In several of the preceding chapters, we have seen summary statements of Judaism recited on a regular basis – most prominently, the Shema passages and the bikkurim declaration. As we come to the end of the book of Devarim we find another variation on this theme, the song known by its first word, Ha’azinu (Devarim 32:1 ff.). Though we have no record of stated times for its recital by the entire people, the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 31a) informs us that it was recited by the Levites in the Temple every Shabbat morning.147There Abbaye tells us that the reading was divided into six parts which would be recited on a rotating basis at the time of the musaf, the additional Shabbat offering.
This section, however, stands apart from the others in even more fundamental ways. It is dissimilar in style, content and even purpose. Moreover, we immediately note an unusual expression instructing Moshe “to place it in the mouths of Bnei Yisrael.”148Rashi, Ramban on Devarim 31:19. It is worth noting, however, that several commentators understand that it is not only Ha’azinu that is being described as a song here, but the entire Torah as well. See, for example, Ralbag and Rabbi S.R. Hirsch ad loc. Even though the Torah doesn’t consistently contain the various features that are characteristic of song, still, as mentioned earlier, Netziv points out in his introduction to Ha’amek Davar that as a whole it does have certain similarities to verse. Most important is the fact that, like verse, the Torah contains a great deal of meaning that must be teased out from its terse wording. Moreover, the Torah was ideally meant to be memorized in its entirety. It is clear that Moshe is not being told to just teach them the song or to simply inform them of it. Rather, the expression connotes an unusual relationship between words and speaker.
Based on its usage elsewhere as well as on its literal meaning, the expression of placing words in someone’s mouth connotes a strong dichotomy between the words and the speaker whose mouth eventually receives them. With regard to other places in the Bible where the expression is used, the most famous is with the prophecy of Bil’am. There, the gentile prophet makes it quite clear that it is not he who owns the prophetic words that he speaks, but rather that it is always God Who “puts them into [his] mouth” (Bemidbar 23:12). Likewise earlier, Moshe is instructed to put his own words “into the mouth” of his spokesman, Aharon (Shemot 4:15).
The expression is similarly found in the Prophets with regard to the speech of the wise woman chosen by Yoav to help David and Avshalom resolve their differences (II Shmuel 14). There too, the woman’s words clearly belong to someone else. Likewise concerning Ha’azinu: even if the speakers learn the song very well, somehow they will never own it. It will always remain foreign in a way that the Shema passages are not.149Granted, the Shema contains the instruction to place God’s words on the hearts and souls of the Jews (Devarim 11:18). Still, the parallel is not complete and does not have the same connotation of making the words of the Shema foreign. The reason for this will become evident as we further explore what characterizes this unusual section, placed close to the end of the Torah.
Ha’azinu is not completely sui generis. The Torah itself contains a handful of “songs” and the rest of the Tanach contains several more. Rather than implying music, these songs could best be described as lyrical poems. Still, even if music would not always accompany them, they were composed with sound and rhythm in mind. In fact, their rhythm is further accentuated by the distinctive fashion in which they are written on the traditional parchment scroll. There, each phrase is given its own aligned position, separated from the phrases both before and after it.
These sections are more easily memorized than the prose that surrounds them, even as their artistic form makes them more difficult to understand. This is particularly important here, as memorization is explicitly one of Ha’azinu’s main goals, something more or less exclusive to this song alone. It was apparently not enough merely to recite it regularly, reading it from a written text or repeating it after someone else. It had to be internalized to the point where every Jew would know it by heart.150See Eruvin 54b. And yet, in spite of all this, it was to retain the foreignness of something that is only “placed in our mouths.” In Ha’azinu’s unique combination of proximity and remoteness, it is literally under our skin and yet remains a foreign object.
A Dismal Reminder
Why did the Ha’azinu song need to remain somewhat foreign? One likely reason was its bitter message that the Jewish people would have certainly preferred to ignore. The metaphor of an unpleasant substance being placed into one’s mouth is in contemporary terms reminiscent of bitter medicine that a child is forced to swallow. Like the child, the Jewish people surely did not want to hear that they would eventually fail in their loyalty to God and His Torah. Nor did they want to hear about the harsh punishments that would ensue. Yet, like medicine, it was to benefit the Jews, at the very least as a preventive, but also to reassure them that no matter how far they strayed, they would never be totally destroyed.
