MISHPATIM - 3

SHEMOT 23:20 - 24:18

Eitz Hayim 474; Hertz 319; Plaut 589

David B. Brooks - Adath Shalom - Ottawa - 13 Feb 2010

What a come-down is this third of the Parashah in the triennial cycle! For the first two years, we go through a long sequence of laws and regulations incumbent upon the Israelites for managing work, slavery, injuries, property and behaviour B a text so important that it is sometimes called Code of the Covenant. Then, in this final third, we are back to what Rabbi Plaut calls ACultic Ordinances@ (587). However, as part of those cultic ordinances there are two re-affirmations of The Covenant. While the first is cele-brated with the usual sacrifices, the other is celebrated in a format more familiar to us, and I will come back to that point at the end. But, first, those two re-affirmations.

Our portion begins with God telling Moses that an angel is going to be sent to lead the Israelites into the Promised Land. As Susan Landau-Chark pointed out a few weeks ago, at this point God is doing all the talking and Moses has trouble even getting in a word in these bilateral meetings. How different it is when Moses is talking to the Israelites! Whatever Moses might have meant when he told God at the burning bush that he had a heavy mouth and a heavy tongue (Shm 4:10), Moses now has no problem at all with public speaking. The text (Shm 24:3) says that he came before the people and told them all the commands and all the rules that God has set out for them to follow. As he presumably hopes they will, the Israelites agree to Ado all that the Lord has commanded.@ Indeed, the text seems to say that their agreement was unanimous ($(! -&8 .3%<-, 03*&). Then and only then does Moses write down all of God=s commands (24.4). Clearly, the Israelites were already a literate people with a culture based on written, not arbitrary, laws and regulations.

This is the first re-affirmation. The original affirmation came in the previous parashah, Yitro (Shemot 19:8), when God has informed Moses of what the people need to do to prepare themselves for the Theophany, the time at which they will in some sense be close to God and receive the Ten Commandments. Moses passes on the instructions to the people, and they had answered at that time in much the same way and in almost identical words that they would do all that God asked. But just what had they agreed to do? No doubt still somewhat shell-shocked from the events of the previous few weeks, and surely afraid of this God who does not hesitate to wield power, it is reasonable to suggest that they were willing to agree to anything. However, if we take their affirmation literally, they only agreed to prepare themselves properly for the Theophany; nothing more. Perhaps implicitly they accepted everything that was to come afterwards, and, if so, that was understandable but it was not, as we might say, a legally binding contract.

Clearly there was a need for re-affirmation. But just what they had agreed to in this second time through? Again, we must read the words carefully. Moses had heard and repeated aloud all the commands and the rules (respectively, d=varim or divrai haShem and misphatim). Remember that it is an axiom of Jewish exegesis that no two words in Torah can have the same meaning. As the note to 24:3 in Eitz Hayim explains d=varim are categorical (Ayou shall . . .@) with enforcement left to God; in contrast, misphatim are conditional (Aif - then@) with enforcement by human courts. Now look carefully at how the people answered Moses. The translation in Eitz Hayim is precise. They accepted all the commands B ie, the d=varim; they said nothing about the rules, the misphatim.

Did Moses notice the cautious response of the people? He must have because the very next day, he insists on a second re-affirmation. However, typically for our Torah, this qualified acceptance of the Covenant by the people is recorded even though it casts the Israelites in a bad light. Indeed, it later became the source of a major heresy in Judaism. In the post-Biblical period, some groups were trying to throw off the AYoke of Torah,@ and they argued on the basis of this text that only the Ten Commandments, or in other cases, only the categorical commands, are divine and therefore obligatory. All the rest is human in origin, and therefore open to adjustment or even revocation. Jewish history does not report a lot of theological heresies, but this is one of them.

