Kaisipang Hudyo sa Job 38:41: Akeidat Yitzchak & Duties

The view of some that the term prophet used to be applied to whoever happened to be the person of outstanding caliber in his generation, and that the definition is therefore not subject to objective criteria, is incorrect. Those who believe that prophecy is merely confirmation by G-d of wisdom acquired previously are also mistaken. The idea that a blind man-- through frequent usage-- may know his surroundings well, and regaining his eyesight will merely find confirmation of the truth of what he had surmised, is also not correct. If the onset of prophecy would not bestow additional information on the prophet, it would not be worth having. Whoever thinks along those lines belongs to the people who wish to limit the freedom of the Creator to change preordained events. Such people are therefore not of our faith! Anyone one who thinks in these terms cannot believe any part of the Torah which involves the supernatural or the miraculous. Solomon, in Proverbs 30,7-8, asks to be spared such fallacious logic as is expressed in the four generations of the verses following (10-14).

The author, after having taken issue with other commentators, points out that the line "the waters remained strong for one hundred and fifty days" (Genesis 7,24) is not to be understood as an additional rising of the water levels for one hundred and fifty days after forty days of rainfall. Rather, for a total of one hundred and fifty days the water level remained high enough for the surface of the earth to remain flooded. The highest levels of flood waters were recorded at the end of the first forty days, when the water level was fifteen cubits higher than the tallest mountain top. After that, the waters receded gradually. Since the ark could not come to rest anywhere till after one hundred and fifty days, the waters are still described as govrim, strong, prevalent. Though mountain peaks may have appeared prior to that, the turbulence prevented the ark from settling anywhere. At the end of one hundred and fifty days, on the seventeenth of Nissan, the turbulence subsided. The Arrarat mountain chain is rated as relatively low. After the initial forty days of G-d having completed His act of retribution, He activated a wind to accelerate the drying up process (G-d remembered Noach etc.). By the first day of Tammuz, the tenth month, surrounding mountain tops became visible. Forty days after that, about the tenth of Av, Noach sent out the first bird, a procedure repeated three times at seven day intervals. This brings us to the first day of Ellul. Between then and the first day of Tishrey, the gradual drying of the earth's surface continued. Another fifty-seven days later, the process had reached a stage enabling Noach and his passengers to leave the ark. (4) Because it had breached the sexual etiquette of the creatures in the ark (Sanhedrin 108), the raven was sent out as soon as Noach could be certain that he could survive outside the ark, not in order to determine the extent of the progress of the atmosphere's drying out. Since dogs and Cham could not survive outside the ark at that stage, they were not expelled from the ark, though they too had breached the sexual etiquette imposed on all passengers of the ark. With the dispatch of the dove, Noach's active search for resumption of a normal life on earth begins. The end of the paragraph illustrates G-d’s great Providence, in that not a single creature had failed to survive the long and arduous trip in the ark.

The commandment then emphasizes that the reward promised is not a natural sequence, but an act of Divine kindness, one that in light of the natural tendency to honour parents if only from a sense of gratitude, is hardly warranted. The mitzvah element of the commandment addresses itself first and foremost to the poor, who invest in looking after their father and mother rather than ensure they do not lose their inheritance.