ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף יחזקאל 33:11

A Midrashic approach (Tanchuma Tazria 9): Why has this paragraph not been introduced by the customary: “speak to the Children of Israel; if a person has such and such symptoms, etc.?” The absence of this introductory formula is to teach you that it is not the Lord who initiates afflictions as we know from Psalms 5,5 כי לא אל חפץ רשע אתה לא יגורך רע, ”for You are not a G’d who desires wickedness, evil cannot abide with You;” David does not belabour the obvious; he speaks about G’d having no desire to make any creature guilty of anything. We have proof of this also in Ezekiel 33,11: “as true as I am alive, says the Lord, G’d, I do not desire the death of the wicked.” On the contrary, what is it that G’d desires? He wants to find an excuse to justify His creatures’ actions as we know from Isaiah 42,21: ה’ חפץ למען צדקו יגדיל תורה ויאדיר, ”The Lord desires His creatures’ vindication, that He may magnify and glorify (His) Teaching.” If our paragraph had commenced in the normal way some people might have misunderstood and thought that G’d derives satisfaction from having to afflict people even though they were guilty of something.
Another comment by the Midrash: the words “evil does not abide with You” which we quoted from Psalms 5,5 mean that the name of G’d is not associated with events of an evil nature but only with things positive. When G’d created light and darkness, He did associate His name with the light but not with the darkness. In Genesis 1,5 the Torah writes: “G’d called the light day, and the darkness He called night.” When G’d blessed the first pair of human beings, His name was associated with the blessing for both of them, as the Torah writes (Genesis 1,28: “G’d blessed them.” On the other hand, when G’d decreed a curse on man, (Genesis 3,16) The Torah writes: “to the woman He had said, etc.,” and we find similar language in connection with the penalty decreed on Adam. The Torah writes (Genesis 3,17): “and to Adam He had said, etc.” You may ask that when G’d cursed the serpent we also find this kind of language, i.e. (Genesis 3,14) “the Lord G’d had said to the serpent, ‘because you have done this, etc.’” Our sages answered this query in Tanchuma Tazria 9 by saying that there are indeed three occasions when G’d did associate His name with something evil, such as a curse. The first instance is the case of the מסית, someone who seduces others to worship idols; the first personification of such a seducer was the serpent who seduced Chavah in Gan Eden saying to her: “G’d knows that on the day you (pl) will eat from the tree your eyes will be opened and you will become just like G’d” (Genesis 3,5). The serpent implied that just as G’d had created worlds so she and Adam would be able to create worlds; the serpent implied that G’d had forbidden eating the fruit because He was jealous of potential competition. The serpent implied that just as a skilled craftsman is anxious not to reveal the secrets of his craft, so G’d wanted to keep the secret of how He had created the universe. Seeing that the serpent had used G’d’s name in its seduction of Chavah, G’d in turn associated His name with the punishment, the curse.
The second instance of G’d’s name being associated with something evil concerns people who deliberately transgress the decrees of the sages whose authority has been given to them by G’d and has been confirmed at Mount Gerizim. The prophet Jeremiah referred to the fact that such people are guilty of death when he wrote in Jeremiah 11,3: “Thus said the Lord: cursed be the man who will not obey the terms of this covenant which I enjoined your fathers when I freed them from Egypt, etc.” The sin of these people is that they place their trust in man instead of in G’d as the prophet said in Jeremiah 17,5: “Thus said the Lord: ‘cursed is he who trusts in man, who makes a mere flesh his strength and turns his thoughts from the Lord.’” In other words, when does the curse mentioned earlier apply? When someone turns his heart away from the Lord. When Noach blessed his sons Shem and Yaphet, he used the name of G’d in his blessing, saying: ברוך ה’ אלו-הי שם, “blessed be the Lord, the G’d of Shem,” etc. When he cursed Canaan (Genesis 9,26) he simply said: ארור כנען, “cursed be Canaan;” he did not mention G’d in that context. When the prophet Elisha prayed to G’d asking for deliverance from the Arameans (enemy of the Israelites at that time, Kings II 6,17) he invoked the name of the Lord in his prayer saying: “Lord open his eyes let him see” (a reference to his attendant who was afraid). When he then turned to cursing the Arameans (verse 18 of the same chapter), Elisha only said: ”please strike these people with a blinding light.” The name of G’d was not invoked in the prayer to bring a curse upon them. Even when the Israelites were sinful, G’d referred to them with respect and honor. When G’d legislated the kind of animals which were to be offered by the Israelites, -when, where and under what circumstances,- the legislation is introduced with the words: “if one of you wishes to offer a sacrifice to the Lord, etc.” When introducing the צרעת legislation, however, the name of G’d does not appear. Clearly, even when the legislation presupposes sins by the afflicted, the Torah still does not wish to involve G’d directly, as the One who initiates the “curse.” This is why the verse starts merely with the words: “when someone develops a white spot on the skin of his flesh, etc.”
What sins cause such afflictions? In retribution for illicit sex. (Tanchuma Tazria 11) This is also what happened in Jerusalem whose inhabitants were struck by this disease because their sexual mores had deteriorated so much (Isaiah 3,16) ”because the daughters of Zion are so vain and walk with their heads thrown back, with roving eyes, and with mincing gait, making a tingling with their feet...the Lord will uncover their heads.” The word used there is שפח which is the equivalent of צרעת as we know from Leviticus 14,5.
The words אדם כי יהיה בעור בשרו שאת או ספחת, are equivalent to what we read n Chabakuk 1,7 איום ונורא ממננו ושפתו ושאתו יצא, “they are terrible and dreadful; they make their own laws and are overbearing.” The prophet speaks about Adam who was the direct creation of G’d, created in His likeness, who was composed of particles from all the corners of the globe and whose dominion before his sin therefore extended over all parts of the globe. At that time Adam was able to see with his eyes from one end of the earth to the other. Adam’s wife, Chavah was created from his very body, she who caused his mortality. Seeing that she gave Adam to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge she made him mortal.
Another Midrashic explanation: The words “terrible and dreadful” which we quoted from Chabakuk refer to Pharaoh who ruled over the whole earth as we know from Psalms 105,20. The words: “they make their own laws, etc.” refer to Moses who grew up in the very house of this wicked Pharaoh and eventually deprived him of his rule after bringing ten plagues upon him. Moses used to take a look at his holy staff to see which kind of plague was appropriate to smite Pharaoh with; he would then inflict this plague upon him; hence the prophet speaks about something “terrible and dreadful.”
Yet another interpretation of that verse in Chabakuk relates the adjectives in that verse to the principal characteristics of the four host nations who had control of the Jewish people in exile at different times. [The Midrash broadens its perspective of allegorical meanings; the interested reader is referred to the original text seeing that our author does not contribute to the understanding of this Midrash except quoting its text. Ed.]

