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Back to Question of the Week Q: Hello Rabbi! Does God regret (any of His actions)? I am thinking of after the flood which carried Moses on the ark, God says he will never destroy humanity on such a large scale again (or something like this). This seems to me that there is a sense of regret in God for His action - does God sometimes regret what He does? (Aren't the things He does always right?) If in some time in the future the right thing would be to destroy most of humanity would God stop Himself from doing something that is right? Best regards, Walt |
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A: Dear Walt: Wow, now, THIS is a golden opportunity for moral and metaphysical speculation- the kind of thing that rabbis do for fun! I would love to be able to tell you if God changes Her mind (and if so, could She please change her mind about the current political leadership in North America?) but all I have to go on are texts which tell us what our ancient ancestors believed about God's interactions with the world. In other words, I can't really tell you about God, directly, but I can tell you something about what the Torah tells us that Jews have believed about God. It's not the same thing, but half a loaf. . . . First, let's deal with the theoretical question in the middle of your query: are God's actions, by definition, moral? Is morality what God says it is, or is are ethics objective, binding upon even the ultimate Lawgiver? I believe that the Torah arose in a world where the kings made the laws- the kings WERE the law- and so one of the great religious advancements made by Torah law was that everybody- EVERYBODY- was bound by it. This is clearly spelled out in the book of Deuteronomy: The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees, and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel. (Deuteronomy 17:16-20). This idea- that there is a moral code binding upon everybody- is most famously addressed in the book of Genesis, when Avraham argues with God over God's intended destruction of the evil cities Sdom and Amorah: Then Abraham approached [God] and said: "Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing--to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" The LORD said, "If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake. . ." (Genesis 18:23-26, emphasis added.) Given these two passages, I would say that the Torah teaches that true justice must be separate from the whims of personal emotion or subjective passion, and even God is morally bound by this larger principle. Now, what about the question of God's actions after the flood? God makes a covenant with all the earth not to ever do anything like that again: Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: "I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you--the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you--every living creature on earth.I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth." (Genesis 9:8-11) Does this indicate regret on God's part? Well, if it does, it certainly throws a wrench into the classic idea that God is outside of time, and knows past, present and future. One could ask: if God knew the future, why would God create humanity in such a way that they would be so defective that She would have to wipe the slate clean and start over? Rather, I think it's possible that our Biblical ancestors believed in a kind of hazy, unpredictable future, where God would promise to take certain actions but human actions (especially repentance) could always change the course of events. Thus, God's "regret" might be more like sorrow that humans didn't change their evil ways. On the other hand, you might take something else out of this story entirely: the idea that it comes to teach that our world is stable and beautiful, and God's relationship to it is essentially benevolent. In an ancient world of deities at war with each other, and the chaotic elements of creation always ready to cause problems for people, it must have been very, very reassuring to read of God's covenant with "every living creature on earth." Finally, in a world of global warming, nuclear weapons, whole regions on the brink of war, population pressures, and other problems for which humans bear complete responsibility, I would not worry too much about God deciding to destroy the world. Human beings are quite capable of doing it without any Divine assistance. NJL |
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