ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף דברים 4:39

Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi, may His memory be an honor, asked me why it mentioned, "I am the Lord, your God, that took you out of the land of Egypt," and it did not state, "that made the heavens and the earth and I made you." And this was my answer to him: Know that the levels of people’s faith, in which they believe in the glorious God in their hearts, is not equal. As the masses believe that which was heard by their ears, that their Master told them this. And above them are those that saw it written in the words of the Torah that God gave to Moshe. And if a heretic comes to challenge that there is no God, they will place their hands on their mouths, as they will not know [what] to answer. And the one whose heart has elevated him to learn the sciences – which are like stairs to rise up upon to the place of his desire – will recognize the work of God in the patterns and the plants and the animals, and in his own human body - that he will know the function of each limb, according to its development, and why it is [made] in such a pattern. And his heart will elevate him afterwards to know the matters of the planets, that they are the works of God in the intermediate world – that he should stand and know the time of when the sun should appear or the moon and how much [of that time] the sun will appear. And he will also know why the moon appears and Who caused it [to do so]. And all of this, he will know with clear proofs that have no doubt. And from [these] ways of God, the enlightened one will know God. And so did Moshe say (Exodus 33:13), “show me Your ways and I will know You.” And behold the glorious God mentioned in the first of the statements (of the Ten Commandments), “I am the Lord, your God” – and this can only be understood by someone who is an outstanding sage. As I have already explained in Parshat Veeleh HaShemot (Ibn Ezra on Exodus 3:15) that this God is alone and He exists without change and there is none besides Him who is eternal and there is none like Him that 'dwells from the beginning always.' And He supports the higher world with His power and the intermediary world with the power of God, and His holy angels that are in the higher world. And this lowly world that we are in, He supports with the power of God and with the power of the two higher worlds. And behold, the statement, “I am the Lord, your God,” suffices for the enlightened one in every nation. As [while] only Israel concedes to the making of the heavens and the earth which today is close to five thousand years ago, the sages of the nations of the world do not deny that God alone made the heavens and the earth; just that they say that God always makes [them] – without a beginning and an end. And behold, God made signs and wonders for Israel in Egypt until He brought them out of there, ‘to be for them a God.’ And so did Moshe say (Deuteronomy 4:34), “Or did God venture to come and take for Himself a nation.” And the explanation is that God did to Israel that which He did not do to all nations, since God created the intermediate world that it govern the lowly world according to the [astrological] system [over] everything – whether it is from the good or the bad, so will it happen, since so did God apportion it to the [constellations]. And behold it was in the system for Israel – according to the stars of their constellation – to still be slaves. And God with His power – because of His love for the forefathers – introduced signs in the lowly world that were not in the power of the intermediate world, and He took Israel out from the control of the constellations, so that they be a people that is an inheritance for Him. And because of this, our ancestors said (Shabbat 156a), “There is no constellation (mazal) for Israel.” And I will also elucidate this in a metaphoric fashion in Parsht Ki Tissa (Ibn Ezra on Exodus 33:21). And behold, because of the signs that God did in Egypt, Moshe said (Deuteronomy 4:35), “You have been shown, to know” – that all saw this: the sages and those that are not sages, the adults and the children. And he also added about the matter of the stand at Mount Sinai, that they heard the voice of God. Hence afterwards, he said (Deuteronomy 4:36), “From the Heavens, He made you hear His voice to instruct you.” And he said at the end [of this], that there is complete knowledge that a person can place into his heart until it is clarified in his heart that God is alone. Therefore, he said (Deuteronomy 4:39), “And you will know today and place it upon your heart.” And David said (II Chronicles 28:9), "And you Shlomo, my son, know the God of your father and serve him [with a complete heart]" - and knowledge is in the heart and not with the admission of the mouth. And behold it mentioned for the enlightened one, "I am the Lord"; and it added, "that took you out," so that the enlightened and the unenlightened one would [both] understand. And it said, "your