{"id":52289,"date":"2019-03-27T18:21:30","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T16:21:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=52289"},"modified":"2022-10-19T22:37:21","modified_gmt":"2022-10-19T19:37:21","slug":"the-torahs-final-promise-is-not-a-covenant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-torahs-final-promise-is-not-a-covenant\/","title":{"rendered":"The Torah\u2019s Final Promise Is Not A Covenant"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Deuteronomy Chapter 32, or <\/span>Parashat Haazinu<\/span><\/em>,<\/em> is the song or poem Moses recited for the Children of Israel shortly before his death. Using rich imagery and poetic parallelism, it recounts the history and future of the people Moses guided from Egypt and shepherded through the desert. But the narrative and theology of the poem are strikingly at odds with other parts of the Torah.<\/span><\/p>\n

Take 32:10: \u201c[God] found him (the Children of Israel) in a desert region, in an empty howling waste. He engirded him, watched over him, guarded him as the pupil of His eye.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But wait: God didn\u2019t just find the Children of Israel wandering in the wilderness! What about the Exodus? Yet the Exodus, and for that matter the giving of the Torah, are found nowhere in the poem.<\/span><\/p>\n

More fundamentally, the notion of <\/span>brit<\/span><\/em>, of covenant, is absent. <\/span>Haazinu<\/span><\/em> fails to follow familiar patterns\u2014that God makes promises in return for loyalty and proper conduct. In the poem, God finds the Israelites in the desert, they worship idols, and God punishes them; but God will also redeem them, apparently regardless of how they behave. As Nachmanides notes, God\u2019s grace at the end of the poem is not contingent upon repentance. Why not?<\/span><\/p>\n

Unlike most of Deuteronomy, <\/span>Haazinu<\/span><\/em> is not Moses\u2019 speech, but God\u2019s song. In the rest of the book, Moses, often speaking in first person, retells the people\u2019s travels and travails and transmits God\u2019s instructions. In <\/span>Haazinu<\/span><\/em>, God frequently speaks in the first person. The story is told from God\u2019s unique divine perspective. And God\u2019s perspective is one-sided.<\/span><\/p>\n

God in <\/span>Haazinu<\/span><\/em> is called the <\/span>tzur<\/span><\/em>\u2014the rock: unchanging, timeless, and above history. The Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah are time-bound events that are crucial markers of a reciprocal relationship with God, but they do not speak to the primal relationship between God and the Children of Israel that exists independent of their actions. Here, God decides to spare the Israelites because to destroy them would be a desecration of God\u2019s name (32:27). And that\u2019s a problem for God whether or not the people repent. <\/span>Haazinu<\/span><\/em> is not a bilateral agreement, but a testimonial. From the poem\u2019s divine perspective, sin does not erase Jewish chosenness. The people are stuck with God, and God is stuck with them.<\/span><\/p>\n

And perhaps that\u2019s part of the reason why the Jewish people are still here.<\/span><\/p>\n

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