Israel and Humanity - The righteousness of God in the concept of Providence

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III.

The righteousness of God in the concept of welfare.

We can say that the justice of God is the beginning of the story. We see at work in everything the Bible tells of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, the general opinion at the time of the flood in the ruling part of the cities of Pentapolis. God appears in a dream to Abimelech to avenge the honor of Sarah and Abimelech lets out a cry, eloquent confession of his concept of the justice: "Lord! Wouldst thou slay even a righteous nation? [1]

The expulsion of the inhabitants of Canaan by the Hebrews has always raised to the opponents of the biblical spirit of indignant protest, as they present it as a massacre, blind ruled by the pleasure of God in favor of privileged people. However, there is instead an example of impartial justice. If God drove the Canaanites, that no mistake is, "said Moses, because of their sins:" Through all these things the nations are defiled which I cast out before you. The country has been defiled his iniquity, and I would punish the country vomited out its inhabitants [2] The moral law is also needed if all Israel will not be spared if more people come to imitate these corrupt: "Take care that the country will vomit you out when you defile it, as it vomited out the nations that were before you [3] And elsewhere: "It will happen that I will treat yourself as I have resolved to treat [4] ". "If you forget the LORD [5] your God, and you go after other gods, if you serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will perish . You will perish like the nations the LORD destroyed before you [6]

All these statements are of paramount importance and full of valuable lessons. Israel is presented as all humanity to the same divine law. The iniquities of men breaking harmony universal cause of fatal consequences for them, or providential law of cause and effect must, to maintain the general order, receive constant application and inflexibly is that sovereign wisdom.

Not only did the sacred writers equate Israel with emphasis on the Gentile world under God's justice, but they put special care to ban the idea that the Jewish people have been elected by a privilege or even arbitrary because its merit is would have been greater than that of his enemies: "Say not in thine heart: It's because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land. For it is because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD driving them out before you. No, this is not because of your justice and righteousness in your heart that you came into possession of their country, but it is because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them before you [7] Elsewhere, as if to remove any hint of pride, Moses calls Israel "the smallest of nations": "This is not because you exceed in number all the peoples that the LORD has sought you and he chose you because you were the fewest of all peoples [8] ". The great legislator gives as the reason for the election of Israel God's love for him and his willingness to take the oath he had done to his fathers. And we should not believe that there is a contradiction with the statements quoted above from Leviticus, because everything indicates that this particular love of God is basically that the consecration of ethnic special ability of Israel to become the guardian and the propagator of the divine law in the world.

The historical accuracy of the claims of the Bible on the corruption of the Canaanite peoples, as some critics wanted [9] contest, moreover adds nothing to the religious and moral texts. The key is that we have believed in the depravity and that Moses had been able to take the benefit of Israel, a lesson of divine justice equally to all. But here is something even more remarkable and makes a last touch to the portrait of the fair and universal welfare traced by the Hebrew lawgiver. We hear one say to his people that the misfortunes that will melt on Israel survives the moralization of the Gentiles, as well as recent events have served as a lesson to the Israelites: "Generations to come, your children born after you and abroad who come from a distant land, the streets of wounds and diseases with which the Lord has struck this country .... all nations shall say: Why the Lord done thus to this land? Why this passionate, this great anger? And one answer: Because they have forsaken the covenant with them by the LORD, the God of their fathers, when bringing them out of Egypt, because that they went and served other gods and worship them ... Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against this land ... The LORD has torn their country in anger and rage, with great indignation ... [10] ". And can we not see in this verse a word of repentance and conversion of Gentiles to the view that justice which God exercises even on those who are dearest to know that the example most beneficial to all? "The secret things belong unto the Lord our God the things that are revealed to us and our children for ever, so that we may do all the words of this law."

