And He Saw That There Was No Man: On Seeing the Future and Prophecy

The rabbi’s opening post

And He Saw That There Was No Man: On Seeing the Future and Prophecy

Sent on 10/1/2007

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And He Saw That There Was No Man: On Seeing the Future and Prophecy

As is well known, Moses goes out to look upon their suffering, and he sees an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man. He looks this way and that, strikes the Egyptian, and buries him in the sand. Rashi brings the midrash on “and he turned this way and that”—that he saw that no one would in the future come forth from him who would convert.

At first glance, this is prophetic vision: Moses saw the future already at that moment, as though he had rolled back the axis of time. But this is of course incorrect. For if one rolls the axis of time backward, one sees what will occur in the future. Yet it is clear that in actual fact, in the future, no one at all would come forth from this Egyptian who would convert, since in another moment Moses kills him. The dead generally do not have children. If so, Moses determined the future with his own hands; he did not foresee it.

So what, after all, did Moses see?

It seems that he contemplated the present, not the future. He saw the Egyptian as he was then and there, and saw that nothing positive could come from this fellow. Incidentally, this also resolves the contradiction in the words of the Sages regarding Ishmael, “where he is”—that a person is judged according to what he is at present.

On this I have two questions:

1. Perhaps every prophet in fact contemplates the present and not the future. He sees what is liable to emerge from the present. And if you should say that this contradicts free choice—well, foreseeing the future also contradicts free choice (and one may analyze the Ra’avad’s discussion of “the vision of the astrologers” in chapter 5 of Hilkhot Repentance, halakhah 5). Moreover, this anticipation is not necessary or absolute; rather, it is what will emerge from the present according to the natural course. There is always the choice to change it. And so wrote the Shelah explicitly in the introduction to his book, in the section “Bayit HaBechirah.”

Accordingly, prophecy is not an ability to see the future, but an ability to see the depth of the present.

2. According to the Sages, someone did in fact come forth from that Egyptian who converted (the assumption is that “would convert” means: would be a Jew, and not: would be righteous): namely, our teacher the blasphemer (the son of Shelomit bat Divri and that Egyptian).

Now, if this is a matter of seeing the future, there is an answer: the blasphemer came forth from him before he was judged by Moses (it must be so, for after he died no one could come forth from him). But according to what we have said, that this is a matter of seeing the present—that from his state at that moment no one could come forth who would convert—then from his earlier state someone of just that sort did come forth. So how, then, could it be determined that no one who would convert could come forth from him?

Thus we see that Moses’ vision (and perhaps that of all the other prophets as well, as I wrote above in the name of the Shelah) is only by way of probability, not necessity, and free choice can alter it.

However, if “would convert” means “would be righteous,” then there is no difficulty. The blasphemer may have been a Jew, but he was not righteous. Indeed, the commentators have already discussed (who? I do not remember) why that blasphemer was Jewish, for he was the son of an Egyptian man, and before the giving of the Torah Jewish status followed the father and not the mother. Perhaps, then, the point is that he converted, and thus someone who converted did indeed come forth from him.

Source (“Stop Here, We Think” forum): http://www.bhol.co.il/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=2125858