ואני אקשה, seeing that G’d is interested in the sinner’s repentance rather than his death (as we know from Ezekiel 33,11 חי אני, נאום ה', אם אחפוץ במות הרשע כי אם בשובו מדרכו וחיה, “by My life, I do not want the death of the wicked but that he return from his wicked path and live”), G’d told Moses that He would bring on numerous plagues, all in order to increase the chances that Pharaoh would finally see the light and become a genuine penitent. He hoped that by demonstrating His greatness and His power this would eventually cause the Egyptians to recognise all this. At the same time, G’d also spelled out a similar thought in 9,16 but aimed at the Israelites, when He said: “that the only reason He had not yet killed Pharaoh was so that in the course of more plagues you, the Jewish people, would come to recognise both G’d’s greatness and His patience.“ He also wanted the Jewish people to learn how to both love and revere Him when they witnessed and thought about the meaning of all these plagues. There can be no question that without G’d stiffening Pharaoh’s attitude from time to time, he would have collapsed much sooner and would have sent the Israelites on their desired journey. However, this would not have been the result of his repentance and humbling himself before the Lord, involving genuine regret about his previous errors, but the result of his impotence to withstand the pressure applied to him. He would have acted out of terror of what the next plague would do to him and to his country. If we needed confirmation of this, all we have to do is look at what his servants said to him when Moses threatened with the plague of locust. They said to him: “how long will you be obstinate, do you not see that Egypt will go down the drain?!” There was not a single word of regret of past errors, no word of recognition that G’d could have killed them all long before this and that He must therefore be very patient, and kind, but mere terror forced them to utter these words. (10,7) Keeping all this in mind, it is foolish to ask how G’d could punish Pharaoh after he Himself had interfered with his decision-making process by “stiffening his heart,” ואני אקשה את לב פרעה, I will stiffen the heart of Pharaoh, etc.” not in order to punish him but in order to finally trigger repentance in his heart. The operative clause is “in order that I can demonstrate all these miracles of Mine in his midst” (10,1), the purpose being to bring about his humbling himself in repentance and genuine contrition. If that wish of G’d would indeed materialise, the Jewish people also would tell of G’d’s greatness, (למען ספר את שמי, having observed at first hand how the mightiest secular power on earth turned into G’d fearing human beings.) They would tell their children and children’s children the lesson they had learned that G’d’s apparent cruelty is actually an act of loving kindness as it results in His creatures coming to love and to revere Him. [Noach, who had survived the destruction of mankind by a deliberate act of G’d’s kindness to him and his family, had not been able to relate to his children what G’d hoped that the Israelites would be able to relate to their children. Ed.] The basic lesson in ethics we derive from all this is that when suffering an affliction we must first and foremost examine our past actions to find out where we went wrong, and try to find out what these afflictions are intended to trigger in our memory so that we can improve our conduct both vis-à-vis G’d and our fellow man.

There are yet another four types of “life” man may merit as a result of מצוה-performance: One is regular life on earth such as the majority of people enjoy who experience no special disabilities in their lives on earth and are in good health.
The second category of life on earth is that of people who have recovered from usually terminal sicknesses and near-fatal accidents. Such lives may be compared to vessels which have been reconstructed after having reached what could be considered as the end of their useful existence. We find a description of something like this in Job 33,25: “let his flesh be healthier than in his youth; let him return to his younger days.”
The third kind of life is that granted by G’d to the sinner who was slated for death but has repented with the result that G’d grants him an extension of life. This is what the prophet Ezekiel 33,11 speaks of when he said: ”it is not My desire that the wicked shall die but that he turn back from his evil ways and live!”
The fourth category of life is life after the resurrection. All of these four categories of life are part of the Torah’s promise וחי בהם that he who observes the commandments of the Torah may qualify for some or all of these lives.