Ha’azinu’s message to the Jewish people is rather primal in that it strips down God’s relationship with them to the bottom line, which is that the Jews’ betrayal of God will never bring its most logical conclusion – their obliteration. In this song, everything else is secondary. As opposed to the bikkurim declaration, here there is no need to mention the historical miracles God wrought for His people. In the bikkurim declaration, mention of the miracles was meant to engender gratitude. Here, however, gratitude is not sought. The gist is much more fundamental: that even though the Jews will act in such a way that should end the relationship, God will not allow it to end. Period.
Nevertheless, while the Jews are assured of survival, Ha’azinu is a far cry from a romantic story of God’s holding on to His beloved. Instead, it is a declaration that God’s assured preservation of the Jewish people is the best thing that can be expected in such circumstances. It also hints to an endless loop: The reason given for God’s decision not to destroy the Jews is that it would mislead others into thinking that they had the power to subdue His chosen nation (Devarim 32:27). If God were to destroy His nation, it had to be apparent that it was He Who destroyed them and not anyone else. But the only appropriate mechanism for doing this was to have other nations subdue them, which was itself intrinsically flawed for the reason just mentioned – that those nations would attribute it to their own power. Thus, problematic as the Jews might be, there was simply no way to discard them once they had been selected as God’s representatives on earth.
This is hardly the stuff of national anthems,151Malbim on Devarim 31:19 does in fact identify Ha’azinu as a type of national anthem. This makes sense given his unique understanding of the song’s message (see below). nor is it typical Biblical fare. What nation would proudly proclaim their disloyalty to God, safe in the knowledge that He has to spare them only because His plans leave Him with no other choice? Although the Jews are often warned of terrible consequences if they betray God, the usual refrain is that after being punished they will learn their lesson and return to Him. Here, we don’t see this, and instead read that He will not destroy them completely (Devarim 32:26–27), and that He will also eventually avenge their blood (Devarim 32:41). In Ha’azinu, the Torah wants to get this message across and no more.
What’s the Point?
Given the dismal tone of the song, one wonders why the Jews had to remember it. And not only remember it, but memorize it as if it was of primary importance.
Malbim presents a creative metaphor to answer this question:
A king freed a slave from jail and appointed him in charge of the royal treasury. The king knew that this man had a long history of robbery, and in all likelihood would steal from the king, incurring his own death sentence. However, the king didn’t want the man to die. And so he recorded the entire episode in his royal archive: that the man was an incurable thief and that the king himself appointed him as head of the treasury with full knowledge of his character. Anyone who read the entry in the royal records thought that the purpose of the record was to deter and warn the thief that if he stole he would be severely punished. But in truth, it was a reminder for the king himself to treat the thief lightly should he steal again. After all, the king had selected the thief with full knowledge.
Similarly here; God says: I know that they will sin in the future, and therefore, “write down this song” for your own good. “Teach it to the children of Israel; memorize it,” let it be in your memory, on the tips of your tongues, as an excuse, an explanation to Me so that you not be punished, “in order that this song be a testimony for Me regarding the children of Israel.”152Malbim on Devarim 31:19, translation based on that of R. Alex Israel.
According to Malbim, then, Ha’azinu wasn’t meant for actual everyday use, even if it had to be recited all the time. The Torah says as much, prefacing the command given to Moshe to write and teach this song by the prognosis that the Jews will reach such a nadir of moral corruption that they won’t even understand why punishments are coming to them (Devarim 31:14–18). It was at such a time that the song was meant to be employed.
Ha’azinu was meant to be ready in case of emergency, and like all emergency procedures, it wouldn’t be useful if it weren’t kept fresh. In that sense, the learning of this passage could be likened to a fire drill. So long as the Jews were living within the parameters of spiritual normalcy, there was no need to bring it out for anything but practice. It was only to be “used” when the Jews had reached rock bottom and needed reassurance that they were not to face total annihilation. At that point, it would not be enough to merely calm them down and reassure them with regard to the consequences of sinning, but it would be enough to give them the assurance that all would not be lost and indeed would never be lost. That was the song’s purpose.
God didn’t need to be reminded. He knew His own will. But even as God would not destroy them, there would be times so dismal that the Jews were in danger of losing faith in, and destroying, themselves. Ha’azinu was meant to remind the Jews never to give up on themselves, in the same way that God would never give up on them.
It would be a bit far-fetched to say that the Jews would be able to use Ha’azinu as a sort of shield against God’s anger, but their invoking it also reminded them that God’s eternal choice came with Divine foresight. He knew that there would be times when things got so bad with the Jews that the only way to salvage His original plan would be to protect the Jews from His own attribute of justice, even though they had done nothing to deserve His mercy.
