Q&A: And You Shall Do What Is Right and Good — Morality?
And You Shall Do What Is Right and Good — Morality?
Question
The Rabbi has argued in dozens of places that “and you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord” is an instruction from the Torah that we must act morally.
Maybe if you read the three words “and you shall do what is right and good,” that is the impression one gets, but from the context it is clear that this is not the intention. The entire chapter (Deuteronomy 6) is the Torah encouraging us to keep the commandments; the previous verse, for example, is: “You shall diligently keep the commandments of the Lord your God and His testimonies.” The Torah repeats this in many formulations and styles, among them “and you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord,” where it is obvious to any reasonable person that in this context the meaning is the commandments of the Torah (or at least the will of God as reflected in the Torah). There is a similar expression in Deuteronomy 12, and there it is actually explicit: the Torah commands not to eat blood, and then: “You shall not eat it, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you, when you do what is right in the eyes of the Lord,” and a few verses later (at the end of the commands about blood): “Observe and hear all these things that I command you, so that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever, when you do what is good and right in the eyes of the Lord your God.” And in the next chapter (Deuteronomy 13) the Torah commands the law of the condemned city; this is the Torah’s description of it (I don’t think the Rabbi would define this as something very moral):
(16) You shall surely strike the inhabitants of that city with the sword, utterly destroying it and all that is in it, and its animals, with the sword. (17) And all its spoil you shall gather into its public square, and you shall burn the city and all its spoil completely with fire to the Lord your God; and it shall be a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt. (18) And nothing of the condemned property shall cling to your hand, so that the Lord may turn from His fierce anger and grant you mercy, and have compassion on you, and multiply you, as He swore to your forefathers. (19) Because you listen to the voice of the Lord your God, to keep all His commandments that I command you today, to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord your God:
There are many more places in the Torah and the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) where this is also explicit, and there is no need to go on. [See, for example: Leviticus 10:19, Exodus 15:26, and also note Jeremiah 42:6.] Not only is there not the slightest proof for the Rabbi’s words that this is an instruction to act morally, but it is absolutely clear that it refers to the will of God in the simple sense, as reflected in the Torah.
The Rabbi is known as someone with fairly good analytical ability. How could you have understood the verse as a moral instruction?
Answer
Nachmanides and the Maggid Mishneh also had no small amount of analytical ability, and they interpreted it this way. And the Amoraim, too, had no small analytical capacity, and they also understood the verse this way (search through all the rabbinic sources and you will see that this is the meaning—for example, in the law of the adjacent property owner and the principle of the character of Sodom). So I, too, small as I am, allow myself to join them and hold on to the hem of their cloak.
The context does not say much about this issue, because there are quite a few places in the Torah where a given instruction is not connected to what surrounds it. There are places where the Talmud says this explicitly: “here they taught a mixing of passages.”