Еврейская мысль к Дварим 28:36

11. The Rabbi: I would compare them to proselytes who did not accept the whole law in all its branches, but only the fundamental principles, if their actions did not belie their words. Their veneration of the land of prophecy consists chiefly in words, and at the same time they also revere places sacred to idols. Such is the case in places in which an assembly happened to meet, but in which no sign of God became visible. Retaining the relics of ancient idolatry and feast days, they changed nothing but the forms. These were, indeed, demolished, but the relics were not removed. I might almost say that the verse in the Bible, occurring repeatedly: 'Thou shalt not serve strange gods, wood and stone. (Deuteronomy 28:36, Deuteronomy 28:64), contains an allusion to those who worship the wood, and those who worship the stones We, through our sins, incline daily more towards them. It is true that they, like the people of Abimelech and Nineveh, believe in God, but they philosophize concerning God's ways. The leader of each of these parties maintained that he had found the divine light at its source, viz., in the Holy Land, and that there he ascended to heaven, and commanded that all the inhabitants of the globe should be guided in the right path. They turned their faces towards the land in prayer, but before long they changed and turned towards the place where the greatest number of their people lived. This is as if a person wished to guide all men to the place of the sun, because they are blind and do not know its course. He, however, leads them to the south or north pole, and tells them: "the sun is there, if you turn towards it, you will see it." But they see nothing. The first leader, Moses, made the people stand by Mount Sinai, that they might see the light which he himself had seen, should they be able to see it in the same way. He, then, invited the Seventy Elders to see it, as it is written: 'They saw the God of Israel (Exodus 24:10). Then he assembled the second convocation of Seventy Elders to whom he transferred so much of his prophetic spirit, that they equalled him, as is written: 'And he took of the spirit that was upon him and gave it unto the seventy elders' (Numbers 11:25). One related to the other concerning what they saw and heard. By these means all evil suspicion was removed from the people, lest they opined that prophecy was only the privilege of the few who claimed to possess it. For no common compact is possible among so many people, especially where large hosts of them are concerned, and equally well-informed as Elisha, who knew the day on which God would remove Elijah, as it is written: 'Knowest thou, that the Lord will take away thy master . . . to-day?' (II Kings 2:5) Each elder served as a witness for Moses, and admonished the people to keep the law.

And this is as the Midrash (Eichah Rabbah 2:17) concludes: "When the day arrives, 'The L-rd alone will be exalted on that day'" (Isaiah 2:17). This refers to the time of our Messiah. And this is what was intimated by Jacob (Genesis 49:10): "The staff shall not depart from Judah nor the sceptre from between his feet until Shiloh shall come, and his shall be the gathering of the peoples." As Onkelos translated "…forever, until Messiah comes, to whom the kingdom belongs, and to whom the peoples will give obedience." The intent of "and his shall be the gathering of the peoples" is that all will be gathered to him and he will teach them his judgments. The interpretation of the verse is as follows: "The staff shall not depart from Judah" to one of his brothers, for the kingdom in Israel will always be with the tribe of Judah. Similarly, the sceptre shall not depart from between his feet to be given to a different tribe. For so long as there is rule in Israel, Judah will be the ruler, until the advent of Messiah, the last of the kings of Israel. The idea is not that kingship shall never depart from Israel, for it is explicitly stated (Deuteronomy 28:36): "The L-rd shall bring you and the king whom you have set over you to a nation…," and the prophet [Jacob] would not assure the Jews that they would under no circumstances go into captivity so that Judah could reign over them. The meaning is, rather, that it will not depart from him to another of his brothers, and as long as there will be kingdom in Israel, it will reside in no other tribe but that of Judah.

If we examine the corporeal promises mentioned in the Torah one by one, we shall find that spiritual promises could not have been made in those cases. For all the promises in the Torah embrace the nation as a whole. As for the promises in the section “Behukkotai,” it is clear that they are all spoken in the plural and refer to the nation as a whole. But even those promises made in the section “Ki Tabo,” which are expressed in the singular, refer to the nation as a whole. This is proved from the fact that at the end of those curses we read: “The Lord will bring thee and thy king whom thou shalt set over thee … The Lord will bring a nation against thee from far, from the end of the earth …,” statements which, though made in the singular, clearly refer to the nation as a whole. Similarly, the promises of material prosperity mentioned in the Torah in section “ ‘Ekeb” refer to the nation as a whole.