Returning to the need for an unqualified acceptance of the Covenant, Moses for once keeps his cool. He seems to ignore the partial acceptance and orders a celebration for the next morning. He also erects twelve pillars to represent the 12 tribes. We have no idea how Moses spent the evening, but I see him calling together his most trusted supporters and pointing out that everything he recorded came from God. Not just the commands; the rules too. He sends them out to talk, explain, argue, plead, cajole B whatever it takes B in order that the people think again, be less cautious. He might well have said (and meant it literally), AFor Heaven=s sake, do not blow your chance to become God=s chosen people.@

The next day, after a whole lot of burnt offering and of sacrificed bulls, Moses took the blood and divided into two basins. (I am skipping over many details.) The blood in one of the basins was then splashed on the altar, an act which symbolically commits God to the Covenant. Then Moses poses the question to the Israelites for the second time in two days. He must have been nervous, for this time the Torah says that he read the Covenant (;*9"% 952.) aloud to the people B literally, in their ears (24:7). This time the people answered in a way that is considered definitive, but even this third affirmation is not free of controversy. For one thing, in contrast to the first two affirmations, there is no reference to unanimity. For another, what they said was that everything the Lord has asked of us, we will do and we will hear (or listen): 3/:1& %:31. Do first; then hear/listen. I found no commentary on the absence of any words to indicate unanimity, but there is no end of commentary on the strange sequence of Ado@ and Ahear.@

1. Eitz Hayim and the Plaut Chumash dodge the issue by conflating the two verbs and translating them as Afaithfully do.@

2. Hertz and more traditional Chumashim translate the phrase as Ado and obey.@ AObey@ is a possible translation of Ashma@ but, in the 3-volume Alcalay Hebrew-English dictionary, it is the last of 11 possible meanings B very possibly only included because it works well as Ato do and obey.@

3. Hertz says that Ato do@ refers to the what has already been said, and Ato obey@ refers to instructions that may come in the future.

4. Some commentaries say that Ado@ refers to commands; Ahear@= to rules.

5. Other commentaries say that Ado@ refers to positive mitzvot; Ahear@ to negative.

Midrash claims that a heavenly voice pronounced that the wording 3/:1& %:31 is Aangel language,@ and that immediately thereafter 600,000 angels descended from heaven and adorned every Jew present with two crowns, one for na=aseh and one for nishma.

With the force of all that support, who am I to suggest that it was incautious to say Ato do and to listen.@ Perhaps I am too much of a scientist, too risk adverse. Whatever any of us might say, it was the defining moment when the people of Israel accepted finally and firmly their link to God and the Torah. Moses, no doubt gave a great sigh of relief, and splashed the second basin of blood on the people (some say, on the 12 pillars), which symbolically commits the people to the Covenant, which is then sealed. The Israelites are, or at least are starting to be, the Jewish people.

Let=s close the discussion by looking at the celebrations that followed each affirmation. The first affirmation was not followed by any special ceremony. Presumably, everyone was getting ready for the Theophany, and there was lots to do, including washing their clothes, purifying their bodies, setting boundaries etc. The second affirmation goes to the opposite extreme. It is a big deal, with everything one might expect in that era: dozens of animals slaughtered, rivers of blood, and lots of priestly activities before an audience of six hundred thousand. Maybe Moses showed a few of the magic tricks he could do with his staff. All no doubt very impressive, but not exactly our kind of thing.

The celebration after the third affirmation is very To start with, the human party does not consist of the pure democracy of 600,000 people, but the more republican form of government that Yitro had suggested to Moses (Shm 18:13 ff). Moses, Aaron, Aaron=s two eldest sons, and 70 elders go up to meet with God. This time there is no sacrifice; no splashing of blood; no priestly activity. Instead, the 74 men did what Jewish men and women have done ever since: They ate and they drank! From those words, Nachmanides (cited in Plaut 596) says the Asages derived the custom to make a feast whenever a unit of Torah study has been completed.@ To this, I would only add: AAnd on any other happy occasion!@

Shabbat shalom,