1. None of the precious truths of Judaism has become more indispensable
than the belief in divine Providence, which we see about us in ever new
and striking forms. Man would succumb from fear alone, beholding the
dangers about him on every side, were he not sustained by a conviction
that there is an all-wise Power who rules the world for a sublime purpose.
We know that even in direst distress we are guided by a divine hand that
directs everything finally toward the good. Wherever we are, we are
protected by God, who watches over the destinies of man as “does the eagle
who hovers over her young and bears them aloft on her pinions.” Each of us
is assigned his place in the all-encompassing plan. Such knowledge and
such faith as this comprise the greatest comfort and joy which the Jewish
religion offers. Both the narratives and the doctrines of Scripture are
filled with this idea of Providence working in the history of individuals
and nations.(491)
2. Providence implies first, _provision_, and second, _predestination_ in
accordance with the divine plan for the government of the world. As God’s
dominion over the visible world appears in the eternal order of the
cosmos, so in the moral world, where action arises from freely chosen
aims, God is Ruler of a moral government. Thus He directs all the acts of
men toward the end which He has set. Judaism is most sharply contrasted
with heathenism at this point. Heathenism either deifies nature or merges
the deity into nature. Thus there is no place for a God who knows all
things and provides for all in advance. Blind fate rules all the forces of
life, including the deities themselves. Therefore chance incidents in
nature or the positions of the stars are taken as indications of destiny.
Hence the belief in oracles and divination, in the observation of flying
arrows and floating clouds, of the color and shape of the liver of
sacrificial animals, and other signs of heaven and earth which were to
hint at the future.(492)
On the other hand, Judaism sees in all things, not the fortuitous dealings
of a blind and relentless fate, but the dispensations of a wise and benign
Providence. It knows of no event which is not foreordained by God. It
sanctioned the decision by lot(493) and the appeal to the oracle (the Urim
and Thummim)(494) only temporarily, during the Biblical period. But soon
it recognized entirely the will of God as the Ruler of destiny, and the
people accepted the belief that “the days,” “the destinies,” and even “the
tears” of man are all written in His “book.”(495) Thus they perceived God
as “He who knows from the beginning what will be at the end.”(496) The
prophets, His messengers, could thus foretell His will. They perceive Him
as the One who “created the smith that brought forth the weapon for its
work, and created the master who uses it for destruction.”(497) However
the foe may rage, he is but “the scourge in the hand of God,” like “the
axe in the hand of him who fells the tree.”(498) No device of men or
nations can withstand His will, for He turns all their doings to some good
purpose and transforms every curse into a blessing.(499)
3. Naturally this truth was first accepted in limited form, in the life of
certain individuals. The history of Joseph and of King David were used as
illustrations to show how God protects His own. The experiences of the
people confirmed this belief and expanded it to apply to the nation. The
wanderings of Israel through the wilderness and its entrance to the
promised land were regarded as God’s work for His chosen people. The
prophets looked still further and saw the destinies of all nations,
entering the foreground of history one by one, as the sign of divine
Providence, so that finally the entire history of mankind became a great
plan of divine salvation, centered upon the truth intrusted to Israel.
Beside this conception of _general_ Providence ruling in history, the idea
of _special_ Providence arose in response to human longing. The belief in
Providence developed to a full conception of care for the world at large
and for each individual in his peculiar destiny, a conviction that divine
Providence is concerned with the welfare of each individual, and that the
joyous or bitter lot of each man forms a link in the moral government of
the world. The first clear statement of this comes from the prophet
Jeremiah in his wrestling and sighing: “I know, O Lord, that the way of
man is not in himself, it is not in man that walketh to direct his
steps.”(500) Special Providence is discussed still more vividly and
definitely in the book of Job. Later on it becomes a specific Pharisaic
doctrine, “Everything is foreseen.”(501) “No man suffers so much as the
injury of a finger unless it has been decreed in heaven.”(502) A divine
preordination decides a man’s choice of his wife(503) and every other
important step of his life.
