“All the Israelites murmured against Moses and Aaron.”
Although the Torah is a book, it is rare that anyone sits down to read it as a book, straight through. Most people are familiar with the stories that make up the greater part of Genesis and the early part of Exodus. But once we get to the legislation of Leviticus, including the laws governing the sacrificial cult, things become difficult for the average reader. Numbers, which is concerned primarily with wanderings in the desert, takes up the narrative of the Exodus and presents a decidedly unflattering picture of the Jewish people. Deuteronomy consists mainly of farewell speeches from Moses that review everything that has happened up to that point and ends with an account of Moses’s death.
In synagogues, the Torah is divided into weekly portions. In modern scholarship, it is divided into at least four different sources, each with its own point of view. The result is that few people look at the Torah as a unified whole. The problem with breaking it down into ever smaller pieces is that it makes it easy to miss the forest for the trees. In this chapter, I want to look at the major narrative of the Torah, the story of the Exodus, and ask what it is trying to teach us.
The Exodus narrative is referred to as early as Genesis 15:13–14, when God tells Abraham that his offspring will be strangers in a land that is not their own and will be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years. At Mount Sinai, when God presents the Ten Commandments, he could have introduced himself by saying: “I the Lord am your God who created the heavens and the earth.” But instead he says: “I the Lord am your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage. In short, the Exodus narrative is the theme that brings together everything else in the Torah. It is recalled every Friday night and forms the linchpin that unites the three major festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. We will see, however, that the story as it exists in the Torah is quite different from the story that exists in most people’s imagination.
The theme of the story is clear: deliverance and redemption. A band of slaves living in a strange land are oppressed by a king who fears that their numbers are growing too rapidly. To protect himself, the king orders that all male children born to slave women be killed. The slaves cry for help, and their cry is answered when God reveals himself to an escaped criminal living in exile and tells him to go before the king and demand that the slaves be set free. After a series of confrontations, the slaves are told that they can go free. At the last minute, however, the king changes his mind and sends his army to destroy them. Trapped between the advancing army and a large body of water, the slaves are saved by a miracle: the waters part, allowing them to walk to safety, and then draw back and drown the army.
More than just a historical narrative, the story was destined to become a full-fledged epic. According to the political theorist Michael Walzer, it is “a story, a big story, one that has become part of the cultural consciousness of the West.”1 For centuries Pharaoh’s Egypt stood as the archetype of all oppressive regimes and Moses as the archetype of all those seeking to overthrow them. Beyond the question of politics, the story became a paradigm for how we understand divine providence: oppression ceases, those responsible for the oppression are brought to justice, and a new order is established.
Walzer also is right to point out that, in addition to qualities like irony and suspense, the story is noteworthy for its linear structure. Unlike Odysseus, who returns to his home in Ithaca to reestablish himself as ruler and be reunited with his family, none of the characters who leave Egypt has ever set foot in the Promised Land before.2 At a fundamental level, linearity implies futurity. The Promised Land is not just a place where people can enjoy milk and honey but also a place where human life is to take on a whole new dimension. Monotheism is to replace idolatry, concern for the less fortunate is to replace selfishness, and humility is to replace arrogance. No one has ever experienced a culture like this before.
The story is also noteworthy for its sense of dramatic confrontation. At Exodus 7:3 God intervenes to harden Pharaoh’s heart, providing the story with a larger-than-life villain. If the people are to be released from slavery, it will not be because a calculating ruler decided that he would be better off without them but because a stubborn ruler became involved in a deadly test of wills with God. Each time Pharaoh changes his mind, God brings more deadly plagues on his kingdom.
The test of wills reaches a climax when the slaves leave Egypt and camp by the Red Sea and Pharaoh changes his mind. But the God who rescued Ishmael and Isaac from certain death in the Book of Genesis intervenes once again and forestalls catastrophe. As we read at Exodus 14:30–31: “Thus the Lord delivered Israel that day from the Egyptians. Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the shore of the sea. And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord; they had faith in the Lord and His servant Moses.”
It would be reassuring if, having witnessed the saving power of God firsthand, the people decided once and for all to trust him and listen to Moses. But as anyone familiar with the story knows, this is not the case. By Exodus 15, when they come to Marah, the people complain that the water they are given tastes bitter. Again they witness the saving grace of God when Moses takes a special piece of wood and puts it in the water, and suddenly the taste changes from bitter to sweet.
