Here is the first occurrence in Scripture of God issuing a commandment to man: And the Lord God commanded the Adam saying, Of every tree of the garden eat you must eat. (Genesis 2:16) Many English translations get it wrong by translating, ...of every tree of the garden you shall surely eat The original Hebrew does not say surely. Instead it repeats the commandment to eat. Here is what the Hebrew looks like: Reading from right to left, you will see five words. [From all] [the trees] [of the garden] [eat!] [you must eat]. You can see that the fourth and fifth words look very similar, distinguished only by the one letter prefix you must. Ancient Jewish wisdom explains that Gods first explicit directive repeats the verb to eat to tell us to perform two separate and distinct acts with every mouthful. We are to eat for both physical and spiritual reasons. That way we extract the full benefit from every morsel of food. Our Creator surely knew that in the future scientists could find ways to fulfill our bodies needs through tablets or infusions, bypassing the fruits, vegetables and grains He provided for us. No! Machines need fuel. Humans need more than that; they must eat! How weird is it that we absorb nutrition through the same facial orifice from which our voices emerge? Dedicated functionality seems to be Gods design. After all, we dont smell and hear through our ears. Mouths are different. Speech is a uniquely human function while eating is not. Sharing the same orifice reminds us to take care to eat in a uniquely human way-one that provides spiritual as well as physical nourishment. In this vein, we prefer not to eat alone and to show gratitude to God for our food by blessings before and after eating. (Rabbi Daniel Lapin)
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 05:09:15 +0000
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