A careful reading within the biblical story also gives room for a different interpretation and actually goes against the approach of the supernatural God
introduction
The accepted perception of God is that he is present, present and will be. God as the one who created the world is outside of history and above time. One of the conclusions that arose from this approach is that all events, everything that happened and everything that will happen are visible to God, but within that determinism there is still room for changes Conditioned by the will of the person considering that everything is expected and permission is given. Despite this deterministic view, a person still has freedom of action to block his own path. Man, as someone who acts within history, can influence it. A careful reading within the biblical story also gives room for a different interpretation and actually goes against the approach of the Supreme God Temporarily. To see what things are supposed to mean, we will present here five of the biblical stories.
First story - Paradise
Here it is said that God unequivocally forbade man to eat from the tree of knowledge and that the violation of this order would result in his death. Later, the scripture says that after God finds the person hiding from him, he asks him, "Who told you that you were naked, and you ate from the fruit of the tree that you commanded not to be eaten" (Genesis 11:1). The woman points out "because God said you shall not eat from every tree of the garden" (ibid. verse 2). And the woman answers him "from the fruit of the tree of the garden we shall eat, and from the fruit of In the garden, God said, "You shall not eat of it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die" (ibid. verses 3-16). Here the question arises as to where the woman learned about the prohibition, since it is said in the commentary, "And God commanded man to say, of every tree of the garden you shall eat, and of the tree of the knowledge of good and bad You shall not eat" (ibid. 17-1). The commandment was given only to man and how did the woman know about it anyway? One possibility is that God indeed addressed the man, but the woman was present at the time of the commandment and also heard the commandment, even though the commandment was not addressed to her personally. A second possibility is that she was not present at that event and a man told her about it. A third possibility is that the snake told the woman about it. This possibility can be partially confirmed in chapter 2 verses XNUMX-XNUMX: "And the serpent was naked like every beast of the field that Yahweh God had made. And he said to the woman, although God said you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. And the woman said to the serpent from the fruit of the tree of the garden we shall eat..." From the dialogue between them one gets the impression that verse XNUMX is a missing verse. If you try to complete the sentence in a hesque way, then the snake is actually saying the following to the woman: Although God forbade the eating of the tree of the garden, I suggest you try to eat its fruit, so that you will not be punished for breaking the divine commandment. According to this interpretation, the snake was a witness to the commandment given by God to man.
Since the act of temptation is a future act in relation to what is said in chapter 22, God knew what was going to happen. What is the point then in imposing such a sweeping commandment to the point of threatening death, and this in light of what is said later that God, after rebuking man, did not kill but punished? Moreover, he did not even kill the snake. Wasn't all this just to put the person to the test? And if the snake continues to live like this, is it that man is doomed to spend his whole life trying to withstand temptations? Is this the image of man that God wanted, living in constant tension? Later it is said: "And Yahweh God said that man was one of him to know good and evil, and now lest he put forth his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat and live forever, and Yahweh God sent him out of heaven to work the land which he takes from there" (Isaiah 23:XNUMX-XNUMX). With God, the fear arises that man will go one step further and eat from the tree of life as well, and in order to avoid this, he actually casts him out of the Garden of Eden. The obvious meaning of this is that God has actually lost the ability to control man's behavior. If in Heaven this ability is no longer in God's hands, it is easy and matter of fact. This ability is further reduced after the expulsion because the Garden of Eden is a limited area where this ability was given to God, before the man ate from the tree Knowledge. Banishment, on the other hand, leads man to open and infinite spaces. From what has been said so far, it seems that God could have avoided all of this, had he not created the tree of knowledge or whether the creation of this tree was inevitable. So, whether we choose the first or the second option, the saying that "everything is predictable and permission is given" is also valid for God. Even if God as the creator of the world is temporary, since from the time of his creation he enters the world of history and acts within it, and then questions begin to arise for him about the righteousness of his actions and his ability to anticipate the actions of human beings. As an actor in history, God is actually prone to mistakes. From reading chapter XNUMX, a question arises that probably has no answer. Following God's willingness to accept Abel's sacrifice and his unwillingness to accept Cain's sacrifice, the latter's jealousy arose, to the point of murdering his brother Abel. Couldn't God have foreseen what happened due to the different attitude he showed towards their sacrifices?