Unfortunately, the people remain skeptical and mean-spirited. At Genesis 16, when they reach the wilderness of Sin, they complain that they are hungry and wonder why they did not die by the hand of God in Egypt, where at least they had food to eat. At Exodus 17, when they reach Rephidim, they complain about lack of water and ask why they have been led into the desert to die of thirst. The foundation for their lack of trust is laid as early as Exodus 6:9, when Moses promises that God will liberate them and lead them to a new land: “But when Moses told this [that God had sent him to liberate them] to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage.”
The usual explanation for their lack of trust is that slavery involves more than physical or economic oppression; over time it destroys a people’s spirit and makes them comfortable with humiliation. Despite witnessing the plagues that God brought on the Egyptians and being told that he will be with them every step of the way, they continue to say that they want to return to Egypt. Seen in this light, their complaints about lack of food and water run true to character. If the people are going to be worthy of redemption, they must not only break free of Pharaoh’s taskmasters but break free of the mentality that has been drummed into them for the past four hundred years. Put otherwise, they have to stop thinking like slaves and start thinking like free men and women.
Along these lines, Maimonides claims that God subjected the people to the hardships of the desert in order to toughen them up and prepare them for the wars of conquest.3 Needless to say, the transition from slavery to freedom will not be easy. As anyone can see, the people are not yet ready to accept the responsibilities that go with freedom and are about to make a series of mistakes. The question is: Will they ever learn to overcome the obstacles that await them, or will they continue to think like slaves?
For much of the story, the answer is that they will continue to think like slaves. In fact, as the story progresses, the confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh takes a strange and unexpected turn. Instead of viewing Moses as the hero and Pharaoh as the villain, the people begin to see things the other way around. By Numbers 11:4–6 they refer to Egypt as the seat of luxury and comfort (“We remember the fish we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic”) and the desert as the seat of poverty and starvation.
Did Pharaoh provide lavish meals for his slaves? The early chapters of Exodus suggest that he did not. According to 1:13, the Egyptians were ruthless in imposing tasks and made the people’s lives bitter as a result. My guess is that Pharaoh never provided more than a subsistence diet and that the people’s memories have begun to play tricks on them by conjuring up images of a “good old days” that never existed. Whatever the case may be, the fact remains that the people show little interest in the spiritual tasks God has set for them and are more concerned with where they are going to get their next meal.
Their lack of attention to spiritual matters reaches its climax at Exodus 32, when Moses is delayed on the mountain, and they ask Aaron to make gods (elohim) for them. Aaron responds by collecting gold jewelry and fashioning a statue of a calf. When the people proclaim the statue divine, Aaron builds an altar around it and announces that there will be a festival to the Lord the following day. At the festival, the people are told: “This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up out of the Land of Egypt!” (Exodus 32:4).4
Although the Golden Calf is often viewed as a paradigm case of Israel’s lack of faith, we have seen that elohim can have a variety of meanings. When the Israelites ask Aaron to make them elohim, it is unclear whether they are rejecting God, introducing an unauthorized way of worshipping God, or expressing the need for an intermediary between God and the people now that Moses has been gone for such a long time.
Rashi took another tack, pointing out that, according to Exodus 12:38, a “mixed multitude”—suggesting other enslaved peoples, political prisoners, thieves, and anyone else who might have benefited from social chaos—accompanied the Israelites on the Exodus. Because the text says this is your god rather than this is our god, he concluded that the mixed multitude was responsible for the Golden Calf episode, not the Israelites themselves. Though Exodus 32:26 does make it clear that not every Israelite went along with worship of the Golden Calf, it is noteworthy that when the mixed multitude is at fault at Numbers 11:4, the text says so quite clearly. Here no such qualification is found.
Whoever is at fault, there is no question that God becomes angry and says that he wants to destroy the entire nation and start over. One midrash suggests, contrary to the biblical text, that the Golden Calf episode was responsible for the people’s having to wander in the desert for forty years.5 Beginning with the Book of Acts (7), early Christians argued that the Golden Calf constituted a violation of Israel’s covenant with God, making it necessary for God to establish a new covenant.6 Yet, as Moses reminds God when he threatens to destroy the nation, the original covenant with Abraham said that his descendants would be like the stars in the heavens and would inherit the land forever.
