TORAH SPARKS
Parashat Shoftim
August 19, 2023 | 2 Elul 5783
Torah: Deuteronomy 16:18-21:9 Triennial: Deuteronomy
16:18-18:5
Haftorah: Isaiah 51:12-52:12
You Ain t Never Had a Prophet Like Me
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah
Moses is unique. We read, at the very end of the Torah, right after the successful transfer of leadership from Moses to Joshua, that Moses is special – But no prophet again arose in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face-to-face,with all the signs and the portents which the LORD sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and with all the strong hand and with all the great fear that Moses did before the eyes of all Israel. Moses has a relationship with God that no one else will have and Moses had a job to do, an exodus to lead, that no one else will copy.
Our parashah is Moses s explanation of how we will function without him. He presents to us four overlapping branches of government, four types of leaders – judges, kings, priests, and prophets. Each of these types replaces part of Moses s role. He is dividing his job up and making it more manageable by hiring more people. This division of labor is very much in line with the sentiment expressed at the end of the Torah – Moses is irreplaceable, it ll take a whole group of people to do the job he did alone.
Yet there is one verse in our parashah that seems to contradict this sentiment. We read, in Deuteronomy 18:15, A prophet like me from your midst, from your brothers, the LORD will raise up. Him shall you heed. Moses tells us that God will elevate a prophet like Moses himself. Yet the Torah ends by telling us this never happens. And in our parashah, Moses seems to be making arrangements so that a prophet need never again bear all the responsibilities alone for leading a nation that Moses bore. So what does Moses mean when he says that God will raise up a prophet like him?
The context of the quote is Moses trying to explain to us how to recognize a true prophet. He makes clear that prophecy is something different from the abhorrent practices of soothsaying or practicing magic in which the Canaanite nations engage. We are given two signs for how to recognize a true prophet. The first is that a false prophet who pretends to speak in the name of God will die, although we are not given a timeframe for this prophet s death. The second sign is that the things that a true prophet of God prophesizes will come true, while those of a false prophet will not.
With this as context, Moses perhaps is explaining his own death and his own loyalty. Moses did in fact act as a prophet in a manner that was not sanctioned by God. When Moses insulted the nation and struck the rock at Meribah, he seemed to be acting under God s auspices while in fact he was transgressing them. For this, God condemns Moses to death, to not reaching the promised land. So when Moses says that God will raise up another prophet like him, perhaps he is being humble. That any prophet God raises up will be human, will be fallible, just as Moses has been. Of course, water did indeed come out from the rock, the second sign that Moses was a prophet held true. Even in the moment when Moses transgressed God, God did not abandon us to our thirst.
Now, in Moses s final speech, Moses lets us know that we are responsible for the actions of our prophets. A prophet is God s messenger to us. But we are the ones who are able to choose whether or not to receive that message. When Moses transgressed God, calling us out as rebels, perhaps we should have stood up and rejected that message. If Moses, the best of prophets, can fail, then all prophets can fail. All prophets can be like Moses. It is up to us and the other balances on prophetic power to determine right and wrong, to find truth even when it is hidden in human foibles.
Parashat Shoftim Self-Study
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Questions for the
Table (From the Archive 5778)
This week we will meet some of the institutions of the society; courts, the king and prophets, along with state, cultic and criminal laws and laws of war.
- In the opening paragraph about judges (shofetim) the Torah instructs tzedek tzedek tiirdof (justice, justice you shall pursue, 16:20). Who do you think that this instruction is directed to? Why do you think that the Torah doubled the word tzedek?
- The people who lived in the land previously followed various witchcraft practitioners, but we are not allowed to do so. We will be sent a prophet (Navi) who will speak God s words to us (18:14-18). Why do you think that we may not turn to sorcerers? What might be the difference in the service that sorcerers and prophets provide?
- Cities of refuge have to be provided for anyone who accidentally killed someone to escape the blood avenger (19:2-10). If there are not sufficient and available cities, the killer might be killed, and the blood guilt will be upon you. To whom do you think the Torah directs this instruction? What do you think about holding them responsible for a death they did not commit?
- Should a person intentionally bear false witness against another person, it should be done to him as he intended to do to the person against whom he testified (19:16-20). Why do you think that the Torah did not give a clear punishment for this offense?
- When laying siege to a city, we may not destroy the trees of the city, especially its fruit trees (20:19-20). What do you think is the rationale behind this commandment?