4. This theory of predestination, however, presents a grave difficulty
when we consider it in relation to man’s morality with its implication of
self-determination. While this question of free will is treated fully in
another connection,(504) we may anticipate the thought at this point. The
Jewish conception of divine predestination makes as much allowance as
possible for the moral freedom of man. This is shown in Talmudic sayings,
such as “Everything is within the power of God except the fear of
God,”(505) or “Repentance, prayer, and charity avert the evil
decree.”(506) Thus Maimonides expressly states in his Code that the belief
in predestination cannot be allowed to influence one’s moral or religious
character. A man can decide by his own volition whether he shall become as
just as Moses or as wicked as Jeroboam.(507)
5. The service of the New Year brings out significantly the Jewish
harmonization between the ideas of God’s foreknowledge and man’s moral
freedom. This festival, in the Bible called the Festival of the Blowing of
the Shofar, was transformed under Babylonian influence into the Day of
Divine Judgment. But it is still in marked contrast to the Babylonian New
Year’s Day, when the gods were supposed to go to the House of the Tablets
of Destiny in the deep to hear the decisions of fate.(508) The Jewish
sages taught that on this day God, the Judge of the world, pronounces the
destinies of men and nations according to their deserts. They thus
replaced the heathen idea of blind fate by that of eternal justice as the
formative power of life. Then, moved by a desire to mitigate the rigor of
stern justice for the frail and failing mortal, they included also God’s
long-suffering and mercy. These attributes are thus supposed to intercede,
so that the final decision is left in suspense until the Day of Atonement,
the great day of pardon. Some Tannaitic teachers(509) find it more in
accord with their view of God to say that He judges man every day, and
even every hour.
Of course, the philosophic mind can take this whole viewpoint in a
figurative sense alone. All the more must we recognize that this sublime
religious thought of God liberates morality from the various limitations
of the ancient pagan conception of Deity and the more recent metaphysical
view. In place of these it asserts that there is a moral government of the
world, which must be imitated in the moral and religious consciousness of
the individual.
6. The belief in a moral government of the world answers another question
which the medieval Jewish philosophers and their Mohammedan predecessors
endeavored to solve, but without satisfying the religious sentiment, the
chief concern of theology. Some of them maintain that God’s foreknowledge
does not determine human deeds.(510) Maimonides and his school, however,
say that it is impossible for us to comprehend the knowledge and power of
God, and that therefore such a question is outside the sphere of human
knowledge. “Know that, just as God has made the elements of fire and air
to rise upwards and water and earth to sink downward, so has He made man a
free, self-determining being, who acts of his own volition.”(511) The
Mohammedans would often give up human freedom rather than the omniscience
and all-determining power of God; but the Jewish thinkers, significantly,
with only the possible exception of Crescas,(512) laid stress upon the
divine nature which man attains through moral freedom, even at the risk of
limiting the omniscience of God.
7. The philosophers failed, however, to emphasize sufficiently a point of
highest importance for religion, God’s paternal care for all His
creatures. Indeed, God ceases to be God, if He has not included our every
step in His plan of creation, thus surrounding us with paternal love and
tender care. Instead of the three blind fates of heathendom who spin and
cut the threads of destiny without even knowing why, the divine Father
himself sits at the loom of time and apportions the lot of men according
to His own wisdom and goodness. Such a belief in divine Providence is
ingrained in the soul, and reasoning alone will not suffice to attain it.
Therefore even such great thinkers as Maimonides and Gersonides go astray
as religious teachers when they follow Aristotelian principles in this
very intimate matter. They assume a general Providence aiming for the
preservation of the species, but include a special Providence only so far
as the recipient of it is endowed with reason and has thus approached the
divine Intellect. A Providence of this type, the result of human
reasoning, is a mere illusion, as the pious thinker, Hasdai Crescas,
clearly shows.(513) For the man who prays to God in anxiety or distress
this bears nothing but disappointment.
The Aristotelian conception of the world has this great truth, that there
is no such thing as chance, that everything is foreseen and provided by
the divine wisdom. But religion must hold that the individual is an object
of care by God, that “not a sparrow falls into the net without God’s
will,”(514) that “every hair on the head of man is counted and cared for
in the heavenly order,”(515) and that the most insignificant thing serves
its purpose under the guidance of an all-wise God. We use figurative
expressions for the divine care, because we cannot grasp it entirely or
literally.