To repeat: the transition from slavery to freedom will not be easy. The people are disappointed that the milk and honey they were promised have not appeared. God is disappointed that the people put more emphasis on food than they do on salvation. Moses is stuck between them, defending God to the people and the people to God.
Still, the Book of Exodus does not end on an air of complete hopelessness. God’s promise that Abraham will be blessed through his posterity remains in place. By chapter 39, we learn that work on the Tabernacle is finished, which means that the people now have a concrete manifestation of God’s presence in their midst. They are being fed on manna. With the Golden Calf out of the way and the instigators put to death, there is reason to hope that the people will direct their attention to God and put up with the austerity of the desert until the end of the journey.
If the people were rebellious in the Book of Exodus, their rebellion becomes even more pronounced in the Book of Numbers. Beginning with chapter 11, they complain to God, God becomes angry with them, and fire consumes the outlying parts of the camp. At 11:4–6, the mixed multitude complains about eating manna, which causes the whole nation to “recall” the luxurious meals discussed above.
Shortly thereafter, Moses complains to God that the responsibilities of leading a rebellious people through the desert are too great and asks: “Why have You dealt ill with Your servant, and why have I not enjoyed Your favor, that You have laid the burden of all this people upon me?” God tries to ease Moses’s burden by distributing the responsibilities of leadership to a council of seventy elders.
In response to the people’s desire to eat meat, God causes a bevy of quail to blow in from the sea. But before the meat is consumed, as it is still in the people’s mouths, a plague breaks out. In chapter 12, Miriam and Aaron incur God’s anger by speaking against Moses and suggesting that they should be treated as equals. This chapter is significant because it shows that the problem is not just a matter of getting God and the people together but of deciding how the political structure of the nation should be organized.
By definition war is a conflict between enemies. Yet as anyone who has studied military history soon learns, the primary conflict often sets the stage for a series of internal conflicts between allies, the army and the navy, or one field commander and another—all leading to the question, “Who is in charge?” And so it is in our narrative: eventually, civil war breaks out between the followers of Moses and Aaron and those of Korach.
By chapter 13, Moses sends spies to survey the land and report back on what they find. Most of the spies say the land is indeed flowing with milk and honey but that the current inhabitants are strong and the cities well fortified. If the purpose of making the people wander in the desert was to toughen them up and get them ready for wars of conquest, then it did not succeed, because with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, the people decide once again that they want to return to Egypt. It is here that we get the quotation that introduces this chapter.
Although the people have rebelled against God before, this act turns out to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. In anger God cries out: “How long will this people spurn Me?” This is, after all, the God who destroyed the entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea. Again God threatens to destroy the whole nation, and again Moses must intercede. At Moses’s behest, God relents, but there is a catch: none of those who rebelled against God will ever see the Promised Land. It is at this point that the punishment of forty years of wandering takes effect. Apparently, the generation of the Exodus will never be able to shed the slave mentality. Rather than trying to prepare the people for entry into the Promised Land, the purpose of the wandering now becomes to allow a new generation—one that has never experienced slavery—to take charge.
The reader might well expect that, having reached this point, the themes of rebellion and social disintegration would begin to subside. But as if to add insult to injury, the story only gets worse. Complaints about lack of food and water continue. In chapter 20, the water runs out, causing the people to say that it would have been better if they had died with their brethren earlier on. In chapter 25, a number of people partake in a lewd ritual in honor of the pagan god Baal Peor. Moses is nearing the end of his life and seems unable to regain control. Before long, the fate of the nation rests with Phineas, a vigilante who acts outside the boundaries of normal authority.
My reading of the story is that too much was asked of the generation of the Exodus. Unable to live as free people in Egypt or put down roots in the wilderness of Sinai, they never had the opportunity to establish a national identity and assume the responsibilities that go with it.
We should keep in mind that nation building is a difficult process that comes with no guarantee of success. It is often forgotten that the Revolutionary War of 1776 was also a civil war, because large numbers of colonists remained loyal to the British Crown. The first government established after the Revolutionary War failed. Even after the US Constitution was ratified and George Washington installed as president, Federal troops had to put down an armed rebellion in western Pennsylvania. By 1861 the entire country was fighting a civil war that went on for four years and resulted in over 600,000 casualties. In some parts of the country, the scars left by that war can still be felt.