Frome Flight to Atonement
Rabbi Joshua Kulp
The Halakhah in the Parashah
If you re a parent and your child has reached the age at which they can drive and has been doing so for a few years, you might have had the following conversation. Your child was in a car accident while they were driving. I m hoping no one was seriously injured and that the damage was limited to property. Your child now has to face you and tell you what they did. After they get over their fear, they say to you, But it was an accident. And they are almost surely correct it’s highly unlikely they intentionally damaged your car. But this is not the end of the conversation, as you know. There is a vast difference between an accident in which, for instance, the driver swerved left trying to avoid a dog that ran out onto the street and hit a car in another lane, and a case where the driver was sending a text message and rammed into the car in front of them. Both are accidents, but the latter is a case of negligence, one for which there probably needs to be a response.
This week s parashah makes it abundantly clear that a murderer is to be executed. If a person hates another, sets an ambush and then kills him and then runs away to a refuge city, the elders must send to the city, extract him from there, and give him to the blood avenger. The Torah specifically warns not to have mercy on such a person.
But the Torah does not believe that accidental murderers should be executed. Instead, Devarim 19 establishes a system of refuge cities to which an accidental murderer should flee to avoid the blood vengeance (these laws are also found in Bamidbar 35). An accidental killer has spilled blood and therefore something needs to be done. He cannot just remain in his home as if nothing happened. But this was not intentional murder. As verses 19:4-5 make clear, if the person did not have prior hatred for his fellow human being and the murder was done in a manner that seems to be accidental for instance, a man goes with another fellow into a grove to cut wood; as his hand swings the ax to cut down a tree, the ax-head flies off the handle and strikes the other so that he dies –then we cannot consider this person at fault and he has the right to flee (see also Numbers 35:16-23).
Rabbinic law offers a subtle but deep shift in these laws. Mishnah Makkot, chapter 2 begins with the following statement, These are those who go into exile. While the Torah refers to this as flight, as in That man shall flee to one of these cities, and in Numbers 35:6 the cites are called refuge cities, the rabbis describe the one who spilled blood without prior intent as going into exile. This is a radical transformation achieved with one word. Instead of fleeing for his life from a blood avenger (an institution the rabbis find deeply problematic), the rabbis imagine this person as requiring atonement for having spilled blood.
But the rabbis do not stop merely with a different word to describe the action taken by the accidental murderer; they also radically transform the law. In the Torah itself there are two categories intentional murder and unintentional murder. The rabbis add two more categories to this list, offering greater precision as to who needs atonement and who is allowed to get atonement.
First of all, Mishnah Makkot 2:1 refers to someone either moving heavy equipment on his roof or going up and down on a ladder. He or the equipment falls and kills someone below. No doubt that this was accidental. However, the Mishnah rules that if the person was either going down the ladder or lowering the equipment and the accident happened, then he goes into exile. This is negligent when lowering something one needs to be extra careful not to harm those below. But if the person was going up or raising the equipment and it fell, then he does not go into exile. This is a new category one called in Hebrew –which I usually translate as an unforeseeable circumstance. To return to the driving analogy above, this is similar to the case of the dog running into the street. While the damages have to be paid, I hope I would not get angry at my child under such a circumstance.
The other new category can be found on Bava Kamma 32b, which describes a person who enters a carpenter s shop and is killed by a flying piece of wood. Rava explains that if the carpenter gave the person permission and then proceeded to chop wood with no care, the carpenter is accidental but close to intentional. In our language we would call this criminal negligence. Rava does not believe that such a person should be afforded the opportunity for exile. The person cannot be executed because that is reserved for those who murder with full intent. The carpenter is clearly not a murderer. But his negligence seems to be so great that affording him an opportunity for easy and automatic atonement is an insult to the integrity of the law. To return to the driving analogy, this would be akin to drunk driving. While not quite murder, we do not offer such a person easy atonement.
The case of the accidental murderer offers us an excellent opportunity to trace the rabbis modifying, interpreting and expanding the precision of the Torah s laws. They modify the laws by essentially abandoning the entire practice of a blood avenger. They reinterpret the cities of exile from places of refuge to places for atonement. And they expand the precision of the law by moving from the simple binary of intentional/unintentional to a system that includes four types of bloodshed: intentional, criminally negligent (the carpenter who granted permission to enter the shop), negligent (going down the ladder) and unforeseeable circumstances (going up the ladder).