8. The Bible in the Song of Moses compares divine Providence to the eagle
spreading her protecting wings over her young and bearing them aloft, or
urging them to soar along.(516) The rabbis elaborate this by referring to
the twofold care which the eagle thus bestows, as she watches over those
who are still tender and helpless, shielding them from the arrows below by
bearing them on her wings, but inspiring the maturer and stronger ones to
fly by her side.(517) In the same way Providence trains both individuals
and generations for their allotted task. A little child requires incessant
care on the part of its mother, until it has learned how to eat, walk,
speak, and to decide for itself, but the wise parent gradually withdraws
his guiding hand so that the growing child may learn self-reliance and
self-respect. The divine Father trains man thus through the childhood of
humanity. But no sooner does the divine spirit in man awaken to
self-consciousness than he is thrown on his own resources to become the
master of his own destiny. The divine power which, in the earlier stages,
had worked _for_ man, now works _with_ him and _within_ him. In the
rabbinic phrase, he is now ready to be a “co-worker with God in the work
of creation.”(518) Only at those grave moments when his own powers fail
him, he still feels in the humility of faith that his ancient God is still
near, “a very present help in trouble,” and that “the Guardian of Israel
neither slumbereth nor sleepeth.”(519)
Philosophy cannot tolerate the removal of the dividing line between the
transcendent God and finite man. Hence the relation of man’s free will and
divine foresight cannot be solved by any process of reasoning. But when
religion proclaims a moral government of the world, then man, with his
moral and spiritual aims, attains a place in Creation akin to the Creator.
Of course, so long as he is mentally a child and has no clear purpose,
Providence acts for him as it does for the animal with its marvelous
instinct. Through His chosen messengers God gives the people bread and
water, freedom and victory, instruction and law. The wondrous tales
describing the divine protection of Israel in its early life may strike us
as out of harmony with the laws of nature, but they are true portrayals of
the experience of the people. Whatever happened for their good in those
days had to be the work of God; they had not yet wakened to the power
hidden in their own soul. Their heroes felt themselves to be divine
instruments, roused by His spirit to perform mighty deeds or to behold
prophetic visions. It is God who battles through them. It is God who
speaks through them. Both their moral and spiritual guidance works from
without and above. At this stage of life autonomy is neither felt nor
desired. When man awakens to moral self-consciousness and maturity, this
inner change impresses him as an outer one; the change in him is
interpreted as a change in God. He feels that God has withdrawn behind His
eternal laws of nature and morality which work without direct
interference, and in his new sense of independence he thinks that he can
dispense with the divine protection and forethought. As if mortal man can
ever dispense with that Power which has endowed him with his capacity for
worthy accomplishment! Thus in times of danger and distress man turns to
God for help; thus at every great turning point in the life of an
individual or nation the idea of an all-wise Providence imbues him with
new hope and new security. And in all these cases the great lesson of
providential direction is typified in the history of Israel as related in
the Bible.
10. The idea of Providence, indeed, belongs also to certain pagan
philosophers, who observed the great purposes of nature which the single
creature and the species are both to serve. The Stoics in particular made
a study of teleology, the system of purposive ends in nature. Philo
adopted much from them in his treatise on Providence. Later the popular
philosophic group among the Mohammedans, the so-called “Brothers of
Purity,” based their doctrines of God and His relation to the world on a
teleological view of nature. In fact, the Jewish philosopher and moralist
Bahya ben Pakudah has embodied many of their ideas in his “Duties of the
Heart.”(520)
Jewish folklore—preserved in rabbinic literature—has also attempted a
popular explanation of the obscure ways of Providence, in strange events
of nature as well as the great enigmas of human destiny. Thus the flight
of David from Saul affords the lesson of the good purpose which may be
served by so insignificant a thing as a spider, or by so dreadful a state
as insanity.(521) Vast numbers of the Jewish legends and fables deal with
adversities which are turned into ultimate good by the working of an
all-wise Providence.(522)