The Genesis of Justice (5 page)

29.
Quoted in Epstein at p. xix. The more formalized midrashic process continued “in an unbroken line from the days of Ezra [around 400 B.C.] to the 11th century” (Epstein at p. xviii). There are also the Responsa, which are recorded rabbinic answers to legal (halakic) questions over time. For a remarkable example of such literature, see Oshry, Ephraim,
Responsa from the Holocaust
(Judaica Press, 1983).

30.
See Gillman, Neil,
The Death of Death
(Woodstock, Vt.: Jewish Lights, 1997), pp. 32-33.

31.
Twersky at p. 44.

32.
Renan, E.,
Histoire du Peuple d’Israel
(1893) v, p. 321, quoted in Epstein at p. xx, n. 1. The “Church fathers fully understood the importance of the midrashic method employed with telling effect by contemporary Jewish preachers . . . , and resolved to resort to the same spiritual weapon in order to place the dogmatic system of the Church on a firm basis.”

33.
Kaplan, Mordechai,
Not So Random Thoughts
(New York: Reconstructionist Press, 1966), introduction.

34.
Rabbi Eliexer Shakh, criticizing Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, as quoted in Riskin, Shlomo,
Confessions of a Biblical Commentator
, at p. 25. Riskin points out that Maimonides explicitly introduced “novel ideas” (
hidushim
) in the textual meaning of the Bible. Idem at p. 4. Most modern Orthodox authorities accept the concept of
hidushim
, at least in a limited way.

35.
Quoted in Riskin at pp. 9-10. Rabbi Ashkenazi believed that such an exploration would necessarily “straighten out our faith,” but he appeared willing to risk the possibility that it might lead to apostasy. See p. 10.

36.
The Talmud suggests that rebellious sons are not actually executed. Rabbi Jonathan said “he had once seen such a one and sat on his grave” (Sanhedrin 71a). The Talmud itself made it virtually impossible to execute a rebellious son, since he must be thirteen years of age to bear criminal responsibility, but still young enough to be a “son” and not a man. Professor Menachem Elon views the biblical rule as “intended to limit the powers of the
paterfamilias:
the head of the household could no longer punish the defiant son himself, according to his own whim, but had to bring him before the elders (i.e., judges) for punishment. In earlier laws (e.g., Hammurapi Code nos. 168, 169) only the father had to be defied; in biblical law, it must be both father and mother.” See generally, Elon, Menachem,
The Principles of Jewish Law
(Jerusalem: Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1974), p. 491.

T
HE
T
EN
S
TORIES

YHWH, God, commanded concerning the human [Adam], saying:

From every [other] tree of the garden you may eat,

yes, eat, but from the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil
—

you are not to eat from it for on that day you eat from it, you must die, yes, die…
.

G
ENESIS
2:16-17

Now the snake was more shrewd than all the living-things of the field that YHWH, God, had made.

It said to the woman [Eve]:

Even though God said: You are not to eat from any of the trees in the garden …!

The woman said to the snake:

From the fruit of the [other] trees in the garden may we eat, but from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden,
God has said:

You are not to eat from it and you are not to touch it, lest you die
.

The snake said to the woman:

Die, you will not die!

Rather, God knows

that on the day that you eat from it, your eyes will be opened

and you will become like gods, knowing good and evil
.

The woman saw that the tree was good for eating

and that it was a delight to the eyes,

and the tree was desirable to contemplate
.

She took from its fruit and ate

and gave also to her husband beside her
,

and he ate

The eyes of the two of them were opened

and they knew then

that they were nude
.

They sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths
.

Now they heard the sound of YHWH, God, [who was] walking about in the garden at the breezy-time of the day
.

And the human and his wife hid themselves from the face of YHWH, God, amid the trees of the garden.

YHWH, God, called to the human and said to him:

Where are you?

He said:

I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I am nude
,

and so I hid myself
.

He said:

Who told you that you are nude?

From the tree about which I command you not to eat
,

have you eaten?

The human said:

The woman whom you gave to be beside me, she gave me from the tree.

And so I ate.

YHWH, God, said to the woman:

What is this that you have done?

The woman said:

The snake enticed me
,

and so I ate.

YHWH, God, said to the snake:

Because you have done this, damned be you from all the animals and from all the living-things of the field;

upon your belly shall you walk and dust shall you eat, all the days of your life.

I put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed:

they will bruise you on the head, you will bruise them in the heel.

To the woman he said:

I will multiply your pain [from] your pregnancy,

with pains shall you bear children.

Toward your husband will be your lust, yet he will rule over you.

To Adam he said:

Because you have hearkened to the voice of your wife

and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you saying:

You are not to eat from it!

Damned be the soil on your account,

with painstaking-labor shall you eat from it, all the days of your life.

Thorn and sting-shrub let it spring up for you,

when you [seek to] eat the plants of the field!

By the sweat of your brow shall you eat bread, until you return to the soil,

for from it you were taken.

For you are dust, and to dust shall you return … .

YHWH, God, said:

Here, the human has become like one of us, in knowing good and evil.

So now, lest he send forth his hand

and take also from the Tree of Life

and eat

and live throughout the ages …!

So YHWH, God, sent him away from the garden of Eden, to work the soil from which he had been taken.

