NOTES for Deu 4:23

The Torah devotes considerable space to the theme of the image of God, more exactly, the prohibition of such images. It is advisable to note that this type of request in the context of the religious representations and the religious practice widely spread in the antiquity in the Middle East (and not only there) was a little bit strange. In fact, for the gentiles god exists only as much as he has his altar and his sacred image, which can be worshiped.

The god who has neither one, nor the other, is considered going or even dead, it could not even be question to communicate with such a god. But here is, the God of Israel asks on the contrary for the absence of all the sacred images, as the indispensable condition of communion with God. Any image of God, even symbolic, becomes an obstacle for the relationship with Him. But why it is so? Of course, any image, even symbolic, has potential chance to be itself transformed into object of worship, what happened several times in the history of various religions (including the monotheist also).

But it is all the same an anomaly of the spiritual life, the consequence of the spiritual degeneration of the tradition: because even the heathen (of course educated) understood perfectly that the sacred statue or the sacred image is not a god, but only its symbol and a means to communicate with Him. The problem, as we see, was all the same in something else. In what? Probably still in these figurative associations, which engender inevitably any symbols, even the most saturated by spiritual senses.

Even the image of the sacred bull (calf) cast by gold by the Jews on Sinai, with all its symbolism, despite the fact that it simply had to indicate God's power, this power that God used to bring His people out of Egypt, couldn’t all the same bind Yahweh to the image of the Egyptian Apis. And no symbolism could help here. But indeed, Yahweh is not Apis, and even His power is not the power of Apis. There was only one solution: to avoid any image, any association, any symbolism. It is not accidentally in the Tabernacle was initially only a sacred relic: the text of the Decalogue stamped on small tables of stone. No symbol, no association. Only the will of God, clearly expressed by Himself.

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.

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 law, the commandments. Through understanding these commandments we can come to know Him Himself.

We will never know everything about Him: He is incomprehensible. But we can know Him, know Him personally, as a friend. This is all the more possible now, when we have heard the joy promised to all people: God became Man, opening for everyone the possibility of a personal relationship with Him.