Torah Bad Quotes

No text, being human creation, is free from flaws – it is the human mind that should be conscientious enough to accept their good elements and discard the bad ones.

The Torah talks about the Sabbath in different ways. We're told in Exodus to remember, zachor, and keep it holy. In Devarim, it says to observe, shamor, and keep it holy. Zachor speaks to the positive, the bread, wine, prayer, and song, everything we celebrate, eat and drink, and rejoice in. Shamor speaks to the negative - that which is prohibited, the work and play we set aside, the pleasures from which we abstain. This isn't to say these things are good or bad, Hannah. It does not refer to right or wrong. More like inhale and exhale. That which we choose to keep and that which we choose to let go - both are holy.

2:9. tree of knowledge of good and bad. Not good and "evil," as this is usually understood and translated. "Evil" suggests that this is strictly moral knowledge. But the Hebrew word (rā') has a much wider range of meaning than that.

1:1. wilderness Wilderness emerges through the narrative not only as a setting but also as a theme of considerable significance. The Hebrew title of the book, bêmidbar, "In the Wilderness," which derives from the opening verse ("And YHWH spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai [bêmidbar sînay] ... "), is a better indicator of the book's contents than the Greek title, arithmoi (from which comes the English "Numbers"). It also better captures the pervasive feeling of the book. The wilderness depiction conveys two quite different qualities. On the one hand, the wilderness years constitute a kind of ideal. The peoples life is orderly, protected, close to God. It is a period of incubation, of nurturing. All is provided: food, water, direction. The miraculous is the norm. At the same time, though, the wilderness is depicted as terrible. Conditions are bad. The environment is hostile. There is rebellion from within and fighting with peoples whom they encounter on the way. There are power struggles and fear. And this is pictured as having been almost entirely avoidable, a fate that has come upon the people for having rejected the opportunity to enter the land. Numbers thus expresses pervasively a notion that is only begun in Leviticus, namely that closeness to the divine is both glorious and dangerous.

In his Mishneh Torah (Hil. Yesodei HaTorah 10:4), Rambam speaks of the guidelines for establishing whether one who claims to have received prophecy is a genuine prophet. Rambam writes that if the prophecy the person delivers foretells some future act of compassion, mercy or beneficence on the part of God, and this event does not materialize, then the supposed prophet is surely a charlatan, because God would never renege on a promise of good tidings. If, however, the prophecy promises bad tidings—famine, destruction, or the like—then the failure of the prophecy to materialize cannot be taken as evidence that the prophet is a liar. This is so even if the prophecy of bad tidings was given unconditionally, because, Rambam argues, there is no such thing as an unconditional promise of bad tidings; the possibility of reversal always exists, even if the prophet doesn’t explicitly state this. In essence, Rambam seems to be suggesting that prophecies of bad tidings ought to be seen as cautionary warnings of a worst-case scenario that will take place unless steps are taken to avert it. Thus, when Jonah prophesied that in forty more days Nineveh would be destroyed, his prophecy must be seen as a warning to Nineveh that their destruction looms, unless it is averted by the force of human free will; in the event, it is averted, after the people of Nineveh choose to change their ways.