The story of the second flood
In the introduction to the story of the flood, it is said, "And Yahweh saw that the evil of man was great in the land, and every thought of his heart was only evil all the day long. And Yahweh was comforted because he made man in the land and he was saddened to his heart. And Yahweh said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, from man to beast to creeper to fowl of the sky For I was comforted because I did them" (Genesis 5:7-11). Only after creation did God see that man's actions were bad both in his way of thinking and in his actions. This is actually hindsight. The details of the acts are given later "And the earth was desolate before God, and the earth was full of Hams. And God saw the earth, and behold it was desolate, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said, Rest, the end of all flesh has come before me, for the earth is full of Hams from their presence, and I am corrupting the earth" (Is. 13) - XNUMX). The evil has spread in a total way and God's response is also total. His intention is to eradicate life in general, to remove one group of survivors of Noah and his household. Twice in these verses the root nehem is used in the meaning of regret. Once by the narrator "and the Lord will comfort" and the second time this word comes from the mouth of God himself "for I was comforted because you did" to teach us how great the regret is. As the size of the regret it actually is Disappointment, such is the magnitude of the punishment that God imposes on man. Not only man is punished, but also all life on earth is punished. Here we are talking not only about a single person such as the man from the Garden of Eden or his son Cain, but in the majority of human beings wherever they are. God actually failed to foresee the magnitude of man's evil deeds, not of a single person but of the entire society, in such a severe and hopeless way that the only way left in his hands was to destroy the All of them and start the act of human creation anew, while basing ourselves on the group of survivors Noah and his household. Will God succeed in this? If he made a mistake once in the act of creation, might this mistake be repeated a second time? Rashi gives two interpretations of the verse "Noah was a righteous and innocent man in his generations". One interpretation is that Noah was indeed a righteous man and the other interpretation is that Noah was considered a righteous man in his generation. And the extent of his sins was relatively small. Because of this, he received a forgiving attitude from God, and the renewed human creation must rest on him and the members of his household. And if so, he exists The possibility that after a while the evil of man will fall again in the land in full force. Will God have to look for one righteous man in Sodom, also one righteous man in his generations, in order to start the act of human creation a third time? Or will his disappointment this time be so great that he will destroy all life leaving no chance whatsoever for them to survive.
Another possibility is that God created man with the thought that his creation is perfect and that there is no chance that man will corrupt, as can be understood from the verse "And God created man in his image, in the image of God created him" (Genesis 27:XNUMX), but when he realizes that this is not the case , decided to start the act of creation again, knowing that there will be those who will deviate from the straight path in one way or another. And if so, he will have to be forgiving towards at least some of them. According to this interpretation, this recognition of God is retrospective. A necessary conclusion is that a priori there is no room for divine perfection during creation.
Third story - Tower of Babel
This story begins with the sentence "And the whole earth was of one language and of one language" (Genesis 1:4) and continues with the description of the settlement of the people of the land in the land of Shanar, the construction of the place, its preparation for permanent residence and the establishment of "a tower with its head in the sky and we will have a common face there over the whole land" The important landmarks in this description are the use of one language, a kind of universal language, and the purpose for which the tower was erected.
It is a tower so high that you can see it from anywhere. The tower actually has a social function. It serves as a unifying factor, an engineering enterprise common to all, and God's response was to say: "And Yahweh came down to see the city and the tower that men have built. And he said, 'They will be one people and one language.' For all of them, and this is what they dreamed of doing. And now they will not be prevented from doing whatever they set out to do. Let us go down and destroy their language, so that no one will listen to another's language" (Shem 5:7-XNUMX ). The meaning is that it was only from the moment God arrived in the city that he noticed for what purpose the tower was built. From above, God indeed sees both the buildings of the city and the tower, they occupy space and space and it is possible to distinguish them. But in order to notice the intention of the builders, God has to reach them, be among them, see to hear and feel them. Only the encounter awakens in God the insight that the inhabitants of the city, by virtue of being speakers of one language, were able to achieve a great engineering achievement in his image of the tower in the sky. From here, the road is not far from achieving any goal they desire. This must be stopped, since it is an irreversible process. In the verse "And now nothing will be prevented from them that He wills to do" God actually fully senses the danger inherent in this ability of the residents of Shanar. From this we learn that if God had not come down to Sha'nar he would not have sensed what was happening and would not have bothered to confuse their languages and would not have spread them on the face of the earth. And if so, why wasn't their language confused before they arrived in Shanar and why were they allowed to build the tower? Couldn't he have foreseen all this? If he had indeed done so, the almost irreversible process of intensification would have been avoided. Only when God understood ahead of time where things would end up did he act as he did. This is actually the hindsight and the meaning is inevitable. God could not have foreseen the behavior of the residents of Shanar when he built their city and the tower.
