EE & R, 3_3: Between the Torah and the Prophets: Prophets Against Toil
EE & R, 3_3: Between the Torah and the Prophets: Prophets Against Toil
(For the previous installment of "Exodus, Exile and Redemption," click here. For ToC, click here.)
The prophets teach mankind to know Hashem, but the Torah does not promote that ideal. The Torah commands mankind to worship Hashem through animal sacrifices, whereas the prophets downplay this method of divine service. As previously mentioned,1 the two differences are somehow co-dependent, a point made explicit in this verse:
For I desired kindness and not sacrifice, and knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings (Hosea 6:6)
A closer reading of the various passages dismissive of sacrificial worship will uncover yet a third theme that regularly appears alongside the anti-sacrificial stance and its corollary of promoting prophetic knowledge of Hashem’s ways: the theme of the Exodus from Egypt. The connection between the Exodus and the prophets’ core message of knowledge will prove crucial to understanding that message and its associated deemphasis of sacrifices. Let us revisit some of the passages:
My people, what have I done to you? How have I wearied you? Testify against me! For I brought you up from the land of Egypt, and from the house of slaves I redeemed you, and sent before you Moshe, Aharon and Miriam… With what shall I come before Hashem? … Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, with year-old calves? … He has told you, man, what is good, and what does Hashem demand from you but for doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with your God? (Michah 6:3-8)
For I did not speak to your forefathers nor command them on the day I took them out from the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings and sacrifices… I sent you all My servants, the prophets, day after day (Jeremiah 7:22-25)
Should you offer up to Me burnt offerings or grain offerings, I will not accept them… But let justice well up like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. Did you bring Me sacrifices and grain offerings for forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel? (Amos 5:21-25)
The same three themes – the significance of the Exodus, the primacy of prophetic knowledge, and the opposition to sacrificial worship – appear, too, in this passage in Hosea, which brings us back to our earlier discussion of Yaakov:
Ephraim has surrounded me with lies, the house of Israel, with deceit… Hashem has a dispute with Yehudah and will punish Yaakov according to his ways… In the womb he cheated his brother… But you must return to your God. Keep lovingkindness and justice… A merchant, in whose hand are cheating scales; he loves to exploit. And Ephraim said, “Why, I have grown rich, found power for myself, in all my toils they shall find in me no iniquity that is a sin.” I am Hashem your God from the land of Egypt… and I spoke to the prophets, and I multiplied visions, and through the prophets I have used images… At Gilgal they slaughtered bulls. Their altars, too, are as heaps in the furrows of the field. And Yaakov fled to the field of Aram, and Yisrael labored for a woman, and for a woman he guarded sheep. And by a prophet Hashem brought up Yisrael from Egypt, and by a prophet it was guarded (Hosea 12:10-14)
Hosea is critical of Yaakov’s toil and contrasts his actions with the experience of the nation of Israel, which was rescued from toil in Egypt. Yaakov worked and guarded sheep, whereas Israel was redeemed from bondage in Egypt and guarded, this by a prophet. The prophet, as such, opposes toil, a stance rooted in the historic redemption from slavery, and this opposition to toil is presented in the context of a passage condemning dishonest work and deceitfulness.
Let us explain the prophetic position. The prophets advocate true knowledge, which is familiarity with all of being – an awareness and recognition of the divine presence and purpose in the world. And those who know never toil. The essence of toil is doing what you have to do rather than what you want to do. Those who understand the ways of Hashem always desire its purpose: thus, their work is devotion, never toil. It is with the greatest ease that the person knowledgeable in the kindness, justice and righteousness of Hashem will emulate those ways, contributing to the divine plan and enjoying it in equal measure. This is the meaning of the remarkable connection between freedom from bondage and the revelation of God, which together comprise the Exodus. Hashem’s self-introduction to His people involved their liberation. As is written:
God spoke to Moshe and said to him, “I am Hashem. And I appeared to Avraham, to Yitzchak and to Yaakov as El Shaddai, but by my name, Hashem, I was not known to them… Therefore, say to the children of Israel, ‘I am Hashem. I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt… You will know that I am Hashem… I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and I will give it to you as a possession. I am Hashem’” (Exodus 6:2-8)
Israel earned knowledge and freedom simultaneously, for knowledge is freedom. For this reason, the inspiration of the prophets is the Exodus, their 1000-year epoch commencing from that watershed moment in history which revealed to Israel freedom in knowledge (as discussed here).