God," since you are obligated because He took you out of a house of bondage 'to be a servant to Me, that you should serve Me and that you should be a people for Me, and I will be for you a God.' And Moshe explained this in the section, "And when your son will ask you" (Deuteronomy 6:20), since the explanation of the question is, "Why are we obligated to do the commandments of God more than every man? And is there not one Creator to all of us?" And behold, he mentioned three answers.The first is that ‘we were slaves to Pharaoh’ and He did us this great good; therefore we are obligated to keep all of what He commanded us, even if we don’t know the explanation of His commandments. And the second is because these commandments are not for His need, but rather ‘to benefit us all of the days and to keep us alive.’ And the third is that we should be righteous [so as] to inherit the world to come. And the men of research have found that all physical things are ten, and these are the main categories and there is none above them. The first one is the essence of everything and it is permanent, and the [other] nine things are all contingent, and they all rely upon the first and accompany it and come from it. For it is like measurement of one in the calculation of ten, since all of the calculation comes from it and every calculation is found in it, as it is the foundation. And behold, this first statement (of the ‘Ten Commandments’) that the glorious God said includes all of the commandments of the heart and the tongue and the deed, as one who does not believe in God in his heart has no commandment upon him. And a person is obligated to remember Him at every moment to honor Him; since all that he does, he should only do for the sake of His honor. And he [likewise] should only prevent himself from [transgressing] negative commandments for the sake of the honor of God alone. As a man who gives charity to a poor person should not give it for the honor of the sexton and not in order that people will praise him – as then, the level of man will be higher in his eyes than the level of the honor of God, who gave him assets – and he should prefer to [use] his money to give what he can to receive reward from God. And so [too], one who does a sin in secret so that it will not be made known to the king or that people [not] see him and he become light in their eyes. And someone who thinks this is crazy, since so is it written (Psalms 94:9), “if he creates the eye, does he not observe.” And behold, God sees in secret places that which people are not able to see in the open, since God knows his thoughts and his secret. And behold, he was afraid of the king that will die tomorrow, that he should not punish him, and was not afraid of the true King, in whose hand is his soul - in this world and in the world to come. And Rav Saadia Gaon authored “The Commandments (Azharot)” and categorized all of the commandments in these ten statements (‘Ten Commandments’) and found the glorious Name of God in the first five statements. And I have already explained that the first statement is the foundation, and all of the structures of the commandments [lay] upon it. And after it is written, “There shall not be.” And the sin of one who does not believe in the great God is greater than the sin of one who worships idolatry. As there are many that believe in God and they [nonetheless] sacrifice and burn incense to idolatry, like the ones that burn incense to the ‘queen of the Heavens’; as they think that it will cause good to be done to them, like they said (Jeremiah 44:18), “And since we have stopped burning incense to the queen of the Heavens, we have been lacking everything”; and it is written (II Kings 17:33), “The Lord they feared, but their gods they would worship; and so [too] Na’aman (II Kings 5:18), “in my bowing down in Beit Rimon.”And behold, these admitted [the existence of] God, however they combined another with Him. Therefore the Name of the glorious God is written in this statement. And in the third statement, It is also written, as the sin of swearing falsely is less than idolatry. He just disgraces the Name of God openly – perhaps he did this because of anger or a need, as in his heart, he believed in God and he does not combine another with Him. And in the fourth statement, the Name of God is written, as He rested on the seventh day. And behold, one who does work on Shabbat is denying the story of Creation. And this sin is less than the one who takes up His name in vain. And in the fifth statement, the Name of God is written, since parents partner with Him in [a person’s] creation. And if he does not honor them, it is as if he does not honor God. And the remaining five statements correspond to man – the first is the most difficult, as it is to separate the soul from on top of the body. And that which is after it is not in the body, and that which is after that – not to steal – is with money; and afterwards, it is with the tongue; and afterwards coveting is in the heart.