Fourth story - Sodom and Gomorrah
In the description of God's encounter with the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, there is some similarity to his encounter with the inhabitants of Shanar. It is said about his encounter with these cities, "And Yahweh will say that the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is very heavy. Come down, please, and see the cry that comes to me, and if I do not know" (ibid. 20) 21-9).Unlike the Babylon story, this story does not refer to technological ability and the language spoken by the inhabitants of Sodom And Gomorrah is used. Here we are talking about something that is much more serious and it is a very serious sin. God knows that they are sinners, but he does not know the extent of the sins and their degree of severity. The question that God asks himself, "As her cry came to me, make a bride, and if I did not know" can testify to the degree of ignorance His is what they do. He needs to be there to prove that it is indeed so. There is something in the act of descent to remind us of a similar act in the story of the Tower of Babel. Following what he saw in the boy, God scatters the inhabitants of the city over the land. He does not want them to build cities. And here the people gather again and build cities. From what is described in chapters XNUMX-XNUMX it appears that in the period of time between the story of the Tower of Babel and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, many cities were built, including the renewal of the building of Shenar (ibid. XNUMX.) Mother Shenar in our first meeting with her, she was the only Or were there other cities at the time? If this city was indeed a single one or were there other cities at the time? If this city was indeed the only one, then the deportation of its inhabitants following the construction of the Tower of Babel was not effective. The people came together to rebuild not one city, but many cities, which is to testify that the need and desire of the people wherever they are is greater than the will of the god The greatness of this desire of the human beings can be testified by the fact that the human beings returned to Shaker. Couldn't God have expected this? Although no new towers were built in the cities featured in these chapters, this does not prevent them from building them in the future.
A similar question can be asked about Sodom and Gomorrah. Couldn't God have foreseen the appearance of sins in these cities, as for the other cities? There is no reference to the sins of their inhabitants, which teaches about two possibilities. Either these gates were indeed free of sins or there were sins, but their scope and degree of severity were so limited compared to Sodom and Gomorrah, that God did not notice them. If God indeed sees the north of heart and soul, why did he allow the construction of Sodom and Gomorrah? Just to prove his mistake and cast a spell on them as described later: "And it will rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from Jehovah from heaven. And it will overturn the cities and the entire square and all the inhabitants of the cities and the vegetation of the earth"? (Im 24:25-XNUMX)
Fifth Story - The Golden Calf
Following the construction of the golden calf, God turned to Moses and said to him: "Go, go down, for you have spoken to your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt. Move quickly from the way that the commandments made them a masked calf, and they bowed down to it and sacrificed to it, and said, "This is your God, Israel, who came up from the land of Egypt." This people, and behold, they are a hard-backed people. And now let me, and my breath will be kindled against them, and I will eat them, and I will make you into a great nation" (Exodus Lev. 7-10). If we go back to the beginning of Chapter Lev, it seems that the people waiting at the foot of Mount Sinai were not willing to wait a long time until Moses came down from the mountain. The impression received by the masses of the people was that Moses would not return again and there would be no one to lead them. There was an acute need to find A solution to the developing feeling of deprivation and it is indeed found in the image of the golden calf. God noticed the act of the golden calf and brought it to the attention of Moshe. Here a problem arises and arises regarding God's ability to judge. Couldn't God have known in advance that the people were stubborn? If he had indeed noticed ahead of time, he might have shortened the duration of Moses' stay on Mount Sinai from forty days to a shorter period, or to only a few days, and thus he would have prevented himself from the same fury that drove him to almost exterminate the people of Israel, the people who in his view are the chosen people. It is possible to understand what is written. The behavior of the people was not a betrayal of Moses and God, but an extreme reaction to a religious crisis while losing self-confidence. For God, the act of the calf was an act of betrayal which brought him to a fury of rage, to the point of being willing to take a final step. On the face of it, Aaron's appeal can be dismissed as weakness in that he surrendered to the people's demands, but it can be understood differently. Compared to Moshe, the perfectionist leader, Aaron is closer to the people and understands the souls of the masses better. Pragmatically, he understands what neither Moses nor God understood, because human beings need concrete things and faith that is not only Aerial, but anchored in one way or another in Realia. It is impossible to disconnect for a long time a community that has just come out of slavery and which is on the journey of survival, from a path. God actually had too high expectations of the people. God, according to his essence, is perfection in its pure embodiment, and it is precisely this perfection that prevented him from understanding the plight of the masses of the House of Israel. While treating the masses of the House of Israel as God's chosen people, he was not aware that they were human beings with their virtues and shortcomings.
Friday story - following the spies' trip
Yehoshua ben Nun and Caleb ben Yifuna return from their tour of the land of Canaan and deliver a detailed report on the quality of its land and its inhabitants. The masses of the House of Israel are not impressed by this. They actually sound quite frightened when they learn that some of its inhabitants are giants and come with serious complaints to Moshe and Aaron. These are the ones who point an accusing finger at God: "Why does Yahweh bring us to this land to fall by the sword of our women and our worship They will scorn us again from Egypt. And they will say to each other, "A head was given to another, and it will be returned from Egypt" (Bamadbar 3:4-XNUMX). The complaints are immediately translated into rebellion. Many begin to organize for withdrawal from the camp and return to Egypt.
