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| Moses and Aaron |
If you know anything about the Torah’s essential teachings,
you know this. Adonai is God, and
Adonai alone. This is the
principle that, more than any other, makes so many Jews cling to their ancient
faith. This, even when new faiths with
all sorts of attractions present themselves to us. Why not adopt this new faith? Because, by and large, this new faith would
require Jews to violate the Second Commandment:
You shall have no other gods besides Me. It’s kind of hard to get around that one;
there’s no ‘wiggle room’! Even if you
like eating prawns and wouldn’t mind having religious sanction to do so, it is
difficult to worship some other god who is pleased with prawns with that echoing
in your head.
Some other religions
will tell you that they worship the God of Israel, but that they accept others as
prophets – even as The Prophet. But
Jewish Tradition, as expressed through the Rabbis, has long held that Malachi,
who lived in the late fourth century before the Common Era, was the last of the
Prophets. Many Jews, even if they cannot
cite the exact places in the Talmud where this idea is presented, internalise
it. Even if you hear a later voice
express some idea that you find attractive, and want to consider that idea as prophecy,
there is the knowledge of this principle getting in the way. This is why Jesus and Muhammad, to offer just
two examples, can never be Jewish prophets.
Given this, how are
we to understand the first verse of the seventh chapter of the Book of Exodus? Look, I will make you a god to Pharaoh,
and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.
It would seem that God is instructing Moses, concerning two
principles that are treif, beyond the pale, in Jewish tradition. How are we supposed to take this statement?
Well, first we need
to understand the principle of Rabbi Ishmael, Torah speaks the language of
man. In other words, even if you
agree that the Torah’s origin is Divine, then you accept that it speaks in
words that we can apprehend and understand.
As we read in the 30th chapter of Deuteronomy: Surely, this instruction which I enjoin
upon you this day is not too baffling for you.
The Torah is written in simple language that should not trip us up
at all.
So how are we to
understand the word ‘god,’ Elohim?
When we hear Elohim, we think only of the God, the one
that we spell with an uppercase ‘G.’ But
Elohim has a broader meaning. It
means someone or something that others approach as a deity, plain and
simple. Pharaoh would have accepted the
existence of multiple deities. He
himself was one of them! But in the
Egyptian pantheon there were a number of deities, to whom various powers were
ascribed. Various gods, to whom temples
were built and maintained. In this way,
the statement I will make you a god to Pharaoh, means, Pharaoh will
consider you to be a god.
But why would Adonai
want that to be so? Wouldn’t He want
Pharaoh and all Egypt to accept Him as the only God? Of course He would. But I think that the point of the statement
is that Adonai wants Pharaoh to sit up and take notice of
what Moses says and does. This is, I
think, how we should understand the statement.
And
what about Aaron’s being a prophet to the god, Moses? Now our tradition, as expressed by Rashi in
his commentary to the Talmud, does consider Aaron to have been a Prophet, uppercase ‘P,’ in the most real
sense. A Prophet of the God of
Israel. But doesn’t your brother
Aaron will be your prophet, cheapen that in some way? I don’t think so, when you consider that the
word ‘prophet’ has a number of different meanings just as any word, in any
language, does. ‘Prophet’ with an
uppercase ‘P,’ in the Jewish context, means that the individual merits
inclusion in the list of people whom our tradition was given the status of ‘Prophet.’ But ‘prophet,’ spelled with a lowercase ‘p,’
simply means someone who has an enduring message, an important truth, to offer.
In that sense, calling Aaron a prophet
of Moses, is simply a way of understanding how Pharaoh will see the
relationship of one to the other. God is
instructing here, that Moses will confront Pharaoh, challenge him to let the
Israelites go, and threaten the imposition of plagues if Pharaoh does not
comply. In chapter six, verse 12, Moses
has already tried to demur from this role on the basis of having, literally, uncircumcised
lips. Most commentators understood this to mean
that Moses has some kind of serious speech impediment, that he stuttered severely
or something like that. So God
instructed that Moses should take his brother, Aaron, with him, that Aaron
would repeat everything Moses said in a clear and eloquent voice. Aaron would serve as Moses’ mouthpiece. And that is the literally meaning of the word
navi,
Prophet.
Some of us mistakenly think it means seer or something like that, the the point of prophecy is to see the future. But that’s not really the meaning of navi. The Hebrew word we translate as ‘prophet’ means a mouthpiece,
or spokesman, for God.
Given
this, it is clear that Moses is not supposed to actually present himself to
Pharaoh as God, and Aaron as a prophet of the god, Moses. God does not wish for Pharaoh, or anybody
else, to deify Moses. Rather, He wants
Pharaoh to sit up and take notice of Moses.
To not dismiss him as his wayward adopted brother, come back to make
trouble. To not let familiarity get in
the way of his hearing God’s voice and God’s will expressed through Moses. We should take the statement I will make
you a god to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet to mean, I will make Pharaoh take you seriously. Because if Moses was truly serving as an
agent for the Living God, then it would have profited Pharaoh to take him
seriously. That he did not, brought
unnecessary disaster upon the Egyptian people.
Shabbat shalom.
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