Real Direct Prophecy
A god who let us prove his existence would be an idol. -Dietrich Bonhoeffer
There are some things that are difficult to believe until experienced, and many times the only alternative we have is faith. One such thing is the concept of prophecy and especially the prophecy that we are told Moses experienced. The concept of God speaking directly to a human being or sharing certain images and visions with them might seem strange. Could it have been a function of their imagination? There are countless cases of people with mental illness who believed that God spoke to them. What makes these perturbed people different from our prophets?
Maimonides, amongst other Jewish sages and philosophers, provides various answers as to the validity and divinity of our prophetic tradition as well as to the uniqueness of the communication and interaction that God had with Moses.
Rabbi Hirsch on Leviticus 1:1 explains that the actual biblical wording highlights the fact that the prophecy of Moses was a real, clear direct communication from God:
“God’s call is described as an act that was an integral part of His speaking with Moses and in fact defined the manner in which the speaking was done. The word to be communicated to Moses was prefaced by a call to Moses.”
“This formulation of the text was apparently intended to make it clear that when God spoke with Moses it was indeed the word of God addressed to Moses by God Himself. The intention probably was to forestall those deliberate misrepresentations which so delight in changing the Divine Revelation to Moses into something emanating from with Moses himself, thus equating the Revelation with the delusion of so-called manic ecstasy arising from within the man himself. But this is not true.”
“The word of the speaker cannot in any manner be interpreted as a product also of the mind of him who hears the speech. So, too, the word of God to Moses came purely and solely from God. It did not come from within Moses. It came to Moses from without, calling him away, as it were, from his own thought processes so that he might listen attentively to what God wished to say to him. Thus, the fact that the call from God came directly before God’s words to Moses refutes the notion that these words were preceded by some process taking place within Moses himself. It characterizes God alone as the speaker and Moses merely as the listener. The word of God to Moses was in no manner a phenomenon initiated or evoked by Moses, not even a development Moses could have surmised in advance; it came to Moses as a historic event from without.”
The transmission of the divine will of God to Moses is something that is beyond our ability to comprehend or understand. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Just because our mental and spiritual faculties are so meager, does not in any way invalidate the historicity of our tradition. Only the feeble-minded dismiss or ridicule what they don’t understand.
What Moses heard and recorded for all of posterity was indeed the voice of God. It was not something he imagined. It was not something he or anyone else made up. It is the will of God as instructed to Moses and transmitted in an unbreakable chain of over one hundred generations. It’s the real thing.
May we appreciate what that means and take advantage of it.
Shabbat Shalom,
Ben-Tzion
Dedication
To all of our friends and family who helped make the wedding of our children such an incredible event.
