[Avodah] Nevuah and Knowing the Future

[Lisa Liel]

On 7/18/2012 2:42 PM, Micha Berger wrote:
> And the whole message, raised from chapter 3 onward and explicitly
> stated at length for multiple chapters, is that people can't
[necessarily --inserted by LL]
> know why Hashem brings tragedy.

I fixed that for you.

> 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.

I think there's a difference between "a reason" and "the reason". I think
that Hashem's actions are far too beyond us to be able to ever say what
"the reason" is, but I also think that we are obligated to look for
"a reason".



>>> 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.

It's similar to my answer above. When you say "to give mussar" and
"to teach morality", you're limiting things unnecessarily, and in my
opinion, incorrectly. I'll grant you that this is one of their roles.
But I think the primary role of nevua is this. No matter how Hashem
would have written the Torah she'bichtav and no matter how He would have
communicated the Torah she'b'al peh to us, there's no way to make clear
to us exactly what mitzvot have what priority relative to each other.
There's other information that couldn't have been included, but based
on the content of the sifrei Nevi'im, it's apparently the most critical.

You can't say, "Listen, being good and kind is more important than
bringing the korbanot that Hashem commanded." For one thing, it isn't
true. Both are commanded. For another thing, while Hashem isn't bound
by time, we certainly are. And we can't be warned about putting too much
emphasis on one thing in favor of another before we've actually *put*
too much emphasis on one thing in favor of another. If the Torah had
said that chesed was paramount, we'd have wound up with early Reform.
Just as an example. So the nevi'im were a correction factor. Fine tuning
on the Torah. But that doesn't always express itself as teaching mussar.
It only does in cases where mussar is the end result of that fine tuning,
which it isn't always.

Lisa