He drove the human out

and caused to dwell, eastward of the garden of Eden,

the winged-sphinxes and the flashing, ever-turning sword

to watch over the way to the Tree of Life.
¹

G
ENESIS
3:1-24

I
t is quite remarkable that a holy book, which purports to be a guide to conduct, begins with a clear rule that is immediately
disobeyed, and a specific threat of punishment which is not imposed. God’s first threat to humankind is unequivocal: He tells
Adam, “From the Tree of the Knowing of Good and Evil, you are not to eat from it; for on that day that you eat from it, you
must die, yes, die.” The use of the Hebrew
mot tamut
repeats the words “die” so there is no mistaking the certainty of the threatened punishment.
²
“Doomed to die” is perhaps the best translation.
³
The certainty of the time frame for the punishment—“on the day”—is unique in biblical threats. Normally God simply says “you
will die” or “you will surely die,” but He never specifies the day.
⁴
Yet when Eve and Adam disobey God’s first prohibition, God does not carry out his explicitly threatened punishment. Indeed,
the Bible says that Adam lived 930 years. The disobedient couple and their progeny were punished, but in a way very different
from what God had threatened.

What are we supposed to learn from a God who fails to carry out his very first threat? Generations of commentators have tried
to answer this question. Some of the defense attorneys have sidestepped its troubling implications with creative wordplay.
If God’s days are one thousand years long, then Adam died seventy “years” short of one such “day.”
⁵
This would render the threatened punishment trivial, at least in comparison with what God had threatened. Others argue that
God didn’t really mean that Adam would actually die on the day he ate of the tree, but rather that on that day he would be
sentenced
to an eventual death—in other words, he would become mortal.
⁶
That is not, however, what God said and—more important—that is certainly not what Adam or Eve understood God to say. God
told Adam that he “must die, yes, die” on the “day that you eat from it,” and Adam told Eve that God had commanded them not
to eat or even “touch” it. It is clear from the story of the serpent that Eve interpreted God’s threat as immediate death.
A midrash says that the serpent pushed Eve against the tree and told her: “As you did not die from touching it, so you shall
not die from eating thereof.”
⁷
The serpent was right. Eve and Adam dined on forbidden fruit and both lived long lives. Taking the serpent’s lesson to its
logical conclusion, it would seem that God’s commands can be disobeyed with impunity. God thus showed Himself to be a parent
who makes idle threats—a rather ineffective model of discipline.

Although Adam and Eve’s eventual punishment was considerably more lenient than the instant death God had threatened, it was
also imposed on their descendants. Hence the Christian concept of “original sin,” which brought death into the world, increased
“man’s inclination to evil” and required the eventual redemption of a Savior.
⁸
The nature of God’s punishments raises profound questions—for Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike—about His concept of justice.
He punishes Eve by inflicting the pain of childbirth on
all
women and by making
all
women submissive to men. He punishes Adam by requiring
all
men to toil for their bread. Finally, God also banishes Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden in order to assure that his
wayward creations do not also eat of the tree of life and “live forever.”
⁹
All for disobeying His command to refrain from eating the forbidden fruit of a tempting tree!

If we evaluate God by human standards, His first action as a lawgiver seems unfair. The essence of fairness in any system
of threats and promises is adequate warning: Punishment should be threatened in unambiguous terms, so that the people to whom
the threat is directed will understand; a punishment once threatened should be imposed, unless there are mitigating circumstances;
and no additional punishments, not explicitly threatened, should be tacked on. Moreover, the punishment should be limited
to the specific person or persons who violated the law, not to innocent descendants. Jewish law, as it eventually developed, recognized that “to punish one person for the transgression of another” is “inconsistent with the very idea of law.”
¹⁰
Finally, punishment should be proportional to the harm caused.

God, of course, constantly violates these rules throughout the Bible—He kills without warning, punishes innocent children
for the sins of their parents, and imposes disproportionate punishments
¹¹
—so we should not be surprised that He begins His career as a lawgiver in this capricious manner. Commentators make heroic
efforts to rationalize these apparent violations of human norms of fairness by reading ambiguity into God’s clear words. For
example, many later commentators interpret God’s threat to Adam as punishment in the hereafter—a common explanation whenever
God threatens punishment or promises reward but fails to carry it out. But the Jewish Bible never mentions the hereafter.
^*
God tells Adam quite directly: “You are dust and to dust shall you return.”
¹²
It is untrue to the text of Genesis to read into punishment threatened
here
and
now
an implicit postponement to a world to come. It is also—in the spirit of the Maimonidian debate described earlier—a far less
interesting answer, which obviates the need to struggle with the text. Accepting an invisible afterlife in which threatened
punishments and promised rewards are meted out, as some commentators do, provides a tautological answer to all questions about
injustice in this world.
¹³
It is far more interesting to search for enduring interpretations based on what was believed at
the time
, not centuries
later
. In the end, it is the plain meaning of a threat that is most important. No one can deny that God plainly threatened Adam
with one punishment and then inflicted a quite different one on Adam, Eve, and their descendants. Moreover, the nature of
the punishment God inflicted on all women raises the most profound issues of fairness. God directly commanded Adam, not Eve,