https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=qLNMUWnF2eQ
God also holds out the possibility of the reestablishment of the covenant Even for those who have violated the most fundamental principles And so you you have a justice that emerges which is if you abide by the appropriate principles Things go well for you and the people and if you don’t huh, then you’re in trouble But even if you’re in trouble, there’s always the possibility that no matter how deep the trouble you can reestablish that covenant And that’s exactly how it’s described in the text the reestablishment of the original covenant and then move forward again and this is this is a One of the things we we talked about After we were recording was the idea that this is normative This is descriptive rather than normative what God is actually doing here isn’t saying Exactly what his will is he’s laying out the actual consequences for the way the world works if you abide by the principle of Horizontal ethic and the principle of vertical ethics So you comport yourself properly among other human beings and you do that in relationship to what is truly transcendent Then you’ll have life more abundant and if you don’t then Everything will turn against you nature and society alike your enemies will Take you out and you will suffer like mad and that just seems accurate but then there is this admixture of The possibility that even out of error good still can come which I think is also commensurate with the way life it works itself out Because we all know that now and then we wander off the path or fail to hit the target And that’s what sin means and things go very badly for us, but that doesn’t mean we’re Instantaneously doomed without the possibility of redemption, so I think it’s a very It’s very harsh and dramatic Chapter but I think it’s Psychologically extraordinarily astute and I think that in the final analysis it actually tilts more towards an An encompassing mercy rather than just a harsh justice And so I mean the point of the very end which is which is where God says That I’m not going to reject them or despise them and annihilate them And I’m not breaking my covenant with them right he said at the very beginning of the section if you break your covenant with me All these bad things are going to happen, but then at the end he says I’m still not breaking my covenant with you My covenant with you which is typically not the way covenants work right if you sign a contract with somebody and somebody else breaks the contract The contract is now broken but what God is saying is that he’s it’s again this romantic language He’s waiting for the Israelites to repent. He’s waiting for us to come back to him Yeah, we stray, but doesn’t mean he went anywhere, right? He’s he’s still there, and he’s just waiting for the people to fix it the covenant has not been broken It’s it’s very similar to what God sort of does after the flood right he says hmm I mean I understand you’re gonna sin again, but here’s the rainbow in the sky to remind you that I’m not going to destroy humanity again He says all these bad things are gonna happen But you’re not gonna be utterly annihilated and that part is unconditional that the covenant is still applicable You know obviously this was the subject for serious You know interfaith you know debates for thousands of years is whether the Jews had broken the covenant now There’s a new covenant and all of this so according to the Jews This is good proof that that’s not the case right that the covenant was not in fact broken because it’s not breakable on the side That’s that’s that the God is still there holding well by the obvious that within a family a Son a father will break the covenant with his son like I think generally speaking that if you’re a father and your son goes Astray, let’s say no matter how far he goes astray There’s there’s a high probability that the door in the most fundamental sense is still open I think that’s exactly right well one of the things that’s worthy of pointing out just in terms of the the prophecy itself Because this has been used historically by Jews to say this is one of the reasons to believe the veracity of the Bible right it Gives all these warnings that all these things came true and the part that that people tend to ignore in in this list And it’s pointed out by Abraham Isaac cool Who was the first chief rabbi of sort of the pre-state of Israel is that the the part here? That’s that’s kind of most indicative of history coming true is not the part about people eating the flesh of their children that that’s existed across societies unfortunately in a wide variety of fragile situations from the Great Leap forward to To the halatomar in Ukraine but the power word says that the land because of your breaking of the violation of Shemitah of the of the Jubilee and and the the sabbatical year and all that that is gonna lie fallow That is where he said the proof is because when in human history have you ever had a land that is flowing with milk and honey? And a people sin and then the line goes fallow and is a complete just trashy for two thousand years Which is exactly what Mark Twain describes it has in in his in his innocence abroad when he’s talking about this the land of Palestine in the 19th century and then the Jews come back and suddenly Israel is the 15th most powerful economy on planet Earth and it’s a Tech center and suddenly you have big farms there and all this kind of stuff like it really is kind of amazing Historical if it’s not a it’s not destiny, then it’s a hell of a coincidence But I think you know obviously there’s very deep things for you as Jews, but there’s a very simple idea here I think a lot of people today need to take on board that choice and freedom are conditional and so many people have specious ideas of freedom that lead nowhere and true freedom the greatest enemy of freedom is wrong freedom and You can see that go one way is it goes well and the judgment is not I think a lot of people have the view That God’s amps people But actually the judgment here is the consequences of their settled choices and they’re reaping what they sow Well one of the remarkable things about the Exodus narrative and and this has been very useful to me in a broad conceptual manner as a consequence of walking through it is the is the juxtaposition of the tyranny the Egypt of course which No one thinks a tyranny is a good thing now in but people are very confused about the desert Because they think that the mere absence of order constitutes freedom and the Exodus narrative is very clear is that no no that the desert which is you’re free to wander around Blindly in the desert and that is a kind of freedom that’s not obviously preferable except as an intermediary place to the tyranny and I really I really think the notion of ordered freedom is it’s brilliant especially because it does also Help explain what it is that’s attractive about games because they’re not me but the book ends of history authoritarianism all order no freedom and Anarchy all freedom no order right right. Yeah. Well, the anarchists are the worshipers of Disordered freedom and yeah and that and I see the other thing that’s interesting about that and I guess pathological is that We and the the Exodus story does a lot lovely job of making this clear too. Is that disordered freedom? Contains within it the call the unconscious call to tyranny because the Israelites in their disordered freedom They want to go back to Egypt or or they want to make Moses a Pharaoh or they want to erect idols They can’t tolerate the disordered freedom. Oh, so you want Leviathan. That’s Thomas Hobbes again Yeah, right, right, right, right Just quickly to point out there’s a wonderful so here we are in our 15th Exodus session There’s a wonderful Let’s say return to the beginning the circle comes full fully around in these these final verses And yet for all that when they be in the land of their enemies I will not cast them away and then it returns to I’ll make remember the covenant because I’m that I have led them out of Egypt This is in a certain sense of a prophecy about the return to a kind of Egypt, right? So that what we see is the the being led out of the out of the land of Egypt The giving of the law the setting up and then the losing of the law the transgression of the law all these things that are here Being described but then even then at the extreme you have the beginning point of redemption again And so I think there’s a very powerful reminder here At least the claim of the text is that and if it’s descriptive right and not normative that the the the text is claiming that No matter where you are or what you have done. There is still Calling for you waiting for you the possibility of some what is some way back So it’s also a model of a real relationship, you know, because when you commit to a marriage part of the commitment and it’s a covenant part of the commitment is Well, you’re gonna go astray and I’m gonna go astray like seriously astray But the best part of both of us and the best part of our union will still be waiting for us if we can return To it right and that’s the promise of that covenant and that’s that’s a great thing because Imagine it was the case in your life that all your relationships were conditional to the point where if you made a mistake of sufficient Magnitude the relationship would just cease. It’s like well, everyone would be lost because at some point in your life You’re gonna make a mistake that big and so and so it’s another example of how maybe the notion that the Animating spirit of the patriarchal animating spirit of mankind if that’s a reasonable way of summing up yawa At least in part in this text The idea that that’s based in this love is actually an accurate reflection of the structure of reality itself