Anyway, this text speaks for itself. We do not want a more explicit notion of impartial justice and wise providence. Also we allow there to see what we find to be similar in Philo, or Josephus, not as a mark of condescension to attract pagans to their kindness, but as an echo faithful biblical ideas themselves. Philo said that before Paul does not belong to Israel by birth to have the right to call himself a worthy son of Abraham and he had to remember that this energetic words of Moses "If you hearken to the voice of the Lord your God ... the proselyte who will be at [11] among you [12] rise over you more than you, you come down lower and lower [13] "

How we doubt also the meaning of the words of these authors Israelites, when we see expressed in the same way a fundamentally Jewish school, who apparently despised the pagan world as she was despised and whose stringent requirements tended constantly to separate as much as possible of the Gentile Israel? We refer to the Pharisees. You can be assured that what they teach is the accurate description of the Jewish faith and not a concession to the pagans that surrounded them. But these doctors have said, among other things, that while nice converted to Judaism is considered to be the Jewish point of birth could eat the paschal lamb, the Jewish apostate becomes a foreign [14], as his works make it unrecognizable to his Father in heaven [15]. In their eyes Abraham is the father of all men who observe the divine law is Jewish, is Noachide, they have the right to give him that name and whoever abandoned the profession of idolatry is pure monotheism can be described as Jewish, Yehudi , of whatever race he belongs [16]. Is not the echo of these doctrines Pharisaic we hear in the mouths of Justin Martyr when he states that those who have lived according to the Logos, like Socrates, Heraclitus and those like them, were Christians before the preaching of the Gospel [17]

These same doctors were taught that below the precepts of the Mosaic law they wrote to the Gentiles use, we added these words: "that you are not trained to act according to their abominations" [18], in order to show that pagans enacted strict laws to separate them from Israel, were intended to preserve the Jews from their moral contact, but that they do not have them considered less [19] brothers if only they had observed the natural law of Noachides. Is it still necessary to recall here the doctrine of the Pharisees so often quoted and according to which all the righteous, of whatever race they belong, have a share in eternal salvation? [20] Such maxims that religion alone inspired the rabbis are also consistent with those that sound philosophy of the Gentile advised its followers, the second witness Plato, Eratosthenes of Alexandria, who two centuries BC we had already professed Christian, not divide men into Greek and barbarian, but distinguishing those who do good to those who commit evil.

We find a passage in the Talmud strangely reminiscent, in that it has reasonable, the doctrine of Paul on the rejection of Israel. It is perhaps useful to rap it closer to the biblical texts we have quoted above, to show the continuity of spirit of Judaism over the issue of justice and providence of God. "The Holy One, blessed be He, says: These are my creatures and those there are the work of my hands. How then could I sacrifice to each other? So says a popular proverb, the bull started to run and as he fell, the master was replaced by a horse he has in his stable. " Rashi adds: "This is what the master would never have done before the fall of the bull, because he loved his bull. And then when the bull comes to recover from his fall, the teacher is having difficulty in making out his horse to the stable after having placed. Similarly, when the Holy One, blessed be He, has seen the downfall of Israel, he has given greatness to the people of the land and converted to God when Israel will obtain mercy, God will find it difficult to push the peoples of the land because of Israel "[21]

When we read in the Gospels that God can even stones raise up children to Abraham, so there is nothing stronger than we find among the rabbis themselves. It is quite conceivable that sectarian opposition, they were to Judaism could inspire such statements to editors of the Gospels too willing to sacrifice their ideals to the Messianic Jewish patriotism, but the rabbis, while [22] Jews remaining faithful and zealous patriots, have the utter such words, what convincing evidence to support the high idea they had supreme and universal justice of God!

References

  1. Genesis, XX, 4.
  2. Leviticus XVIII, 27.
  3. Ibid., XVIII, 28.
  4. Numbers xxxiii 56.
  5. Page 139
  6. Deuteronomy, VIII, 19.
  7. Deuteronomy, IX, 4.
  8. Ibid., VII, 7.
  9. Page 140
  10. Deuteronomy, XXXIX, 22 ff.
  11. Page 141
  12. הגר אשר בקרבך
  13. Deuteronomy XXVIII 43
  14. בן נכר
  15. Literally, his works have become foreign to her Heavenly Father שנתנכרו מעשיו לאביו שבשמים Rashi, in Exodus XII, 43.
  16. כל כופר בע"ז נקרא יהודי VR Nissim, Abode in Zara-357
  17. And μςτά λόγον NOT CLEAR (cum ratione) vixerunt Christiani NOT CLEAR??? qualis apud Græcos Socrates and Heraclitus fuerunt atque iis similes. (Apolog. I, 46).
  18. T . B. Solà, cap. VII.
  19. Page 142
  20. T. Babli, Sanhedrin. XI. Maimonides Ilchot Teshubah , III, I. Melachim IX.
  21. Sanhedrin, f. No. 98.
  22. Page 143