As Jews are fond of saying about such things, nechama purta – small comfort! But that is precisely why the song would not be invoked except under drastic circumstances. God warned Moshe that there would inevitably be such occasions on the long road to messianic times. The Jews needed to be ready to make use of the only consolation available during those terrible times. Small comfort perhaps, but it would be enough when nothing else was available.
Let us now return to the idea behind the song that would remain external to the Jewish people, even as they put it “into their mouths.”
Marked by God
To understand Ha’azinu, we need Yeshayahu, the prophet known for some of the most daunting warnings ever given. Yeshayahu begins his book with a linguistically related rebuke, castigating the Jews as being worse than animals (Isaiah 1:1–9). The prophet is clearly referring back to Ha’azinu when he uses the same introductory words (in a different order) to introduce his song. As in Ha’azinu, Yeshayahu uses the earth and sky as witnesses. He also invokes the comparison to Sedom and Amorrah and makes several other allusions to the song. As for his message, he says that in their state of spiritual dullness, the Jews of his time are even worse than animals, which at the very least understand that they have a vested interest in pleasing their masters. The crux of his speech is that since even an animal is loyal to its master, so too should the Jews be loyal to God. As with the song in Ha’azinu, Yeshayahu is discussing a very simple, even primal relationship. Moreover, here too, God is not looking for gratitude from the Jews. Rather, Yeshayahu plainly presents the fundamental tenet that the Jews belong to God, just like an animal belongs to its master.
While he doesn’t speak about placing a song in the mouths of the Jews, Yeshayahu does bring up the relationship between men and their domesticated animals which sheds valuable light on why the words (and rhythm/music) of Ha’azinu needed to be placed “in the mouths” of the Jews.
The way to indicate ownership of an animal is by making a permanent mark on it – by branding it, for instance. Another way is to insert some sort of tag inside an accessible part of its body, like its ear or its mouth. I am not alluding to any specific practice that might have been well known in the Ancient Near East or even more generally. What I am suggesting is that the forceful placing of a mark or object on an animal is a classic way of denoting mastery over it, which is as true today as it was back then. I am also suggesting that forcing words into a person’s mouth is also a way of showing ownership by the One Who (or one who) placed them there. Incidentally, such an allusion fits very well with the Bil’am story as well, where one finds a subtle parallel between Bil’am’s nuanced mastery over his animal and God’s much less nuanced mastery over Bil’am.
The idea that the placement of something foreign onto a person is meant to indicate primal ownership is further reinforced by the story of Kayin and Hevel. There God protects Kayin by placing a sign upon him (Bereshit 4:15). We are not told what the sign is nor how it protects him from others, but the most straightforward meaning is that the sign is indicative of God’s ownership and consequent protection of Kayin and, accordingly, that anyone who attacks Kayin will risk running into trouble with God Himself.
We can conclude, then, that the Ha’azinu song not only serves to encourage the Jews in times of national emergency, it also serves as a marker denoting their permanent association with God. This is what gives them the safety hatch to begin with. For no matter how poorly they behave, they are literally “branded” as God’s people.
* * *
Commitments rarely mean what they used to. The most obvious manifestation of this is the soaring rates of divorce around the world. And with trends toward globalization, commitment to one’s nation is not what it used to be either. Patriotism and loyalty to one’s country have almost become the abstract contractual obligation envisioned by the classical liberal philosophers instead of any sort of heartrending engagement to the homeland.
Of course, I am not saying that there is no place for casual friendships and acquaintances, but I do not believe that all relationships are meant to be casual. While we share a basic responsibility for everyone we meet, that is only a bare minimum. Family creates a deeper level of responsibility, as does community. This is formalized by halacha as well, wherein we see a hierarchy of whom to help when we are not able to help everybody.153See Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 251.
Our closest relationships should entail a deep, primal commitment. One will sometimes help his children for no other reason than the connection which exists between parent and child. For a child to grow up emotionally and spiritually healthy, he needs to know of that primal relationship, even though that is usually not the motivation behind the care he receives from his parents. His relationship with his parents is generally marked by love and pride on their part, which override attention to his less admirable qualities. But within the course of a lifetime, it is not uncommon for a child to act in such a way as to relinquish all but the primal bond between him and his parents.
What is true within the family is equally true within the nation. I am not suggesting that we engage in an ethic of “My country, right or wrong.” Indeed, God does not. He punishes the Jewish people, sometimes very severely. But what I am suggesting is that the essential relationship to one’s people should never be severed. Moreover, as with Ha’azinu, everyone should make clear, not only to their nation but also to all those with whom they are essentially bonded, that things can get very bad, but that, regardless, the relationship will never die.