When my mother came up sick and we knew her time was short, my wife and I were glad we’d set some emergency funds aside in our savings accounts.
Here’s the rest of my Shof’tim commentary. Or listen to it!
When you think about it, why would the L-RD need to declare something as simple and obvious as, “You are not to distort justice or show favoritism, and you are not to accept a bribe?”
Easy! Because it is not in our nature to be selfless and pursue justice at ADONAI’s perfect standard, or even at the Torah’s minimum standard. As any parent knows, you teach your children what they do not already know, not what they already know. You teach what they are supposed to do, not what they are already doing.
So the answer to my question of how we got stuck dealing with all this mess of determining truth and justice may have begun in Genesis, but it is also explained in this week’s parashah.
Deuteronomy 18:15-19
“ADONAI will raise up for you a prophet like me from among yourselves, from your own kinsmen. You are to pay attention to him, just as when you were assembled at Horev and requested ADONAI your God, ‘Don’t let me hear the voice of ADONAI my God any more, or let me see this great fire ever again; if I do, I will die!’ On that occasion ADONAI said to me, ‘They are right in what they are saying. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their kinsmen. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I order him. Whoever doesn’t listen to my words, which he will speak in my name, will have to account for himself to me.”
This passage is one of the key messianic promises ADONAI makes to us, and he makes it precisely because he knows that no matter how many regulations he lays down for priests and judges and kings, none of them can ever live up to it completely, not to a standard that meets not just the compromise of Torah, but the perfect standard of ADONAI.
That could be accomplished only by the promised messiah, Yeshua. He is the one who me must, at last, allow to rule us, as only He is able to do so perfectly and free from selfish interests. We pushed God out of His role as justice-giver in the Garden, and rejected the restoration of ADONAI to that role by asking at Horeb not to hear His voice directly. Therefore, we must struggle to achieve justice and mercy, and to keep our land and our lives and our households and our families free from wickedness, free from injustice, free from the shedding of innocent blood. Yet ultimately we are not the solution to the problem, because ultimately we all fail. There is one solution, and it is found in the person of Yeshua the Messiah.
Preparing for my next commentary
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
Already, I am preparing a rough draft in my head of my next Torah commentary. It will be on the parashah of Vayelekh, covering only Chapter 31 of Deuteronomy. In this parashah, Moshe is being told to prepare for his own death by Adonai; having recently lost my mother to cancer, this may end up being a very personal commentary.
It’s not like Moshe is sitting around giving out his secret recipes for sweet potato casserole, either; he’s being told by the L-RD that despite of 120 years of faithful service to Adonai and standing in the gap between Adonai and the Jewish people, they will still break covenant with Adonai one Moshe is gone.
What a burden to be given just prior to death! Like a parent being told, “After all your prayers and worry over your son or daughter, they are still going to go mess up their lives.” Certainly, there is the messianic hope to sustain Moshe at the hour of his death, but there is little else.
Tags: commentary, Moshe, sweet potato casserole, Vayelekh
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