God Is Still Speaking: Haftarat Bo, Jeremiah 46:13-28

Never place a period where God has placed a comma.

–Gracie Allen

One might be forgiven for thinking that when it comes to Haftarah, “Bo” is short for “boring.” Commentators have tended to summarize the Haftarah, connect it to the parashah, and move on. There is much to be said for this strategy; don’t push the text further then it can go.

Jeremiah’s prophecy is straightforward. Do not go to Egypt, he warns imperiled Judeans, for you will find no refuge there, because God is using Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon as a way of punishing Egypt. Eventually, Israel will be released from captivity in Babylon, and we will all live happily ever after. And of course it is easy then to connect the Haftarah to the Parashah: Egypt is punished in both, and Parashat Bo takes us into the heart of the Exodus story. Yawn.

But wait. Something is very different here.

Throughout Exodus, and but most prominently at the very beginning of Parashat Bo, Yahweh is referred to the “God of the Hebrews” by Moses himself (Exodus 10:3). Oh yes, God can harden Pharaoh’s heart, and “mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt,” but that’s just as one god among many.

By the time we get to Jeremiah, however, we have a very different view of God’s role in the world. God controls all nations, and uses them for divine purposes. Put another way, between Chumash and Nevi’im we have gone from henotheism – worship of one God but acknowledgement of many – to monotheism.

This change powerfully argues for recovering the study of Haftarah, for it was the Prophets who first proclaimed monotheism as the Jewish creed. Amos led the campaign, contending the other gods that Judah worshipped were not merely abominable, but “false.” (Amos 2:4). Yahweh was not simply the “God of the Hebrews” but “the Creator of heaven and earth and all that is in them.” (Amos 8:6). God governs not only Israel, but also the destinies of all nations. (Amos 9:7). First Isaiah agreed, prophesying that God will not just fail to protect Israel against its foes, but will use Assyria as “the rod of God’s anger.” (Isaiah 10:5).

As this week’s Haftarah shows, Jeremiah continued this trend, and by the time of the Babylonian exile, Second Isaiah perfected it. “I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.” (Isaiah 45:5). Second Isaiah refers to Persian king Cyrus, who would eventually free the Israelites, as not merely a good foreign ruler but rather as God’s anointed. (Isaiah 45:1).

But what of it? Israel did not fully understand God’s Oneness, but thanks to the Nevi’im, it now does. So?

Well, why think that the process stops there? After all, if the Israelites who received Torah at Sinai did not fully understand God, why think that we do now? If God is the Eternal and Infinite One, why think that we will ever fully understand the divine? Judaism is not about timeless truth, but rather about the timeless search for ever-evolving truth.

The rabbis comprehended how knowledge of God continues to unfold:

Rab Judah said in the name of Rab, When Moses ascended on high he found the Holy One, blessed be He, engaged in affixing crowns to the letters. Said Moses, “Lord of the Universe, Who stays Thy hand?” [“Why are you taking time to affix the crowns to the letters?”]

He answered, “There will arise a man, at the end of many generations, Akiba ben Joseph by name, who will expound upon each jot and tittle heaps and heaps of laws.”

“Lord of the Universe,” said Moses; “permit me to see him.”

He replied, “Turn around.” Moses went and sat down behind eight rows [and listened to the discourses upon the law]. Not being able to follow their arguments he was ill at ease, but when they came to a certain subject and the disciples said to the master “How do you know that?” and the latter replied “It is law given to Moses at Sinai”, he was comforted.

He then returned to the Holy One, blessed be He, and said, “Lord of the Universe, You have such a man and You give the Torah by me!” He replied, “Be silent, for such is My decree.”  (Menachot 29b).

It is hard to overestimate the theological import of this Aggadah. Moses sits in the back row of Akiba’s academy – the place usually reserved for novices – and cannot comprehend the teaching, but is relieved when Akiba claims – incorrectly! — that a particular ruling derives directly from Sinai. Our understanding of God keeps developing, and God wants it that way. So even though the particular teaching did not come from Sinai, the authority of later generations to continually discover new aspects of God did.

Maimonides embraced the same concept of continual divine unfolding. He explained in chapter 32 of Book III of Guide of the Perplexed that God did not institute sacrifices because an actual divine desire for sacrifices. Far from it; the point was to eradicate idolatry little by little. Had God simply told the Israelites, however, to worship through study, prayer or meditation, they could not have understood or followed such instructions. Sacrifices were not ends in and of themselves, but rather designed to foster the Israelites” spiritual tutelage: in the same way that God did not lead the children of Israel directly to the Promised Land, He did not lead them directly to the best form of worship.

Who is to say that we are not now in a similar time of spiritual tutelage? Is it not arrogant to believe that we so completely comprehend God that our beliefs cannot withstand change? In the same way that the Prophets changed henotheism to monotheism, and