Again the lesson is clear: the conditions in which people live cannot help but affect the way they act. As the Greek historian Thucydides put it, the problem with political turmoil is that it brings people’s characters down to the level of their fortunes.7 The same theme was explored in a television show aired in 1960 called “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” part of the series The Twilight Zone. How would a typical American town react if it were invaded by creatures from another planet?
In most science fiction stories, the invaders are robots or creatures who devour helpless earthlings. This one was different. All the aliens do is tamper with the town’s electricity. Televisions stop working, lights do not go on, and cars fail to start. Then suddenly one car begins to start on its own. With no clear explanation of what is happening or why, it does not take long for the townspeople to begin accusing each other and to look for scapegoats and for violence to break out. Eventually, stones are thrown and shots fired. The moral is ironic: rather than destroy the townspeople outright, all the aliens have to do is take away some of their comforts and watch as they destroy each other.
To return to the story of the Exodus, only an extraordinary person can focus on spiritual matters without an adequate meal or a place to call home. Moses went without bread and water for forty days and nights; but Moses is not the average person, and we have seen that even he begins to falter under the strain of leading a rebellious people through the wilderness.
In chapter 20, Moses himself is tested and found wanting. The people complain for the umpteenth time that they have no water to drink. God instructs Moses to take Aaron’s staff and speak to the rock in front of the people so that water will flow out. Moses and Aaron assemble the people, and Moses says to them: “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of the rock?” Instead of speaking to the rock as God commanded him, he strikes it with the staff twice. Though water flows out, God chastises Moses for his lack of trust and issues the supreme punishment: Moses will not be allowed to enter the Promised Land.8
There has been no shortage of speculation on the nature of Moses’s sin and why it merits such a strict rebuke. Is it that he struck the rock instead of talking to it? Is it that he struck the rock twice instead of once? Is it that he made it seem as if he is the one responsible for the miracle rather than God? Or is it that, after striking the rock, he did not thank God? Whatever the explanation, the close relation between God and Moses is damaged.
By the end of the Book of Numbers, no one is happy. With the exception of Joshua and Caleb, none of the people liberated from Egyptian bondage will set foot in the land earmarked for Abraham’s descendants. The hoped-for transformation from slavery to freedom is still on hold. At various points, both Aaron and Moses fail to live up to expectations. The only remaining hope is that the new generation will not repeat its parents’ mistakes. If they do not repeat them, then the years of wandering in the desert will have accomplished something; if they do repeat them, then it would seem that the years of wandering were for naught.
As its Greek-inspired name meaning “second law” (deuteros nomos) suggests, Deuteronomy contains a review of everything that has happened since the Israelites left Egypt. With the new generation poised to enter the land, Moses recounts all the provocations and spiritual failings of the previous one. No attempt is made to sugarcoat the truth. On the contrary, Moses makes it clear that the people have been rebellious ever since they left Egypt (Deuteronomy 9:6–8 and 9:24).9
If those ignorant of history are bound to repeat its mistakes, Moses tries to make sure that this generation understands exactly what is at stake. In some cases, he goes into long descriptions of the evils that will befall them if they follow in their parents’ footsteps. According to Deuteronomy 28:53, for example, the situation will become so desperate that starving parents will resort to cannibalism and eat the flesh of their own children in order to survive. If, on the other hand, the people do not follow in their parents’ footsteps and make a concerted effort to correct past mistakes, they will enjoy a bounty unlike any seen before.
Moses’s orations in Deuteronomy set the stage for the final chapter of the story. Since he himself is not allowed to enter the land, a typical ending would have God tell him that his years of wandering in the desert were not in vain, that even though the first generation could not pull itself together, the second was about to become what God always wanted: a holy nation with a clear sense of purpose. Like an old man planting a tree that will not bear fruit until after his death, Moses would not be allowed to enter the land himself but could form a picture of what the land would have in store for his descendants. That picture would allow us to say that eventually the slave mentality can be overcome.
