Main news for 28 March 2026

The Torah gives us several grounds for the second commandment of the Decalogue, which forbids every kind of sacred image, not only pagan images but also Yahwistic ones. One of these grounds comes down to the fact that God never revealed Himself to anyone among His people in any concrete image with which He could be identified. At first glance, such a statement can look strange: after all, it was near Horeb, where Moses first met God, that He revealed Himself to him in the shining cloud that Moses took from a distance for fire.

But by this radiance God only marked the place of His presence, and it has no relation to His essence. The mystery of God's inner, as we would say, personal life remains a mystery to us in any case. It is open only to the Savior; but in order to understand it, we would have to contain within ourselves, as He does, all the fullness of God, and such containing is, of course, impossible for us. That is why the Torah forbids not only pagan sacred images, but also Yahwistic ones. Every sacred image in antiquity claimed precisely to reveal to the worshiper the essence of the deity he worshiped, so that the worshiper could share in that essence. But in the case of Yahweh this was impossible: His essence remained hidden from the human being by definition. Here what theologians call the transcendence of God manifested itself.

One might think that theophanies could give an idea of God's essence. This was so in the case of pagan gods and cults, but not in the case of the God of Israel, because here theophany did not imply the full overcoming of the abyss that separates God from the human being. A partial overcoming made communion with God possible, but not knowledge of the essence. That is why identifying the theophany with God in this case would be like identifying a person you are speaking with on the phone with the handset from which his voice is heard.

The situation changed radically only with the coming into the world of Christ, who brought the Kingdom with Him. Of course, even there, in the Kingdom, the distinction between God and the human being does not disappear; but there, at least, the abyss that completely separates them disappears. It disappears, of course, not because the human being becomes equal to God, but because the Kingdom is wholly permeated by the breath of God and His love. But there is no image here either. Instead, a relationship appears here, replacing that image. It is a relationship guaranteed by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world.

Deu 4:15

NOTES

Who is God? What is important for us to know about Him? The God of heaven and earth, invisible and unimaginable, appearing in darkness and flame, gives people...

The Book of Deuteronomy did not receive its name by accident. To be fair, it should be noted that it was named this by the translators who translated the Hebrew text of the Pentateuch into Greek in the second century BC, but the name proved very successful: it is a matter of a second law, a new version of the Torah that appeared later than the first, earlier one that we find in the Book of Exodus. Biblical scholars speak of the late origin of the Book of Deuteronomy, while its author himself places his text in the time of Moses; but, whatever the case, it is at least understood that the laws we find in the Book of Deuteronomy appear later than those contained in the Book of Exodus.

Law develops: this is the main thing, and everything else is only historical detail that does not change the essence of the matter. If the Torah can change over time, it is no longer so important whether forty years or six centuries pass from one change to another; what matters is the very fact that the Torah changes, develops, and takes shape in the process of history. The Book of Deuteronomy, its first introductory chapters containing a historical survey of the path the people have traveled, bears witness precisely to this development of the Torah. Here the legislation is preceded by a description of the path that has been traveled, and it is on the basis of that path that the legislation is given.

The Torah changes in accordance with this path, and at the same time it defines the path, giving it meaning, without which the whole path traveled by the people would have been worth nothing. One could say that, in a certain sense, the Torah itself becomes the path: the path of the people before God, for which the external, geographical, and historical path proves to be the outward form. The path of the Torah cannot exist without that outward path, but the outward path itself, without the Torah as its spiritual core, remains only an empty shell. There is no history without the Torah, at least no history of the people of God precisely as the people of God.

Yet there is no Torah outside history either. For even if the Torah is viewed only as legislation or only as a moral code, it is unthinkable without the people who will fulfill it, outside the context of their history and their spiritual and life journey. The Torah is embodied in history, above all in the history of the people of God, and at the same time it becomes the power that gives history its spiritual form and quality, filling it with meaning: not passing human meanings, but God's meaning, eternal and unfading, the meaning that links earthly history with the Kingdom.

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