What really was the final straw that led to the destruction of the entire world except for the righteous Noach and his family? Robbery. (Rashi to B'reishis 6:13, quoting from Sanhedrin 108a). I have a point I would like you to ponder. Given that it was the sin of גזל/robbery (not a sneak thief, but someone who steals with impunity) is what sealed the fate of the Generation of the Flood, wouldn't you think that a prohibition against גזל/robbery ought to make the Top Ten List, aka, עשרת הדברות?
But it is seemingly not there at all. Or is it? Before the big reveal, please note that לא תגנוב/Thou Shalt Not Steal (as they say in America) an exhortation that forbids kidnapping. (Fun fact: the victim does not need to be actually removed from their residence to be considered kidnapped. According to Cornell Law School (and we all know how much weight the opinion of ivy league schools carries nowadays):
Kidnapping is a crime at common law consisting of an unlawful restraint of a person's liberty by force or show of force.
Neither here nor there, but it came up this morning, so I am sharing.)
So on the left side of the tablets, where we have fundamental prohibitions that can destroy a normal human society, we have the prohibitions against false testimony, murder, adultery, kidnapping. Where is stealing? Where is the sin that sealed the deal for the generation of the flood?
It's right there at the end, you know -- the big finish: לא תחמוד/Thou shalt not covet. Interestingly, Google translates this as, "don't be greedy"; which is not entirely wrong. Rabeinu Bachaya explains that instead of simply prohibiting stealing, the Torah goes right to the source of the problem. Maybe because stealing is just so hard to stop, I don't know. In any case, the Torah is not satisfied with simply prohibiting the act itself -- as it does with murder, adultery, kidnapping, and bearing false witness -- but goes right to the root cause.
How do you do that? Essentially, you need to change your view of the world to look at anything that someone else has to be as irrelevant and uninteresting to you as the wings of a bird or a fairy princess. Not yours, not relevant to you, not interesting to you. See the Ibn Ezra for details.
Ok... that's the message I wanted to convey. From here on, you are welcome to read, but it's probably not as fun. This final "commandment" is also the only one that repeats itself: לא תחמוד appears twice in the verse. Same verse, but the phrase is repeated. Again, the Rabeinu Bachaya explains that there are times when חמדה for something -- someone, actually -- that is currently in someone else's home is appropriate. Namely, your fellow's daughter for your son or son for your daughter. To tell us this, the Torah uses the principle of כלל ופרט וכלל/a generalization (in this case, don't covet your anything in your fellow's household), a list of detailed items with share a common denominator, followed by a generalization (in this case: nothing that belongs do your fellow). The common denominator limits the generalization. In this case: things you can't take without his permission. That is the difficulty of this prohibition: desiring things that "aren't yours yet" is appropriate. Desiring things that "aren't your and can't be yours without the owner's permission, though, leads to stealing.
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