He who knows the ways of Hashem is always tranquil; not so the ignorant one. Lost like a stranger in an alien world, adrift and bewildered, he thrashes about, attempting to force success in a realm whose rules he neither comprehends nor respects. Each effort is a struggle against the tide that leaves him more exhausted. Without the guiding light of divine wisdom, his path is fraught with frustration and futility. In his ignorance, he battles against the very fabric of existence, failing to realize that true peace and purpose lie in understanding and acting in harmony with the divine plan.
Yaakov’s toil is therefore associated with his lack of knowledge and his originally imperfect character (discussed here). Because he didn’t fully know Hashem and His ways, he toiled; in contrast, the nation of Israel learned the ways of Hashem when He revealed Himself through His prophets, and was thus liberated from toil: “And by a prophet Hashem brought up Yisrael from Egypt, and by a prophet it was guarded.” In this spirit, prophecy itself is termed “rest”: “’Rest’ means nothing but for prophecy” (Mechilta Bo, 1).
This deficiency of the tsaddik is alluded to in the Torah narrative wherein Yaakov defends his character by referencing his arduous toil, a narrative hinted at in the passage from Hosea. Together with his wives and children, Yaakov escaped from his abusive father-in-law, Laban. During the escape, Rachel, his wife, stole the idols belonging to her father, who then, upon discovering the escape, gave chase and caught up to Yaakov. Laban demanded an explanation: “Now you have gone off because you longed so much for your father’s house. But why did you steal my gods?” (Genesis 31:30). Ignorant of his wife’s theft, Yaakov declared “With whomever you find your gods, that person shall not live!” (ibid, 32). Laban searched but didn’t find, prompting Yaakov to offer an impassioned defense of his character:
What is my crime, what is my sin, that you have come after me in hot pursuit? Now you have rummaged through all of my things; what have you found of all your household things? … I have been with you for twenty years now… by day, the heat ate me up and frost in the night, and sleep departed from my eyes. These twenty years I have been in your household. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters and six years for your flocks… My suffering and the toil of my hands God has seen, and He rebuked you… (ibid, 36-42)
The fact that Laban’s gods were not stolen was held up by Yaakov as demonstration of his innocence. Yet the gods were in fact stolen, only not found, and it is that irony, evident to the reader of Yaakov’s defense, who knows the backstory of Rachel’s theft, that makes his defense fundamentally suspect. If his defense was based on an error on his part, might that not indicate that Yaakov wasn’t as pure as he maintained? Perhaps, then, God did not view his toil as favorably as Yaakov believed.
This irony is the source of Hosea’s indictment of Yaakov. In the passage referencing Yaakov, the prophet charges Israel with deceitfulness and cheating ways. This verse in particular alludes to Yaakov’s defense: “Why, I have grown rich, found power for myself, in all my toils they shall find in me no iniquity that is a sin.” Yaakov believed there is no sin to be found among his possessions. Vindicated by Laban’s fruitless search for his gods, he declared that his toil was judged favorably by Hashem. But Hosea found the sin in the house of Israel: He found the foreign gods that were in Yaakov’s possession, and he rebuked Yaakov and his progeny for relying on toil to amass wealth instead of developing knowledge of Hashem.
In the next chapter, we will explore how the prophets’ position against toil together with their emphasis on the Exodus connects to their stance on sacrificial worship.