Unlike Pagan kings, Biblical heroes are human beings of ethical excellence who, because they are human, also have weaknesses, flaws, and failings, which they struggle to overcome.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
MOSES<\/strong><\/p>\n Moses had selfless courage, great wisdom, and a moral compass. He chose to identify with those in the right, his biological, oppressed people over immoral might, the ancient Egyptian aristocracy into which he was adopted and could comfortably have remained for the rest of an opulent but otherwise meaningless life. Anticipating Ecclesiastes 3:15<\/a>, Moses identified with the lowly and oppressed Israelites, his family by his own choice, before God commissioned him to take Israel out of Egypt. In Exodus 1<\/a> Pharoah commits exactly three ethical outrages against the Israelites. [1] He orders that the Israelites be worked to death, [2] he orders the midwives to murder every male birth, and then [3] he commissions his people, the Egyptian population, to throw all of the Israelite baby boys into the river. In Exodus 2<\/a>, Moses performs three parallel salvific acts: [1] he kills an Egyptian taskmaster who was oppressing an Israelite slave whom Moses saw as his<\/em> brother, [2] he stops an Israelite who was beating a fellow Israelite, and [3] he intervenes in support of Midianite women who were bullied by fellow pagan shepherds. By these three incidents, Moses is moved by the ethical principle of justice, not an ethnocentricity that is concerned with \u201cjust us.\u201d Moses has an innate disposition to oppose oppression, without and before he was called by the Lord. Indeed, this may be why Moses received his missionary call in the first place.<\/p>\n This same Moses was also the most modest of men [Numbers 12:3<\/a>]; ego did not move Moses, but he did have an anger management problem. At Numbers 20:10, an exasperated Moses screams at the Israelites who asked for water, and with sacred snark announces,\u201dlisten rebels, shall we<\/em> \u2013not God–bring forth water from this rock?\u201d Nahmanides notes that God was not given credit for the miracle performed by Moses. Moses was ordered to address the rock, but not to strike it. God\u2019s response is exquisitely consistent. Moses was not to be publicly shamed, so the water did gush from the rock after Moses\u2019s disobedient blow. But Moses, like all Israel, is subject of the Law. He failed to sanctify the Lord\u2019s name. At Deuteronomy 34:5<\/a>, Moses died \u2018al pi ha-Shem<\/em>, literally by God\u2019s \u201cmouth.\u201d bBava Batra <\/em>17a<\/a> speculates that the angel of death did not end the lives of certain human Biblical heroes, but rather God ended their lives with a kiss, taking \u201cpi<\/em>\u201d to be an act, specifically a \u201ckiss,\u201d which is done with the mouth. The contextual, plain sense understanding is that God orders Moses to die, which he does by obeying God\u2019s order, which sanctifies God\u2019s name, thereby atoning for his leadership blunder when he wrongly struck that rock. Moses the Lawgiver lived, and died, according to God\u2019s word and command. We recall that when Moses pleaded to be allowed to enter<\/em> the Holy Land, he begged, \u201cmay I pass over that I might see<\/em> the good land [Deuteronomy 3:25<\/a>].\u201d The Hebrew root rah\/y<\/em> that appears here usually means \u201csee,\u201d but in this context means \u201cto undergo an experience,\u201d as in Psalms 34:13<\/a>\u00a0and Lamentations 3:1<\/a>. Unexpectedly, God orders Moses to ascend Mt. Nevo in Moav, and see<\/em> with his mortal eyes \u201cthe land of Canaan which I [=the Lord] will give the Israelites as a possession [Deuteronomy 32:49<\/a>], and die on that mountain that you have ascended\u201d [32:50<\/a>]. Note that Moses is ordered to die and not merely expire as nature takes its course. God relents and formally allowed Moses to see, with own his two eyes, but not to fully experience, the Holy Land before his life ends.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n KING DAVID<\/strong><\/p>\n King David was a man of great passion, compassion, courage, cunning, leadership, and loyalty. But he, like Moses was flawed. The constitution by which the king of Israel rules is the Torah, according to which no one<\/em> enjoys sovereign immunity, not God and surely not the human king, either. II Samuel 11-12<\/a> reports that David saw Bat Sheva, the wife of Uriah, bathing, he summoned her, engaged in sex with her, and she became pregnant from the encounter. David did his dastardly deed when Bat Sheva\u2019s lawful husband, Uriah, an ethnic Hittite who joined the Israelite people and took a name that means \u201cmy light is the Lord,\u201d was loyally serving his king and country in the Israelite army. David then arranged a furlough for Uriah so that Bat Sheva and Uriah might engage in marital relations and so that David not be shamed by the extramarital pregnancy. Uriah refuses the offer to be intimate with his wife when his comrades are in danger at the front. With the cooperation of Yoav, David\u2019s general, the death of Uriah was arranged; the Israelite army withdrew from the siege of Rabbah, leaving Uriah to his fate at the hand of the official enemy. The narrative contrasts Uriah\u2019s loyalty, fidelity, and integrity with David\u2019s indifference to the pain caused by his misdeeds, his infidelity to and betrayal of his patriotic, loyal soldier, and his libidinous lust for Bat Sheva.<\/p>\n David is portrayed as an entitled monarch whose subjects might be exploited for his princely pleasure. He demands sex from Bat Sheva, who was in no position to refuse the command of the king of Israel. David behaves just like other ancient pagan kings, including Gilgamesh, who used and abused brides by claiming their first night of the marriage for himself David uses and abuses the power of the state to dispose of a loyal subject in order to cover up his own personal outrageous behavior.