Halakhah к Бамидбар 23:23

“For there is no enchantment with Jacob” (Num. 23:23). Our Creator commanded us, “neither shall ye practice divination” (Lev. 19:26). With our wrongs that are multiplied as of this day, they are divining in Israel.¹Jonah Gerondi, Sefer ha-Yirah, ed. Benjamin Silber (Jerusalem: Horeb Publishers, 1952), Chapter CCXXVIII, p. 25a. They search their perversions and recall at the conclusion of the Sabbath not to eat eggs, nor take fire twice²In the event that the fire does not kindle the first time, he is not permitted to go back and take fire a second time. Not eating eggs refers to the rest of the week. if someone is sick in the house or gave birth within nine days, and many such things that the mouth cannot speak of wherein they transgress the commands of our King. And there is another form of divination quite prevalently practised. Standing and looking into the fire and seeing burning coals, they say, “We will have a guest,³Toseftah, Shabbath 7:2. however, if you extinguish it with water the guest will fall into the water,” and there is no divination graver than this. And the contention that this is true and firm and that numerous people have proven it, is but Satan’s doing, it is he who leads them astray. When Satan sees this one divining, and saying, “The guest will fall into the water,” then Satan says, “I will go and throw the guest into the water in order to deceive him that this be a sign to him to divine for ever.”⁴Abodah Zarah 55a. And woe unto those who do so, for they transgress numerous prohibitions such as, “Neither shall ye practice divination” (Lev. 19:26).⁵These are negative commandments. “There shall not be found among you etc…. one that useth divination” (Deut. 18:10). “Neither shall ye walk in their statutes” (Lev. 18:3). Moreover, they render false the testimony of the Torah, “For there is no enchantment with Jacob” (Num. 23:23). Those who vow when a headache occurs never to eat from the head of an animal, or when they suffer with their intestines never to eat intestines, follow the customs of the Amorite.⁶Daath Zekenim Baale Tosafoth, Genesis 32:33. Trust only in the Holy One, blessed be He, and He will cure you. Also we need not be apprehensive about a sign, except in the way our scholars intended (directed us) as in the case where they said, “On New Year’s let them eat of the head of a ram, because of the thought, ‛Let it be the head of a good year,’ also of various sweets because of ‛a sweet year,’ ‛let him raise a cock,’ also let him ‛kindle a light in the house that the wind does not extinguish.’”⁷Horayoth 12a. Those people that need to fulfill a command such as start the studies of their children, or some such other command, but say, “let us wait until the new month,” even though this is not divining it is not good, for who knows whether he will live or die within the month, with the result that he may die and not fulfill the command. The best procedure is to perform a meritorious deed when it presents itself and not postpone it, thus our scholars expounded,⁸Rashi, Yoma 33b. “And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread” (Exod. 12:17). Do not say matzos, unleavened bread, but mitzvos, commandments, which is to say, if a meritorious deed presents itself to you, do not allow it to become sour but perform it immediately.⁹The two words share five letters in common. Adding a vav to the word matzos (unleavened bread) gives us a new Hebrew word meaning “commandments.” And if he intended to perform a meritorious deed but was accidentally prevented from doing so Scripture credits him as if he had performed¹⁰Kiddushin 48a. it, for it is said, “And that thought upon His name” (Mal. 3:16). The Holy One, blessed be He, equates a good thought with action.

It is from the roots of the commandment [that it is] because these matters are crazy things and total foolishness; and it is not fitting for the holy true people that God chose that they pay attention to false words. And also because they are a cause to push man away from faith in God, may He be blessed, and from His holy Torah and to come through them to complete denial [of God and/or Torah]; as he will think that all of his good and all of his evil and all that happens to him is coincidental, and not from the supervision of his Creator. And it will happen that through this he will go out from all of the principles of the religion. Therefore, since God, may He be blessed, wanted our good, He commanded us to remove this thought from our hearts. As all the bad and the good comes out of the mouth of the Most High, according to the actions of man - if they are good, or if they are evil. And the divinations do not [help or hurt], and as it is written (Numbers 23:23), "As there is no divination in Yaakov and no clairvoyance in Israel." The details of the commandment are in the seventh chapter of Shabbat [in Chapter 6 of Sanhedrin] and in the Tosefta Shabbat, Chapter 8.