Q&A: Regarding “And You Shall Do What Is Right and Good”
Regarding “And You Shall Do What Is Right and Good”
Question
Hello Rabbi, and have a good week,
In tractate Bava Metzia 16b it says:
From the standpoint of strict law, the land does not have to be returned; it is only because of “and you shall do what is right and good in the eyes of the Lord” that the rabbis said it should be returned.
It seems that were it not for the Torah’s saying “and you shall do what is right and good,” then ostensibly we would not have been expected to do what is right and good. That seems, on the face of it, to go against your view that we are expected to act morally even if we were not halakhically commanded to do so.
So I am asking: why did the Talmud need the verse “and you shall do what is right and good” in order to justify the ruling that the land should be returned?
Best regards,
Answer
Even aside from this Talmudic passage, you could ask about the verse itself: why is it necessary? This verse does not command anything as such (as far as I know, those who enumerate the commandments do not count it as a commandment); rather, it expresses an expectation that we be moral. In the fourth notebook I explained that the moral obligation too exists because the Holy One, blessed be He, expects it of us. If so, the verse is brought as a source for the idea that one must act morally—and this is not a halakhic source. Beyond that, it may also simply be a conventional turn of phrase. They want to say that this is for reasons of morality, and they express that by means of a verse.