<\/p>\n The Sumerian pagan King Gilgamesh took brides on their wedding night for his pleasure because he, two-thirds god and one-third mortal human, possessed a will and libido that could not be resisted by mere mortals. In radical contrast, Scripture\u2019s Israelite monarch is not a law unto himself, and suffers the consequences of his actions. The prophet Nathan challenges David with a hypothetic parable. \u201cThere was a very rich man with many sheep and cattle, who had a guest to host. Instead of taking an animal from his large flocks, he took the one and only ewe of a poor man. What should be done?\u201d Not realizingthat Nathan\u2019s parable and message were aimed at him, David was convicted by his own words. David stood silent during Nathan\u2019s scathing soliloquy and then confesses, \u201cI have sinned against the Lord\u201d [II Samuel 12:13<\/a>].<\/p>\n <\/p>\n THE BIBLICAL THEOLOGY OF FLAWED HEROES<\/strong><\/p>\n We now are able to decode the messages of these two challenging narratives.<\/p>\n At first glance, Moses\u2019s sin was not as grievous as David\u2019s, but Moses was punished far more severely given the relative gravity of their sins.<\/p>\n Unlike Moses, David expressed remorse for his actions. He explicitly confessed, \u201cI have sinned against the Lord.\u201d God [a] forgives David for his misdeeds and [b] does not <\/em>put David to death as punishment for the Uriah incident. On the other hand, David\u2019s public and private lives were violent, tragic, and troubled. Apparently, God thought that David was redeemable, but did not allow David to go unpunished.<\/p>\n mAvot <\/em>4:8<\/a> posits that only One judge is able to judge with infallible accuracy. The fallible human court is limited by what its human eyes are actually able to see [bSanhedrin<\/em> 6b<\/a>]. A human bet din <\/em>consists of three judges possessing a trinocular perspective that compensates partially for the unavoidable blind spots that inhere in the human condition. Genesis 9:6<\/a> requires that \u201c[a] one who sheds the [b] blood of [c] mortals will by [c] mortals that person\u2019s [b] blood will [a] be shed.\u201d This verse\u2019s chiastic structure underscores the doctrine that one who murderously destroys an innocent human life has forfeited that person\u2019s own life. And it is for humankind to execute this protocol. Cain murdered his brother, Abel, but at that moment in culture memory, [a] there was no law forbidding murder because that norm was not yet enacted and there is no indication that Cain knew his life ending blow would be so fatal and final. Genesis 4:13<\/a> can be read as Cain\u2019s responding to God\u2019s indictment of him, \u201cthe guilt of my terrible act is too great to bear.\u201d In other words, unlike Moses, but like David, Cain conceded, \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n At no place in the Biblical narrative does Moses express regret for his wrongdoing, and God still allows Moses to literally see the Land. And David\u2019s subsequent life narrative is replete with recurring tragedies. Common to all three narratives is that God reject sins and evil, but not good people who on occasion behave badly. When one sins regularly, one\u2019s character is defined by sin, and that<\/em> person becomes evil. When a person sins out error, mistake, ignorance, or weakness, God may chastise but never <\/em>rejects that person.<\/p>\n This theological doctrine appears at the end of Psalm 1:5-6<\/a>,<\/p>\n Therefore the wicked shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. For the LORD knows the way of the righteous; but the way of the wicked shall perish.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The wicked are defined by sin; their character, their habits, and their life choices denied the moral compass and divine image with which they were created, and which they betrayed by making bad choices. They will not stand in judgment. They denied God in this life; God denies them entry into eternity.<\/p>\n Note well that the sinners, as opposed to evil people, do<\/em> stand the final judgment. There are no 100% righteous people! A sinner remains on the righteousness track as long as that person \u201cplaces God before me always\u201d [Psalms 16:8<\/a>]. The \u201crighteous\u201d do more mitsvot<\/em> and make fewer mistakes. Sinners are those who sincerely try to be righteous. These individuals are what we call saints, or sanctified ones. On that day, the righteous, the saintly, the tsaddiqim<\/em> will be marching in. May we be signed and sealed in the Book of Life, and merit to be included in their number.<\/p>\n QUESTION: Moses, God’s chosen one, is not permitted to enter the promised land. David, whose name means \u201cGod’s beloved,\u201d is not allowed to build God’s Temple. Why is God so hard on His heroes? What is the message of this literary Biblical motif? – Isaac ANSWER: God is the real hero of the library of Continue Reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":3381,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,135,134,77],"tags":[],"coauthors":[86],"class_list":["post-3380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles","category-high-holidays","category-holidays-2","category-torah-talmud"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3380"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3389,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions\/3389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3380"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/utj.org\/viewpoints\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2023\/09\/Join-the-UTJ-For-5784-Slider-1340-\u00d7-650-px-1024x497.png\")
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