We’ve established that the spiritual realm is primary, and the physical realm is secondary. As such, all physical truth has its source in the spiritual domain, that world from which God spoke forth physical creation. Let’s continue to develop this idea because once it clicked for me, the Torah opened up in so many ways. What I once saw as an irrelevant commandment related to agriculture became an eternal truth and a guiding principle as relevant and applicable to my life as to any ancient Israelite.
Speaking of the Heavenly Father, Rabbi Akiva Tatz writes: “The Creator is completely transcendent, and utterly incorporeal. He has no body, no tangible aspect, and no parts. The problem, however, is that the Torah speaks of God as if He were physical. Many verses speak of God’s hand, His arm, His eyes, and many other such attributes. “With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm;” “The eyes of God...are upon it (the land of Israel).
“At first glance it seems that the Torah speaks this way because we cannot understand any other method of expression; we can understand only those thing which are part of our world. We live in a finite, differentiated world; we are familiar with beings who have hands, eyes, and feet. Therefore the Torah speaks to us in terms which are familiar to us. Of course, we understand that beyond the metaphor, beyond the borrowed language, there is much more. The finite words of Torah clothe endless layers of deeper meaning; the outer layer is only the vehicle, so to speak, for the deeper meaning. But since abstraction cannot be expressed except through concrete terms, the Torah speaks in those concrete terms which are familiar to us.
“However, deeper thought will show that this cannot be correct. If the Torah is using human terms as analogy, we are faced with a major difficulty. How can the Torah speak in terms which are not strictly true? We know that the Torah is true in the very deepest sense possible; every nuance within the Torah must be true. Since the Torah is none other than God speaking, even the outermost layers of its expression must be absolutely accurate and true. Analogies and metaphors may be useful, but they are not true in themselves. . .If God does not really have a hand, but the Torah says He does because we are limited to familiar concepts, is this not in some sense inaccurate, or false? Is untruth justified because we cannot hear truth? Surely not!
“We shall need to seek more deeply. There is a more accurate answer to our question, and one who hears it will find his perception of reality forever changed.
“How can God have a real hand? Surely a real hand is finite, physical––a contradiction to the infinite Oneness of the Creator? Surely the Divine hand must be some sort of analogy? But the secret which answers our question is this: God’s hand is a real hand and our human hand is an analogy! When the Torah talks of the Divine hand, it is referring to that which is real in the deepest sense; that which is infinite and in no contradiction to the absolute Oneness of the Creator. God indeed has a hand, but that hand transcends human understanding no less than any other Divine attribute which is expressed in Torah, and no less than what we refer to as God Himself.
“So we can say that God has a hand, but we cannot understand what that means. And that is exactly the point: the reason that we have been created with hands is so that we can begin to understand! We possess parts, components, differentiated aspects of our bodies so that we can begin to fathom the meaning of these things at their root. We are the analogy! God wants us to begin to understand Him; part of the purpose of learning Torah is to begin to understand what a human can understand of the Divine; and therefore we are given the tangible tools that we need.”
Akiva Tatz, WorldMask: The World Parallels Its Root, pg. 57-62 (condensed and edited)
So look at your hand. In one sense, that is not a hand. That is an illustration of what God wants you to think about whenever He talks about His hand! Because “we are the analogy.” This is the point Rabbi Tatz is making, and it’s an amazing thing to consider!
It’s been explained to me this way: Imagine you’re an Israelite in ancient Israel. You’re walking down the road and you see that your neighbor’s oxen are stuck in a ditch. You think to yourself, “Okay, God handed down His Word to teach me how to respond to this real life situation. I need to help my neighbor’s oxen out of the ditch.” Yes, this is true; but to some degree, this is upside-down thinking. Actually, God handed down the situation so that you would be able to understand His Word! The oxen, the cart, the neighbor, the ditch––God needed all of these aspects to teach you the eternal reality that He really wanted you to know! Love. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Real things. Spiritual things. Primary things. The situation was merely a parable.
As I mentioned earlier, what I once saw as an irrelevant commandment related to agriculture became an eternal truth and a guiding principle as relevant and applicable to my life as to any ancient Israelite. I just had to realize that God, on one level, created this world as a parable to teach us about the world to come. So if we encounter a commandment in the Torah and sense no deeper meaning, then we’ve missed it. It’s like Jesus said of those who didn’t understand His parables: “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.” The same can be said of those who toss aside God’s directives thinking they are irrelevant to modern life.
Take for instance this commandment: “Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.” A person today may read this and think, “Well I don’t own an ox, so this commandment doesn’t apply to me.” But stop and consider it as a parable, as an analogy expressing higher truth. Paul does exactly this, saying: “The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching, for Scripture says ‘You shall not muzzle the ox while it is threshing’” (1 Timothy 5:17-18). Paul gets the parable. He understands its meaning. It’s about more than an ox. God uses the ox and the grain and the treading to communicate a spiritual principle: those who work for you deserve in return some of the blessing derived from their efforts. Once you understand that this is what it is all about, you realize there are endless applications for this commandment in today’s modern life––no oxen required. It applies to you even if you do not own an ox.
Any yet, the oxen were required to communicate the real part. That is, the truth.
Any yet, the oxen were required to communicate the real part. That is, the truth.
