[Avodah] Nevuah and Knowing the Future

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 01:57:30PM -0500, Lisa Liel wrote Areivim:
>> How do you explain the purpose of seifer Iyov, written by the Av haNeviim?

> The authorship of Iyov is a machloket.  I don't have to accept that it  
> was written by Moshe Rabbenu, and even if it was, it wasn't written  
> under the influence (so to speak) of Nevua, or it'd be in Nevi'im, at  
> the very least.

BB 14b does not record other shitos. On the next amud the subject of
Moshe's authorship is tied to the shitos that says that Iyov lived in
the days of Moshe -- either tying him to life in Mitzrayim or to the time
of the meraglim -- or all the way from Moshe's time through Ezra's. (R'
Elazar calls him one of the olei golah [15a] AND alive during the Shofetim
[15b].) This is also contrasted with R' Shemuel bar Nachmeini saying that
Iyov is mythical. But I don't see a shitah that places his birth after
MRAH's petirah, which would create a difficulty of a seifer kesuvim that
tells of the life of someone not born yet. (A difficulty overcome by
those who ascribe "Al Naharos Bavel" to David haMelekh.) I don't think
the connection is being made between authorship and any one shitah in
the machloqes about when/if Iyov lived.

In any case, you agree that the book is of a quality where amoraim
consider it debatable whether or not MRAH did. So what's in it should
be taken seriously, perhaps more so than books they wouldn't attribute
to MRAH, such as the rest of Nakh (minus some Tehillim). And the whole
message, raised from chapter 3 onward and explicitly stated at length for
multiple chapters, is that people can't know why Hashem brings tragedy.

I asked on Areivim how you understand it, since you seem to believe we
can and should know why. I am still curious what it is.

>> To answer your question: To give mussar. Neviim are to teach morality.

> We disagree.

You had asked:
>>> How would you explain the purpose of nevi'im?

That's how I would, it's what I learned in numerous places. See the
rishonim cited by the Shitah Mequbetzes BQ 2 (explaining the idiom
"divrei qabalah" as being from "qoveil"), and RYBS's Shiurim leZeikher
Abba Mori vol 2 pg 173. That latter has a humorous touch; it shows
RYBS's Brisk-keit that he had to ask what the point of nevu'ah was, if
"lo bashamayim hi" means they had no halachic import. He concludes, as I
wrote, that they were sent to give tokhachah, but still admits discomfort.

You do not say /why/ you disagree.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Good decisions come from experience;
micha at aishdas.org        Experience comes from bad decisions.
http://www.aishdas.org                - Djoha, from a Sepharadi fable
Fax: (270) 514-1507