Shoftim
Deut. 16:18 – 21:9
Rabbi Gary Pokras
“I am not a prophet.”
That is the answer I usually give when someone asks me to make a prediction about the future.
From Abraham to Isaiah, prophets appear throughout the Hebrew Bible, sharing among other things, visions of the future that either God has promised, or we are heading towards because of our misdeeds. In Shoftim, God promises Moses that he will not be the last prophet, that God will raise another after Moses’ death and “put My words in his mouth and he will speak to them all that I command him.” [Deut. 18:18] This statement was meant, in part, to be a consolation to Moses so that he would know that our future was secure. However, it is also a message to all of Israel: we are to trust the words of those whom God selects as prophet.
The only problem is, how do we know who is really a prophet? The Torah portion provides us with some answers. First, divination, sorcery, soothsaying and other similar practices which were common attempts to learn about and control the future in other cultures, are strictly outlawed. [Deut. 18:9-14] Second, two types of false prophesy are described: “… any prophet who presumes to speak in My name an oracle that I did not command him to utter, or who speaks in the name of other gods – that prophet shall die.” [Deut. 18:20]
It is easy to recognize someone who speaks on behalf of another god, but what about someone who claims to speak for God? The Torah continues by giving us a litmus test: if what the prophet says comes true then they are real, if not then they are false. [Deut. 18:21] While on the surface this makes sense, how long should we wait? The predictions of prophets like Amos, Hosea, and others took decades before coming to pass. Micah’s predictions of impending doom did not come true one hundred years after he spoke, yet he is in the canon. Jeremiah was accused of being a false prophet by the very priests he prophesied against, and they lobbied unsuccessfully for his execution as such. Were they cynical or did they really believe he was a charlatan? How could anyone have known?
Rabbi Shai Held shines some much needed light on this conundrum. He suggests that we see Micah not as a failure but as a success, because the people repented and thereby averted the crisis. In other words, “what the prophet wants is to change the future rather than predict it.”1 According to this interpretation, the purpose of the prophet is not to predict the future, but to inspire us to create a better one.
One of the most radical concepts in Jewish sacred text is this: we, through our actions, can impact or change even God’s plans. If we have that power over the divine, then we certainly have that power over ourselves. Fate or pre-ordination are not Jewish concepts. The future is an open book, waiting to be written … by us. This idea becomes especially important when we live under duress or great difficulty. Rabbi Held continues: “Even in the face of all the horror and sadness, hopelessness is not a luxury permitted to us.”2
We are not the first generation to live in tumultuous times, nor will we be the last. And while we do not have prophets walking among us today, we can gain strength from those who came before. For all the true prophets preached the same message: the world may seem bleak, with no hope for our future, but that world only exists when we give in to it and let it happen. Alternatively, when we hitch our wagons to Torah and live as God commands, then we can create a whole new world with a better tomorrow. The choice is ours.