Q&A: What’s the point of the tests we read about in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)?
What’s the point of the tests we read about in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)?
Question
Hello,
What’s the point of the tests we read about in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh)?
Joseph running away from Potiphar’s wife is something a great many people go through.
Abraham leaving his home— that’s also something that happens to a lot of people who completely detach from their family and move to another country.
And so on and so on.
Throughout history many people have gone through absolutely crazy things.
Every day you can open a newspaper or watch TV reports and see amazing things that people have gone through and are going through.
You can also find people today who are going through things that are seemingly much harder. There are children, for example, whose entire family was wiped out in a car accident. There are people with very severe mental illnesses their whole lives, and so on.
There are people who go through tests much harder than Potiphar’s wife, and so on.
Answer
As far as I know, the Hebrew Bible was composed by the Holy One, blessed be He, not by Guinness.
Discussion on Answer
To Shay,
I am not worthy to enter the orchard of Torah. But from the little that I know:
“The deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children.” And we find that the deeds of the patriarchs also affected their descendants for generations to come. For example, and along the lines of what is said in the midrash on the verse, “Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet.” See there.
The power of the patriarchs in relation to the children, for good and for ill.
Michi,
Are you claiming that the Holy One, blessed be He, composed the Hebrew Bible?
You turn the Holy One, blessed be He, into a human being who writes books, and therefore you are an absolute idol worshipper, worshipping a human sitting in heaven and composing monumental books? Do you have statues of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy in your house that you kneel and bow to every morning?
There is such a genre of tales about righteous men.
The yeshiva head was walking down the street, absorbed in his profound thoughts about the law of the upper femur-head that slipped from the socket and entered the mortar, when he suddenly came across a crying girl. The yeshiva head shook himself out of it, and from the heights of his radiant Torah bent toward the girl and said to her, “What happened, sweet girl?” The girl shrugged and wiped her tears with her sleeve. The yeshiva head slowly nodded his head left and right and then once more to the right, and the faintest hint of a fatherly smile rose upon his holy lips.
How delicate are the pure souls of our rabbis, our luminaries!! By their light we shall walk and in their path we shall stride until the coming of the righteous redeemer speedily in our days, amen.