Q&A: A Horse Is Prepared for the Day of Battle, but Victory Belongs to the Lord
A Horse Is Prepared for the Day of Battle, but Victory Belongs to the Lord
Question
The Rabbi has written a lot about the "change in policy" of God’s intervention in the world.
I’m asking about the traditional view: what did the author of Proverbs (and Psalms and others) think when he said that victory belongs to the Lord, that the Lord saves and redeems, etc.? After all, the wars of King David, and of all the kings of Israel, were conducted according to the laws of nature, and not like the miraculous wars of Joshua with stones from heaven, the falling walls, and so on.
A. What did they think? According to your claim, there is no such thing as a miracle within nature. Either nature is broken or it isn’t. So what is the meaning of confidence in the Lord’s salvation? Were they mistaken?
A. Why didn’t they already then adopt the view that the policy had changed? After all, they did not see miracles and breaches of nature in their wars (at least it is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible).
Answer
I didn’t understand the question. That is precisely my claim: in the past there were miracles, which of course departed from nature (because there is no miracle within nature). The diagnosis of when something is a miracle is entrusted only to prophets. Others can only guess, and usually that is not worth much. The Sages apparently were mistaken about this and thought that there are miracles within nature, for example in the Talmudic passage in Berakhot about praying for a past miracle. Everything has already been explained several times.
Discussion on Answer
In principle that’s possible, but go check whether in a military victory or a miraculous rescue (like Hanukkah or Purim) there was somewhere a breach of the laws of nature.
"The diagnosis of when something is a miracle is entrusted only to prophets"
A miracle is a breaking of the laws of nature, so why wouldn’t any ordinary person, or at least a scientist, notice it?