[Avodah] Love of Israel

[Chana Luntz]

> RMB writes:
> 
> > When a malekh tells you to violate an asei de'Oraisa,
> > wouldn't divrei haRav vedivrei hatalmid tell you to ignore 
> > the king? Or is that only where there the violation is of a lav?
> > 
> > Because if it includes a command to violate an asei...
> > Listening to the king would be expressing kavod, no? So if 
> > kavod hamelekh is grounds for violating issurim, then when 
> > would divrei haRav ever apply to a melekh?
> > 

And I then responded:
 
> I think that the only way to reconcile the sources is to say 
> that listening to a king is not in fact an aspect of the 
> halachic form of kavod.  Or at least, listening to him might 
> be, but following what he says if it violates halacha is not. 

I confess I wrote this too quickly, ie before checking the sources for
the various piskei Rambam.  While this is correct as far as it goes,
actually the real reason the Rambam says what he does is based on a
drasha of the pasuk in Yehoshua 1:18 found in the gemora (Sanhedrin
49a).  To back up a bit, the gemora in Sanhedrin 48b (note in the
context of Achav, yet again) discusses where the property of a person
executed by the king for rebelling against him goes, noting that it goes
to the king (that is how come Achav could legitimately get Navos'
vineyard if he could be found to have cursed the king).  Rashi there
brings the verse in Yehoshua 1:18 as the source for the right to execute
a person who rebels against a king, including a king of Israel (noting
of course that in the source pasuk we are talking about Yehoshua).  Then
on 49a, the gemora explains that the reason that Amasa legitimately did
not heed Dovid Hamelech's command to gather the men of Yehuda in three
days, but took longer, which otherwise would have been considered to
subject him to the death penalty for rebellion against the malchus (as
Yoav argued), was because they had started learning a masechta at the
time so he waited until they finished, because he learnt from "ach" and
"rak" in that pasuk that while one might think that the obligation to
obey a king was even l'divrei torah, "talmud lomar rak chazak v'ematz",
therefore he correctly was not mevatel their learning by gathering them
as quickly as Dovid Hamelech had commanded.

So, based on this, it would seem that your point that kavod for a melech
should lead you to be mevatel an assei is quite correct, except that
there is a specific drasha to rule it out.  And it is on the basis of
this, according to the Kesef Mishna (ie the drasha of ach v'rak), that
the Rambam poskened the way he did (ie that while one who does not obey
a king is subject to the death penalty, that is only if the reason he
disobeys the king is not because he is involved in a mitzvah, and that
the death penalty certainly does not apply if the king tells him to be
mevatel a mitzvah).

Note however that this is Yehoshua, ie Navi, being darshened in this
way, not Torah (and all the discussions identify kovod hamelech etc as a
Torah obligation), although maybe this is because it is the first part
of Yehoshua or alternatively because it is just explaining the
underlying obligation.

Regards

Chana