Should we listen to the judgements of the rabbis no matter what?

Friday, 25 April 2008 09:05 Hanok
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When the rabbis are accused of breaking Deuteronomy 12:32 by adding new commandments to the Written Torah, they generally respond with claims to be direct descendants of the ancient Judges of Israel and then make references to the following verses.

Deuteronomy 16:18-20:
(18) “Appoint judges and officers within all your gates, which יהוה your Elohim is giving you, according to your tribes. And they shall judge the people with righteous judgement.
(19) “Do not distort right-ruling. Do not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.
(20) “Follow righteousness, righteousness alone, so that you live and inherit the land which יהוה your Elohim is giving you.

Deuteronomy 17:8-13:
(8) “When any matter arises which is too hard for you to judge, between blood and blood, between plea and plea, or between stroke and stroke – matters of strife within your gates – then you shall rise and go up to the place which יהוה your Elohim chooses,
(9) and shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge who is in those days, and shall inquire. And they shall declare to you the word of right-ruling,
(10) and you shall do according to the word which they declare to you from that place which יהוה chooses. And you shall guard to do according to all that they instruct you.
(11) “Do according to the Torah in which they teach you, according to the right-ruling which they say to you. You do not turn to the right or to the left from the word which they declare to you.
(12) “And the man who acts arrogantly, so as not to listen to the priest who stands to serve there before יהוה your Elohim, or to the judge, that man shall die. So you shall purge the evil from Yisra’ĕl.
(13) “And let all the people hear and fear, and no longer do arrogantly.

Deuteronomy 17:8 clearly says "when any matter arises that is too difficult for you". Thus it (in no mysterious way) implies that the matter is time-sensitive (meaning the ruling made isn't to be set in stone as a precedent for future ages) and it implies if the matter is clearly not difficult, then you don't need a Priest or Judge to dictate regarding what it means. Unfortunately, manyl commandments are routinely entangled with "difficulties" once they are filtered through Rabbinic commentary and previous precedent-based rulings... which shouldn't have been established (or added) in the first place according to the Torah itself (see Do not add nor take away). You see, in the infinite wisdom of יהוה, He knew the temptation to add commandments would become overwheliming and eventually the sum of all the additions would be to difficult for the common people, yet He said previously that the Torah (as a whole) wouldn't be too difficult for us. Even so He made exception in Deut.17 where matters would infrequently be too difficult to be settled by an individual or a group of individuals (i.e. complicated disputes that have no facilitator of justice). When you take the Written Torah and consider it in context, it is clear that יהוה never intended an entire religious system to be developed with additional commandments which would overwhelm the people. The rabbis intimately regard this system as the "Oral Torah". Yet, the Prophet Isaiah and Yeshua ha-Mashiach regarded this rabbinic system as the "doctrines of men" (Matthew 15:9; Isaiah 29:13).

Furthermore, some of the conundrums Ephraim and Jew-dah find themselves now are these: Ephraim wants to return to the Land of Israel. Jew-dah wants and needs Ephraim to return to the Land of Israel. Ephraim largely does not want to follow Rabbinic-Jewish halakhah (Oral Law). Jew-dah doesn't want Ephraim's Jewish Messiah. How are these things to be resolved?

Many of the Rabbis claim 10-Israel rebelled against Jewdah's "God-ordained" system of Judges and thus 10-Israel needs to stop being rebellious and arrogant and return to Jewdah's halakhah. Yet Ephraim, knowing the scriptures, claims 10-Israel rebelled against the King of Judah because of high-taxes in posed by King Solomon and his son Rehoboam. The kingdom splitting had nothing to do with halakhah and the reunification of all twelve tribes will have nothing to do with Jewish halakhah, but it will be the responsibility of the Jewish King, the Son of David.

 

Last Updated ( Friday, 25 April 2008 23:29 )