Comentários de Citação sobre II Reis 3:14

G'd therefore warns Israel "do not make a פסל for yourself," i.e. do not destroy yourself by disqualifying your special relationship with G'd. The sin of idolatry brings in its wake a loss of the צלם אלוקים, the image of G'd in which man has been created. We know this from Psalms 39,7: אך בצלם יתהלך־איש, "man can walk upright only as long as he possesses the mark of having been created in the image of the Lord;" The Psalmist means that celestial beings will not take any notice of man once he forfeits his צלם אלוקים. We find a similar thought expressed in Kings II 3,14, when the prophet Elisha tells king Yehoram (the idolator) that "if I had not beheld (respected) the face of King Yehoshaphat king of Yehudah, I would not have even looked at you" the two kings were allied against Moav, Ed.]

A moral-ethical dimension of this verse may teach us the lesson spelled out in Megillah 28 in connection with Kings II 3,14 לולי פני יהושפט אני נשא אם אביט עליך, "if I did not (at the same time) behold the face of Jehoshaphat king of Yehudah I would not even look at your face." Elisha explained to Achav that it is forbidden to even look at a confirmed sinner such as he. G'd warns that we must not make ourselves into a molten image so that it will be prohibited to even look at ourselves.

ויאהב...אעבדך, in response to the question: “what shall be your wages?,” he answered Lavan that his wages would be in addition to food lodging and clothes that Lavan would give him his daughter Rachel as a wife. Even though Yaakov had spelled out which daughter, namely Rachel, he added the word הקטנה, “the younger one,” so that Lavan could not deceive him by giving him a different girl called Rachel. Some people question that seeing that the righteous marry with a view to producing children, why would Rachel’s exterior appearance have been of interest to Yaakov at all? After all they did not want their wives to be women who would excite their libidos, and it is clear from the fact that Yaakov was willing to delay marriage by seven years was due to his choosing a beautiful bride. He appears to have been angry at Lavan for having given him Leah instead, seeing that Leah was not as attractive as her sister. We have to answer this by saying that in choosing a beautiful woman as their brides, the righteous people had good intentions. They wanted their libidos to be aroused by them in order to produce many children together. Furthermore, they also wanted their children to be handsome like their mothers. Looking at beautiful people helps a person to remain in a joyous frame of mind, something which is a requirement for man for we know that people who are not in a joyful frame of mind cannot serve G’d in the best possible fashion. Even prophets cannot function as such unless they are in a state of joy, and on occasion they require stimulants such as music in order to put them in a more joyful frame of mind (Kohelet 5,19,--compare also Kings II 3,14-15)