Q&A: What Do You Say About This?
What Do You Say About This?
Question
Tanna Devei Eliyahu:
“I call heaven and earth to witness against me that the Holy One, blessed be He, did not tell Moses to stand at the gate of the camp and say, ‘Whoever is for the Lord, come to me,’ and to have each man put his sword on his thigh and kill his brother, his friend, and his relative.
Rather, he said, ‘Thus said the Lord, God of Israel,’ and so on.
Instead, Moses reasoned on his own and said in his heart: If I tell Israel, ‘Let each man kill his brother, his friend, and his relative,’ Israel will reason by an a fortiori argument and say to me: ‘Our teacher, did you not teach us that a Sanhedrin that executed one Jewish person once in seven years is called destructive? Why then are you killing three thousand in a single day?’ Therefore he attributed it to the honor of Heaven and said, ‘Thus said the Lord, God of Israel: Let each man put his sword on his thigh,’ and so on. What is the meaning of what follows? Once he said it in the name of the Holy One, blessed be He, immediately ‘the children of Israel did…’
Answer
Do you have a specific question? If so, ask it. In general, I do not deal with aggadic midrashim.
Discussion on Answer
There is no necessity at all that this is what he thought. It may be that he is simply expounding an aggadic midrash in order to teach a lesson—that a person can interpret the words of God, or that he can tell “holy lies,” and so on. The Raavad also wrote, “Divine inspiration appeared in our study hall,” and several commentators already wrote that his intention was not something mystical, but merely to express a firm and agreed-upon position in the study hall.
He didn’t think so, and even so he declares emphatically, “I call heaven and earth to witness against me”—so he is teaching us…?
I already answered. I don’t see any point in repeating myself.
The question is: where did he get the idea that Moses wrote in the Torah, “Thus said the Lord,” even though he hadn’t heard it? What does “I call heaven and earth to witness against me” mean here, on what basis? After all, he was not a prophet, and even divine inspiration had already ceased according to the Talmud in Sanhedrin, from the end of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).
It seems he thought he had divine inspiration, based on some mystical meditative experience he had, like he said elsewhere: “I call heaven and earth to witness against me, whether man … immediately the Holy Spirit rests upon him.”
What do you say?