As it happens, though, the actual end of the story is nothing like this. Here is how God asks Moses to prepare for death at Deuteronomy 31:16–18:
You are soon to lie with your fathers. This people will thereupon go astray after the alien gods in their midst, in the land that they are about to enter; they will forsake Me and break My covenant that I made with them. Then My anger will flare up against them, and I will abandon them and hide My Countenance from them. They shall be ready prey; and many evils and troubles shall befall them. And they shall say on that day, “Surely it is because our God is not in our midst that these evils have befallen us.” Yet I will keep My countenance hidden on that day, because of all the evil they have done in turning to other gods.
The rhetoric of this passage is the harshest in the entire Torah, for it claims that the generation that is about to enter the land will go astray in the sense that a prostitute or promiscuous person goes astray and will continue to rebel against God.10 For all its beauty and bounty, the land does not bring about a spiritual transformation in the hearts of the people. As Ezekiel (20:28–31) put it years later, it turned out to be the scene of a whole new round of provocations.
The tragedy of Moses’s life is not that he is prevented from entering the land but that at his death reconciliation between God and the people is nowhere in sight. In his last speech to the Levites, Moses indicates that he is under no illusions about the future: “For I know that, when I am dead, you will act wickedly and turn away from the path that I enjoined upon you, and that in time to come misfortune will befall you for having done evil in the sight of the Lord and vexed Him by your deeds” (Deuteronomy 31:29).
Biblical history immediately following Deuteronomy offers a different picture. Since Israel conquered Palestine during Joshua’s reign, the narrative could hardly maintain that the people continued to rebel against God. Accordingly, the Bible claims that the people remained faithful (Joshua 24:31). From a modern perspective, it is questionable whether behavior suddenly improved in Joshua’s time and went back to rebellion after his death. Even if there were a temporary improvement, the fact remains that Moses is not told about it. All he knows is that future generations will repeat the same mistakes he labored to correct.
The closest Moses gets to a happy ending is the blessing of Deuteronomy 33, which culminates in the verse: “Happy are you, O Israel! Who is like you, a people saved by the Lord, the shield of your help, and the sword of your triumph! Your enemies shall come fawning to you; and you shall tread upon their high places.” But these lines are hardly strong enough to overturn the negative tone that runs through Deuteronomy 31. In the end, Moses’s life raises the prospect that even the noblest of people can pursue a goal they will never reach.
Read as a single book rather than a patchwork of individual stories and genealogies, the Torah has all the makings of a tragedy. Closure is provided by the death of Moses, but the goal of reconciling the people with God remains unfulfilled. The lack of fulfillment is so far out of line with our expectations that it cannot help but call attention to itself. Why does an epic that holds out the promise of redemption end on such a sour note?
Modern scholarship answers by saying that the Book of Deuteronomy is a later addition to the Torah and thus contains “predictions” of what has already happened. I have no reason to dispute this except to say that it leaves the basic question unanswered. If the ending is added, why pick this one? Why not have an ending that resembles the story of Joseph, where justice is served and all loose ends are tied up?
Whether one is a Jew or a Christian, there is only one plausible answer: the Torah cannot be the end of the story. Something else has to happen if the story is to make sense. What this “something” is begins to take shape in the idea of a Messiah (literally, the anointed one of God), who will usher in an age totally unlike anything that has preceded it.11 If wandering in the desert for forty years and entry into the Promised Land did not produce a spiritual transformation, perhaps something more drastic is required—a cosmic upheaval.
It is no secret that cosmic upheaval is a familiar theme in prophetic literature. Thus Amos (8–9) tells his audience that the Day of the Lord will not be a joyous time but a bitter, awful one when no light will shine and famine will destroy the land. Jeremiah (4:22–23) sees a time when disaster will follow upon disaster and the whole land will be laid waste, when the heavens will have no light and the mountains will shake. Jesus (Matthew 24:29–34) predicts that the sun will be darkened, the stars will fall from heaven, the heavens will shake, and all the tribes of the earth will mourn.
Why will such drastic action be necessary? Because, it would seem, evil is so ingrained in the human condition that nothing short of a cosmic upheaval can possibly root it out. Recall that after putting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and commanding them not to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, the first thing that happens is an act of disobedience. In the next generation, Cain murders his brother. Eventually, evil becomes so prevalent that God must bring a flood and start human history all over again. Before long he must contend with Sodom and Gomorrah. After promising Abraham that he will be blessed through his posterity, God suffers so many provocations from the generation of the Exodus that he has a difficult time keeping his word. And we have just seen that the generation destined to enter the Promised Land will be no better.