A more rational approach: The author speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven. Solomon warns man not to approach it over and beyond one’s mental capacities. We find other verses in Scripture describing G’d as מושל, ruler, such as Psalms 22,29: כי לה' המלוכה ומושל בגויים, “for kingship is the Lord’s and He rules the nations.” Keeping this thought in mind, Solomon warns you that when you sit down to eat with the ruler you better be clear what nearness to G’d entails, i.e. who qualifies for such an elevated station in life. You must appreciate that the food served at G’d’s table is soul-food, not of the type that is served at the table of a king of flesh and blood. The food you receive there is known as חכמה, the spiritual equivalent to the לחם, “bread,” served here on earth by human kings. The words בין תבין את אשר לפניך mean in essence that you must be sure to comprehend things about the nature of G’d by what is לפניך, “by what is before your eyes,” i.e. by the historical record of G’d’s actions. This is also what David said in Psalms 8,4: “when I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars that You set in place.” The word בין, “between,” suggests that there are two distinct kinds of insights that one must possess in order to properly appreciate the grandeur of G’d and His impact on history as well as on our individual fates. The very concept G’d, Creator, is not a point of departure in one’s thinking but is a conclusion one arrives at after having weighed all the phenomena we are familiar with. This is the meaning of Deut. 4,39: והשבות אל לבביך כי ה' הוא האלו-הים, “and let your heart come to the conclusion that the Lord is your G’d, etc.” When Elijah experienced a personal revelation at Mount Chorev after he had been disillusioned subsequent to what he thought would be G’d’s triumph at Mount Carmel, he had to experience a variety of supernatural phenomena before finally, a most insignificant phenomenon, a whisper, proved to be the real thing, the Presence of G’d (Kings I 19,11-12).
It is due to such considerations that Solomon hints that several insights have to be gained in order to appreciate certain truths about G’d.
If one is an intellectually oriented person, Solomon warns that one should not allow one’s intellectual curiosity to cause one to bite off more than one can chew (intellectually speaking); he couches the warning in these words: “thrust a knife in your gullet.” What he means is simple: you would do better to commit suicide than to reach beyond your intellectual capacity in coming close to the Lord. Solomon phrases this more clearly in Kohelet 7,16: “don’t act the wise man to excess or you will be dumbfounded.” You can see what happened to the two sons of Aaron who were guilty precisely of the arrogance of overestimating their mental/moral capabilities when they were described at the revelation on Mount Sinai as feasting their eyes on divine visions, breaching barriers that had been designed to prevent precisely such a disaster from occurring (compare Exodus 19,24 as well as 24,10). Death was decreed for them because they approached domains which were beyond what they were allowed to approach. This is the meaning of the opening lines of our Parshah.

And so explained in the Akeidat Yitzchak in Parashat Bereishit, regarding the verse And you shall know today and take to your heart that the Lord is God (Deuteronomy 4:39) — when you understand the daily rotation of the celestial sphere and its movements, you will recognize and know that the Lord is God. The Rabbi explained that this was the precious pearl that hung around Abraham’s neck (Bava Batra 16b), for he would proclaim loudly the existence of the Blessed One, and upon his death, he connected this knowledge to the sun’s sphere, as mentioned. Therefore, morning comes and His existence becomes known to all creatures. As for the wicked who neither knew nor understood God’s actions and did not see the work of His hands, their judgment brought about the morning, for the morning condemns them and “cuts off the feet of the wicked.” Therefore, it says that Abraham had God appear to him, as it is written And the Lord appeared to him, while he sat at the entrance of the tent in the heat of the day. For he was contemplating the path of the sun which heats the day, and through this investigation, God appeared to him. But the people of Sodom, who did not know God, were judged as the sun rose. Therefore it says in the heat of the day, as this was the matter upon which the decree against Sodom was sealed. Another explanation for why it mentions the heat of the day: Every judge needs to imagine as if Gehenna is open beneath him (Zohar Exodus 117a). And you already know that the phrase heat of the day is interpreted as referring to Gehenna, as it is said For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven (Malachi 3:19). And from here they learned that Abraham does not allow any circumcised person to enter Gehenna. Thus, according to our approach, this interpretation applies to the judges.