm tree to replace it. Similarly, the righteous are not easily replaced. Also, since both a male and a female palm tree are needed in order for that tree to produce fruit, a tzaddik unless matched with a tzaddeket, i.e. a suitable wife is not really a tzaddik at all. Abraham and Sarah are classic examples of such a well matched pair, of course. What this means concerning our problem is that only in the fullness of time will man and woman reach the goal the Creator has set for them. Setbacks in their progress toward that goal are not due to any shortcomings by their Creator. If we conceive of mankind as a pool of raw material from which the best is to be selected and nurtured, then we get an idea of early mankind. The generations until Noach were predominantly earthy in their orientation, and only a very few were capable of that refinement of mind and spirit that enabled them to become the strain through which all mankind would ascend towards its goal. G'd had been aware of course, at the very outset of that situation. The word vayinachem means to rue something one knew beforehand would happen if the premise on which one had based one's thinking changes. It does not imply a change of thinking on the part of the subject, rather it reflects a change of circumstances on the part of the object of one's thinking. Since it was man that had changed, G'ds decision to prune mankind radically in order to refine the best strain was not a change of heart on G'ds part. Again, from Noach to Abraham no one was found from whom this strain could be refined still further. When Isaiah 51,2, proclaims "look upon Abraham your progenitor, and upon Sarah who suffered your birthpangs," the prophet wants us to know that our origins do not go back any further than to that pair of human beings. Inasmuch as creation itself had served little purpose until the advent of Adam, the first human being, the early generations of man found their real justification of existence only in the fact that they somehow produced a Noach and an Abraham. Abraham is told by G'd "I will make you a great nation," not "I will appoint you, or I will place you etc." In order to become a Jewish nation further changes have to take place before they can qualify for that task. Even when the Jewish people are described as "hail you Israel, a nation saved by the Lord," they are still not yet in their final mould and will have to undergo further refinements with the help of forty eight prophets, sufferings and tragedies. In the fullness of time the ultimate fully refined product will emerge which will represent the objective towards which G'd had striven all along. Israel as a nation, and mankind as a species, are being subjected to a program G'd Himself has set up, although the freedom of the individual is not being impaired thereby in the slightest. Midrash Rabbah Ruth section five on Ruth chapter 4,12, "may the Lord repay your labour and may your wages be complete from the Lord your G'd under whose wings you have come to find protection," says in the name of Rabbi Bunim, that we know the earth has "wings", that the sun has "wings", that shachar, morning has "wings", that cherubs have "wings" and that seraphim, angels have "wings". See how great is the power of the righteous, since they do not rely on the "wings" of any of the above mentioned, but on the "shade" of the One who has said "let there be a universe," as is written in Psalms 36,8, "how precious is Your favour o Lord, human beings can find protection under Your wings." (The Midrash lists scriptural proof for the five "wings" described) Our sages have listed five domains to which men turn for help in securing their needs when they feel the Lord has turned away from them. The "wings" of the earth represent nature and our knowledge of natural law, described by our sages also as "Prince of the earth." When king Assa consulted doctors instead of praying to G'd, he committed a grievous error. (Chronicles II 16,12) Already previously, when engaged in fighting Basha, king Assa had relied on a gentile ally rather than ask G'd for help. This is why he was punished. The "wings" of the sun, refers to the knowledge of astrology. Those who rely on such knowledge to plan their lives, are equally contemptuous of G'd. Solomon who describes people as "under the sun," refers to the kind of people who put stock in their knowledge of astrology. The "wings" of the cherubs refers to those who feel they receive guidance from invisible spirits who control the orbits of the planets. The "wings" of the seraphim would refer to the disembodied power that controls all movement, in short to "time" as a determinant in the universe. The "wings" of the morning, (Psalms 139,9) would refer to the domain which our sages call "the prince of the day."

Since human life is precious, harmful substances must be shunned, and even merely potentially dangerous agents must be avoided. This is best illustrated in the laws governing the Nazirite, the self-appointed ascetic who must not only abstain from wine, but also from grapes, vineyards, and anything even remotely connected with the fruit of the vine. If this is so in the case of a Nazirite, who had imposed strictures upon himself that the Torah had not even demanded of him, how much more must this concept apply to products expressly forbidden by the Torah? The more serious the nature of the prohibition, the more stringent the cordon sanitaire around such a prohibition to insure that the actual prohibition would not be violated. Since the Torah takes a very grave view of immorality, our sages even discouraged idle conversation with one's own wife. Concerning bloodshed, another cardinal sin, our sages compare the infliction of a public insult as equivalent to the sin of bloodshed, and thereby hope to forestall even more serious expressions of one's hatred toward one's fellow man. The same principle applies to the most serious of all transgressions, the sin of worshipping idols. All other sins, especially if committed while one is under the influence of one's basic urges, can be atoned for by repentance relatively easily. After David had confessed his guilt, the prophet Nathan while remonstrating with David, whose apparent crimes included bloodshed and immorality, was able to say to David, "G-d has removed your sin from you, you will not die" (Samuel II 12,13). This is possible when the sinner had all along retained his faith in G-d. This is also what the prophet foretells concerning a future when man's knowledge of G-d will no longer be beset by doubts, "And he that stumbles on that day shall be as David; and the house of David shall be like a divine being, as the angel of the Lord before them" (Zecharyah 12,8). In those days sin will not be due to lack of faith, but will be due only to the weakness of the flesh. Therefore, it can be expiated for at once, and the sinner, after his repentance, can be described as "an angel of the Lord." Nowadays, however, if someone knowingly commits idolatry, how could such a person obtain forgiveness? He would be subject to severance from his people, a penalty corresponding to the nature of his sin. Who could save him? Therefore the Torah includes laws which in themselves represent deterrents to the sin of idol-worship. The most common form of idol-worship is the adulation of heavenly objects such as the sun, the moon, and the stars. These bodies have lured people away from monotheism since time immemorial, and the Torah therefore does not tire of exhorting us "that you may not raise your eyes heavenward and be led astray to worship" (Deut. 4,19). There are many similar quotations, too many to list. All the prophets strove to wean the Jewish people away from these tendencies, and to prove to them that all these heavenly objects are merely tools which G-d uses in His wisdom to guide the progress of the universe. Jeremiah spends a whole chapter discussing this, employing even the chaldaic language to make sure that he would reach the whole nation, including those not fluent in Hebrew (Jeremiah 10).