Viewed in this light, the Torah raises important questions: If, despite the miracle of the Red Sea and the services of the greatest prophet who ever lived, the people have not become a holy nation, will they ever? On a smaller scale, will the people of Maple Street ever come to their senses and resolve their problems in an amicable way? In other words, is redemption possible, or does the evil in human nature run so deep that it is inextricable?
On the basis of Genesis 6:5 (“The Lord saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth, and how every plan he devised by his mind was nothing but evil all the time”), the Rabbis of the Talmud speculated that every person is endowed with an evil impulse (yetzer ha-ra) at birth. A contrary impulse for good is acquired at puberty. Although there is a tradition that connects the evil impulse with Satan, it would be wrong to conclude that it is irredeemably evil. It can be destructive if allowed to get the upper hand, but once the good impulse is instilled, the evil one can be overcome. Thus Genesis 4:7: “Sin crouches at the door; / Its urge is toward you, / Yet you can be its master.” There is even a tradition that says that because everything that God made is good, the evil impulse can be directed to constructive purposes. Without it, no one would build a house, take a spouse, beget children, or start a business.12
That is not to say that the Torah takes an optimistic view of human behavior. The accounts of rape, murder, incest, and sibling rivalry, not to mention the disastrous outcome of the Exodus narrative, are sufficient to dispel any such notion. It is to say that the evil impulse is not so rooted in human nature that nothing we do can overcome it.
In keeping with the idea that everything God created is good, a famous talmudic passage asserts that the soul that God breathes into us is pure because God formed it and created it.13 What we do with it is up to us. In another passage, a debate rages for two and a half years on whether God made a mistake in creating human beings at all, and it is decided that it was a mistake.14 Still, the fact that the debate went on for so long indicates that there was no settled doctrine to which either side could appeal. The real point of the passage is surely its conclusion: given that human beings were created, let them examine their actions, which I take to mean repent of past sins and make every effort to do better.
It is a curious fact that despite the centrality of the doctrine of original sin for Christianity, Jesus never mentions it. The idea that there is more to human failing than a mere impulse to evil originates with the Apostle Paul at Romans 5:12: “Sin came into the world through one man [Adam].” Because all of humanity derives from Adam, and Adam is expelled from the Garden of Eden, Genesis 3 is often taken to mean that Adam’s descendants inherit a fallen condition that includes the unavoidable fact of mortality. The question is whether we are so fallen that nothing but an act of God can lift us out of our desperate state or whether we are capable of renouncing sin and getting out under our own power.
I sometimes ask myself this question on Yom Kippur. Imagine that you are sitting in heaven listening to thousands of people confess their sins. The problem is that they are reading from the same list of sins to which they confessed the year before and the year before that. And it is the same list to which they will confess next year. Does this mean that sin is inevitable, so that every year will be marked by confession of the same sins, or is it possible that one year, people will have come to their senses, so that no confession will be needed?
According to Ecclesiastes 7:20, there is not a righteous person on all the earth who does good and never sins. Although the passage does not say that our sin is inherited from Adam, it does imply that no one is blameless. If sin is inevitable, if no matter how hard we try we cannot rise above it, then while we may not have inherited Adam’s sin in a technical sense, like Adam we are all sinners in a real sense. Just as Adam rebelled against God in the Garden of Eden, in our own way, we rebel against God every time we tell a lie, break a promise, neglect the poor, or put our own interests ahead of those of others.
Let us grant that no one ever has or is likely to lead a perfect life from start to finish. Is sin so ingrained in our nature that everything we do is tainted with it, no matter how hard we strive to do the right thing? Early Christianity produced distinguished adherents to both sides of the question, the two most prominent of which were Pelagius and Augustine.
Pelagius, a fourth-century Irish monk, maintained that while it may take extraordinary effort to overcome sin, it must be possible to do so. The crux of Pelagius’s position is a principle made famous centuries later by Kant: ought implies can.15
To say that I ought to do something is to assume that I am at least capable of doing it. I cannot be obliged to run a four-minute mile, because I am physically unable to do so. I cannot be obliged to give $100 million to charity, because I do not have that much money. But I can be obliged to tell the truth, pay my taxes, and respect the rights of others. Just as we would condemn a master who ordered his servant to complete in one day a journey that requires four, Pelagius argues, it would be unjust—nay, pointless—for God to issue commands that exceed human capabilities.
