Benefits Derived from Questioning the Bible

PIKESVILLE, Maryland — The biblical portion of Vay’hi, Genesis 47:28-50:26, the final portion of Genesis, allows us to see the benefits of questioning the Bible.

Questioning the Bible leads the questioner to consider possible solutions. This, in turn, can lead to learning, prompting the questioner to act. Action is the goal. It leads to self-improvement, which, in turn, improves other humans and all creation.

Also, as Elie Wiesel writes in the preface of his book Night: “Man comes closer to God through the questions he asks Him.”

However, as I will show, not all questions can be answered. But this is all right. While we cannot get undeniably correct answers to some questions about the Torah, we can still benefit from our curiosity if we suggest answers based on common sense and respect for the Torah.

For example:

Rashi notes that the portion Vay’hi is unlike every other biblical portion. There is no space of nine letters between the end of the preceding portion and the beginning of this one.

He offers two possible solutions.

Some readers will reject these answers. It is unreasonable to suppose that slavery began immediately or even soon after Jacob’s death. Joseph was still alive and retained the position of second to Pharaoh. Also, is it reasonable to suppose Jacob had a prophetic ability not previously mentioned in the Torah? If he did, he would have known Joseph was alive. Furthermore, Maimonides suggests in his Guide of the Perplexed that prophets do not get direct communication from God but are men and women who use their intelligence to warn people of possible future calamities.

I suggest another idea. In the second half of the first millennium CE, people called Masorites divided the Torah into sections, like paragraphs. They did not divide the portions. The Torah scroll used in the synagogue is the Masoretic text. Although Jewish tradition does not always agree with the Masorites, the Masoretic Text is the official text. So, the failure to show space before the portion Vay’hi is the decision of the Masorites, who felt that the story of the death of Jacob should be connected to what proceeds it, hence no space. The dividers of the portions to be read weekly and finished yearly disagreed.

(There are other famous differences between the Masorites and current traditional Judaism. The Masorites did not consider what traditional Judaism feels is the first command of the ten and divided what traditional Judaism considers the tenth as the ninth and tenth.)

So, we have no reliable answer to the question, “Why is there no space?” Yet, the question is good, and the three suggested answers so far, and indeed, many more can be offered, prompt us to think about many subjects, such as prophecy, the time of Egyptian slavery, the reliability of the Torah text, and more. So, there is value in asking questions about the Bible.

Another example:

In Genesis 48:5, the dying Jacob tells his son Joseph that his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, will be his (Jacob’s) just as his sons Reuben and Simeon are his. This is generally understood as meaning Joseph would be getting a double portion: Joseph’s two sons would inherit two portions of land in Canaan.

Samuel David Luzzatto notices in his Shadal on Genesis that Jacob did not say Joseph would be the “firstborn,” so he is getting a double portion. He concludes that “until Jacob’s time, the double portion of primogeniture was not customary, but on account of his love for Joseph, he gave him a double portion.” Shadal admits that another sage felt that the verse indicates Jacob was announcing that Joseph was now the firstborn and deserved a double portion.

Is Shadal or the other sage giving an undeniably correct answer to why the Torah does not say that Jacob gave Joseph a double portion? Or is each of them reading information that is not in the text? Again, we need to say that neither answer is undeniably correct. Yet, as previously mentioned, the answers make us think of various subjects, such as Jacob’s intention, whether primogeniture is sensible, and whether giving one child a double portion is fair.

Still other examples:

In 50:4 and 5, Joseph speaks to Pharaoh’s household, asking permission to leave Egypt for a while to travel to Canaan to bury his father. No information is given on why Joseph, who was second to Pharaoh, needed permission from the household, which was at a far lower level of authority than him. One commentator suggests that it was improper to visit Pharaoh in mourning dress. Is this sensible? Couldn’t Joseph dress appropriately before his visit?

Another quote from Midrash Genesis Rabbah is that a mourner should not enter a king’s palace. Is it reasonable to cite a later Jewish view for an Egyptian practice? There is no clear solution. But thinking about it raises questions about Joseph, his authority, Jewish mourning practices, and more.

Asking questions can yield benefits even when it seems impossible to secure an answer, as the following example dramatizes.

Sir Isaac Newton’s (1643-1727) discovery of universal gravitation by observing the fall of an apple in the summer of 1666 is universally known. There’s no evidence that the fruit landed on his head, but what he saw led him to answer many questions that have bothered him and all humanity since the beginning of time relating to why objects always fall.

The first written account of Newton realizing the answer to the ancient questions appears in notes on Newton’s life collected by John Conduit in 1726. He wrote: “He first thought of his system of gravitation, which he hit upon by observing an apple fall from a tree.” Once he developed the gravitation theory, Newton derived several other fundamental laws of physics from it. It was good that the ancients kept asking questions about falling objects because it finally led to Newton’s discovery.

The Torah is the same. It contains much information that raises questions. It may take a person a long time to find answers, but the answers exist, and once known, like the law of gravitation, much wisdom is revealed.

In summary, we can understand the value of questioning as a sixth sense, in addition to the five: taste, hearing, sight, smell, and touch. Each of the five can be restricted, such as people needing glasses and hearing aids. When these two are used, people can see and hear what they could not without them.

So, too, when people train themselves to question, they improve their minds as glasses strengthen and improve their eyes. We can understand that the mind is the sixth sense, the most important of our senses.

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Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin is a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps and the author of more than 50 books.