Q&A: I Am the Lord
I Am the Lord
Question
Why is “I am the Lord your God” counted as a commandment? If a person does not believe, how can it make sense to command him? And if he does believe, then it isn’t really a command.
Answer
Many have already raised this difficulty. I once thought this was a declarative commandment (like positive commandments 85–86 in Maimonides’ Book of Commandments), meaning a kind of festive declaration that opens the Book of Commandments. But my friend Rabbi Dror Pixler pointed out to me that this is probably not Maimonides’ intent, since he lists this commandment as one of the sixty constant commandments.
Various other suggestions have been offered: the obligation to study faith and deepen it; the obligation to live it and internalize it; and so on.
By the way, in my view the question is much harder than that. Belief is a fact (that God exists), and as such it is not something that can be commanded, nor is there authority over it. There is no authority over facts at all, not only with respect to faith. Regarding a fact, one can only try to persuade me, not command me to believe. Because if I do not believe, what good will the command do? At most, I can say that I believe, while in my heart I do not believe. Only persuasion is relevant with respect to facts. Authority applies only to matters of Jewish law, because there it makes sense to command me to act in a way that I think is incorrect by force of authority.
Discussion on Answer
To Shai and the Rabbi
Actually, by the straightforward plain meaning, there is no positive commandment here at all, but rather part of the prohibition of idolatry (or associating something with idolatry). That is: “I am the Lord your God… you shall have no other gods…” (“I am the Lord your God, and not another your god”). This is a common style in the Torah with prohibitions, such as: “From every tree of the garden you may surely eat… but from the tree of knowledge… you shall not eat from it.” It is clear that according to the simple plain meaning there is no positive commandment to eat from the trees of the garden; it is a permission that serves as an introduction to the prohibition. Or: “Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work…” There is no positive commandment to do labor on the six days; it is a permission preceding the prohibition of labor on the seventh. Or: “These are the animals that you may eat… these you may eat. But these you shall not eat…,” “Every clean bird you may eat… but this is what you shall not eat from them…,” or “Remember what Amalek did to you… do not forget.”
Our Sages, of course, expounded in all these places that there is also some kind of positive commandment in them.
Clearly. But Maimonides counts it, and the question is about him.
Rabbi Michi, I couldn’t understand why you see the commandment to offer sacrifices in the Temple (positive commandment 85) and the commandment to redeem consecrated items that developed a blemish (positive commandment 86) as declarative commandments.
With God’s help, Wednesday, the 23rd of Sivan, 5779
Just as there is the commandment “Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it,” which obligates a person to know that this day is the Sabbath, so too if a person does not care when the Sabbath is—even if he avoids labor all his life and thus never ends up desecrating the Sabbath—he has still neglected the positive commandment of “Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it.” Therefore a person is obligated to look at a calendar (or the Sabbath bulletin 🙂 ) so that on the Sabbath day he knows that he is in the Sabbath.
And so Maimonides states that there is a “commandment to know”: a person must be aware of the fact that there is a Creator and Governor of the world, and he cannot say, “Maybe there is and maybe there isn’t, so just to be safe I’ll keep all the commandments.” Rather, he is obligated to clarify, study, and internalize it, so that the fact that there is a Creator and Governor of the world will be fixed in his awareness.
Best regards, Shatz
David, I made a mistake. Positive commandments 95 and 96. They are not really declarative, but they aren’t commandments of anything either. You can see that according to Maimonides, a commandment means a clause in the law book, including a definitional or declarative clause.
Rabbi Michi,
I interpret the verse like this:
“I am the Lord your God” (your ruler), “you shall have no other gods” (another ruler that you accept upon yourself) “before Me.”
In other words, the commandment is not to believe that there is a God; belief in God is a given. The command is only about accepting His divinity.