And what is he doing? He actually complains, "And Yahweh said to Moses, Until then, this people will persecute me, until now, they will not believe in me for all the signs that I have done among them. I will do the word and make it a record, and I will make you a nation greater and greater than it" (Is. 11-12). The description given is quite ironic. The same God who struck Egypt with ten plagues and which he showed to the wandering people in Sinai of his wonders and his experimental abilities is here in defensive positions. He reveals Signs of weakness and hesitation. What can't he face? In the face of curses and complaints. And his response? It is supposed to be particularly difficult - the destruction of the nation and the building of a new nation that will be based on the remnants of Moses' flesh. A kind of re-edition of the story of the flood.
The same rebellion of many towards a return to Egypt, already begins with the spies' familiarization trip in the land of Canaan. Yehoshua ben Nun and Caleb ben Yefuna were not alone in this journey. A number of other people accompanied them. We can learn about this from the following verses: "And the people who went up with him said, "We will never be able to go up, because he is stronger than him. And they brought forth the slander of the land, which they had laid upon the children of Israel. As for the land through which we passed, to be a land that devours its inhabitants and all The people among whom we saw men of measure. And there we saw the Nephilim, the sons of giants among the Nephilim in our eyes as grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes" (ibid. 31:33-30). We then have Two types of report. The report of Yehoshua ben Nun and of Caleb ben Yifuna, which is given in a laconic manner with the words "A noble leaf, and we inherited it because we could afford it" (ibid. verse XNUMX). This is a very matter-of-fact report, and the report of their companions on this journey is detailed and accompanied by plastic colors. If Yehoshua ben Nun and Caleb ben Yefuna were found on the road, their descriptions are encouraging, since the rest of their report was demoralizing with their almost rebellious results.
From a personality point of view, there are two types of people who participated in the journey: Yehoshua ben Caleb and Caleb ben Yifuna are indeed brave people, but they are actually hard-mouthed and hard-tongued. Their speaking style sounds like a military style - short and matter-of-fact. They can't or don't want to say much. Their companions on the journey are invisible As particularly brave people. On the other hand, they are confident in the art of speaking. They have a rich language, demagogic ability and persuasiveness. The conclusion that emerges from these characterizations is that unsuitable people went on the spying mission. The mistake in choosing the spies was twofold. Moshe's mistake was that he was satisfied with the loyalty and courage of Joshua ben Nun and Caleb ben Yefuna as the ones who would lead the journey of familiarization with the land of Canaan without taking into account that it would be necessary to convey this report to the people in an appropriate way without causing them to be demoralized. The second mistake is God himself who approved their choice of those. As someone who examines hearts and minds, Hal did not foresee the behavior of the other members of the patrol. This inability raises many questions, and this in light of the experience that Moses and God gained in leading the people from the exodus from Egypt until now. Throughout the journey of the wanderings, quite a few complaints were heard on the part of the Israelites, complaints that the distance from them to rebellions was very short.
Summary
Both Abraham and Moses turn to God asking for mercy because he will not carry out his plan, each in his own style. Abraham asks God categorically, "The righteous will perish with the wicked" and bargains with him so that he will not carry out his plan, which later turns out to be an unsuccessful attempt, since Sodom And Gomorrah were also destroyed. Moshe asks for the measure of mercy as it is written later in the story of the spies: "Yahweh will be long-lasting and abundant in mercy, bearing iniquity and crime, and will not be cleansed. He will punish iniquity on sons, on thirds and on fourths. Please forgive the iniquity of this people according to the extent of your kindness and when you bore this people from Egypt to here" (ibid. 18 - 19). Here God's appeal is partial. Although he does not destroy the children of Israel, he tells Moses unequivocally that a generation This, the desert generation will not get to see the promised land. This generation will end its life in a natural way.
In this set of stories, God is revealed not only as someone who knows how to forgive, as you can hear from Moses' words, but also as an impulsive figure who is ready to take the most drastic measures to the point of being willing to cause disasters and destroy entire populations, when it seems to him that these have betrayed him or strayed from the right path. One of the moments The hardship described is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, just because they ate from the tree of knowledge. They are forced to leave life in greenhouse conditions and take care of themselves without any preparation. It is hard to say that there is any justice in this divine response. All of these are there to inspire the thought that more than man was created in the image of God, God was created in the image of man.