Augustine, whose influence on Christianity was immense, argued that God created one human nature, which was epitomized by Adam.16 Adam enjoyed the freedom to sin or obey God. Once he decided to sin, he entered a fallen state. So while we were not physically present when Adam sinned, there is no denying that we are born into a deprived or wounded condition. In such a condition, our willpower is so weak that we cannot turn away from the myriad temptations that life puts before us. To suppose otherwise is to give human beings more credit than they deserve.
If Augustine is right, then salvation is not a matter of completely freeing oneself from the grip of sin but of appealing to the grace of God for forgiveness. In other words, it is not our effort that accounts for salvation but God’s love in the form of an infinite willingness to forgive the mistakes we have made. This is the love that is freely given without regard for the merit of those who receive it. If all we had to rely on is merit, salvation would be impossible.
The debate between Pelagius and Augustine became heated and went on for some time. Each side cited biblical passages to support its position. The fact that there was a debate at all shows that as late as the fourth century, the doctrine of original sin in Christianity still had not been formulated with precision. Eventually, Augustine won, and Pelagius was declared a heretic.
While some of the debate over original sin concerns how one reads the Bible, it is undeniable that the doctrine seems to enjoy overwhelming empirical support. It is all very well to hold out for the possibility that someone can resist life’s temptations, but who has ever succeeded in doing so? None of the generation of the Exodus did, nor did David or Solomon. In view of this record, proponents of original sin can always fall back on the claim that they are just being realistic. Dig deeply enough, and you will always find a trace of selfishness in what people do.
Despite his adherence to the ought implies can doctrine, there is an important respect in which Kant sided with Augustine. There is, he thought, a natural propensity in every person to rebel against the dictates of morality, what he termed “a perversity of the heart.”17 It corrupts everything we do and is so ingrained that no amount of effort on our part can get rid of it. So convinced was Kant of the truth of this doctrine that he argued that formal proof is unnecessary: all one has to do is look at the multitude of examples of evil that human history puts before us.18 As we have seen, the story of the Exodus is as much a part of that history as anything else.
What is heretical for Christianity need not be for Judaism. Although no Jew needs to be instructed on the depths to which human behavior can sink, the evil inclination of Rabbinic Judaism is not the same as Kant’s perversity of the heart. As I see it, Judaism is much closer to Pelagius than it is to Augustine. Why would God issue commandments that human beings could not possibly fulfill? If the story of the Exodus were only a record of human failure, there might be reason to think that God has set the standards for human behavior too high.
The truth is, however, that amid the many failures with which the Exodus narrative presents us, it does not end on a note of utter hopelessness, because at Deuteronomy 30:11–14 we read:
Surely this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, “Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it for us, that we may observe it?” Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, “Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?” No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.
These words come from Moses’s last oration and are often regarded as the high point of his prophecy. The full implication of his words has long been the subject of debate, and it may be that in the last twenty-five years, no other passage in the Torah has received as much attention.
Putting aside these debates, we can say that there is at least one message that is unmistakable: the law that was given at Sinai is not too difficult to fulfill. It was not given to angels or superhuman creatures but to ordinary men and women. In chapter 6, we learned that some of the laws are already concessions to human fallibility. This does not mean that the law is easy to fulfill or that, having fulfilled it once, a person is exempt from fulfilling it again. It does mean that no fallen condition or natural perversity stands in the way of its fulfillment.
Is it unrealistic to expect God and Israel to reach reconciliation? If previous generations did not succeed, what reason is there to think that our generation or a future one will? A fruitful way to answer these questions is to turn to a Rabbinic legend about the coming of the Messiah.19 I take the Messiah to symbolize a condition in which God looks at the world and is pleased by what he sees. This was supposed to happen when the Israelites entered the Promised Land, but things went awry.
The legend says that the Messiah will come when all Israel observes the Sabbath for two full weeks running. On the one hand, we have realism: no one thinks this is likely to happen any time soon. On the other hand, we have optimism: nothing stands in the way of realizing it except a concerted effort to act in the proper way. In sum, what the generation of the Exodus could not achieve is never more than thirteen days away.