Shabbat Parashat Shoftim - 5786

Shabbat Parashat Shoftim - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  According to all that you asked of Hashem your God in Choreiv on the day of the assembly

  saying, I can no longer listen to the voice of Hashem my God, and this great fire I can no longer

  see, so that I shall not die. [Devarim 18:16]

What did the people ask of God for which Moshe is now presenting them the results? And what are those results?

Onkelos begins by translating it "as you asked before Hashem", leaving out the word "all" since Moshe is not here addressing everything the people were asking for at the mountain. Rav Hirsch is close to this but changes the purpose of the phrase by translating it "just as you asked of Hashem", which makes it an introduction to what will follow, that being the "so that I shall not die".

Ramban leaves in the "all" yet is similar to Rav Hirsch in that the opening phrase is introductory, but instead of "so that I shall not die" he says that the Torah does not explain what is the follow-on portion, which he understands refers to a demand for prophets. Given the verses that follow ours, this makes sense. He explains that in Shemot [20:15] the people appeared to be rejecting God out of fear of the light-and-sound show, but that in [20:16] they said that they would accept a prophet, thus they reinstated themselves in the eyes of God.

Or HaChayim differs with how Ramban concludes, saying that in fact the people did something wrong there. They had the ability to all become prophets, but rejected prophecy in Shemot, as noted by our verse here, afraid of the difficulties faced by prophets.

Baal HaTurim has a completely different understanding. The phrase "according to all" has a gematria of 70, thus it may be read as "according to the 70 that you requested". Thus our verse means that God said, "I have heeded your request and I have appointed 70 elders over them". This is a reference to the Sanhedrin.

The verse after ours, [18:17] reads "Then God said to me, 'they have done well in what they have said'." This indicates that the people's request for a prophet as an intermediary between them and God is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact in the next verse [18:18] God promises to give them just that, however the two next verses then explain that there will be both true prophets and false ones so there is a risk involved.

We are at the beginning of the month of Elul, leading to the Day of Judgment (Rosh Hashanah). This is an especially auspicious time for us to review who we have become as compared to who we could be, and make plans to close that gap. Since we do not have true prophets today we must rely on what those of the past told us of the words of God.