Parshat Nitzavim
“And God uprooted them from upon their land, with fury, anger and great wrath, and He cast them to another land, as it is this day” (Deuteronomy 29:27). In the Hebrew the word for “and He cast them” ( וישלכם ), the letter lamed is written large. The letter lamed is the tallest of all the letters and thus hints to God dispersing Israel into exile to the farthest reaches of the world and every place in between. Additionally, the enlarged lamed extends itself to reach for what is above and beyond this world. Indicating to us that we must actively seek to sustain our vertical connection to the Heavens in order to survive the long and dark exile of wandering in this world.
The letter lamed means both “to learn” and “to teach,” thus alluding to exile as God’s way of teaching Israel the lessons they needed to learn for abandoning God and the Torah. The above verse comes after a long explanation of how exile will follow if Israel turns away from God and worships idols. When reading the verse, we see God’s “fury, anger and great wrath.” This type of descriptive language regarding God is used throughout the Torah and especially in the Book of Deuteronomy. This arouses one of the most difficult subjects that needs to be addressed regarding the Torah in general and later in the words of the prophets, and that is the widely held perception that the God of the Bible is an angry, jealous, vindictive deity. This is especially pertinent when one is reading the Bible in English with no oral tradition or deeper explanation. The forty-nine “curses” in the book of Leviticus and the ninety-eight “curses” in the book of Deuteronomy discussed above in Ki Tavo for example certainly reinforce this notion. Similarly, when one reads through the prophets, one is struck by the sometimes harsh, aggressive language and horrifying and shocking imagery.
A critical idea to understand is that the Torah speaks in the language of man, for if it did not, how could we grasp anything at all of its infinite wisdom, much less of an infinite God who is beyond all perception and understanding. Therefore, the Torah speaks in a language that can be understood by finite humans. In this way we are able to understand the many anthropomorphic references to God’s anger or compassion, jealousy or sense of justice, all of which are human emotions or traits.
It is in this context that we can now try to understand the frequent examples of the harsh judgmental language of God and the sharp critiques of the prophets as found in the Tanach. From the time God placed the first humans in the Garden of Eden to the covenant He made with the Jewish people at Mt. Sinai there are clearly established cause and effect patterns and parameters. Similar to the consistency of the laws of nature these spiritual laws operate according to the principle of “measure for measure.” Therefore, when the text proclaims God’s anger and the threat or the actualization of punishments it is actually articulating the inherent consequences for previous and present human behavior, as is made crystal clear throughout the Torah and the warnings of the prophets.
The forty-nine “curses” in the book of Leviticus and the ninety-eight “curses” in the book of Deuteronomy, for example, are preceded by clear guidelines that state the positive effects of righteous behavior as defined by the ways of the Torah, in contrasting juxtaposition to the negative consequences of ignoring or rejecting these timeless teachings. The Torah consistently lays out the parameters of the covenant between God and Israel and the “blessings” and “curses” that will follow in or wake, according to our behavior.
This paradigm is very similar to a loving parent, who, for their child’s good, establishes basic rules and guidelines for the family and on occasion is forced to implement discipline or “punishments” when the ground rules are broken or disrespected. Any parent knows how painful it is to see one’s child acting out, rebelling, and in some cases, endangering their futures or even their very lives, let alone the moral or ethical ramifications that may follow. In these instances, the exercising and implementation of judgment, boundaries and consequences on the part of the parents, for the good of the child, is actually a chesed, an act of loving-kindness, although it is expressed through the garment of din, a strict judgment or disciplinary action.
This idea is crucial to understand for the simple fact that when seen in this light, the appearance that God is punishing, raging, or threatening us is merely God or the prophet expressing in human language a reminder of the immutable laws of Divine judgment. It is essentially the spiritual and moral equivalent of God or the prophet warning us that if we touch fire we will get burned. For instance, the “curses” meted out to the snake, Eve and Adam in the Garden of Eden are clearly a direct result of their choices and thus should be understood as consequences rather than curses. Likewise, the “curses” found in the book of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are described as what will happen if Israel does not follow the Torah and the covenant it made with God.
On the other hand, it must be pointed out that despite the intrinsic laws of cause and effect that rule everywhere in the universe, Judaism also believes strongly that man has free will and can at any moment change direction, begin again and chart a new course; this is the power of teshuvah, meaning return, repentance, re-alignment.
In the portion of Netzavim, as discussed above, “punishment” in the Torah and later in the words of the prophets is almost always balanced with words of encouragement and promises by God. Here is but one of many examples that confirm God’s unending commitment to the people of Israel despite many failures and disappointments along the way:
“’For but a small moment have I forsaken you, and with great mercy will I gather you. With a little wrath did I hide My countenance for a moment from you, and with everlasting kindness will I have compassion on you,’” said your Redeemer, God. ‘For this is to Me [as] the waters of Noah, as I swore that the waters of Noah shall never again pass over the earth, so have I sworn neither to be angry with you nor to rebuke you. For the mountains shall depart and the hills flounder, but My kindness shall not depart from you, neither shall the covenant of My peace falter,’ says God, Who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:7-10).
