The Chok of the Torah: Mitzvos Because Hashem Commanded

1“This is the chok of the Torah which Hashem commanded, saying.”¹

2The holy Ohr HaChaim asks why the verse uses the phrase “the chok of the Torah,” a chok being a decree given without a reason.² It should have said “the chok of the heifer,” just as it says elsewhere, “This is the chok of the Pesach offering.”³

3We find in the Midrash: “When Moshe went up on high, he heard the voice of the Holy One, blessed be He, sitting and occupying Himself with the section of the red heifer, and citing a halachah in the name of the one who said it …” See it there.⁴ But why, when Moshe went up on high to receive the Torah, was Hashem occupied with the section of the red heifer in particular?

4This will become clear from what the Gemara relates. When Moshe went up on high, the ministering angels said before the Holy One, blessed be He, “Master of the world, what is one born of a woman doing among us? … A hidden treasure … and You seek to give it to flesh and blood!”⁵ But this is difficult. Surely keeping the Torah applies only to one born of a woman, to flesh and blood, as Moshe answered them. So what was the angels' claim? We must also understand Moshe's first answer to them: “Did you go down to Egypt? Were you enslaved to Pharaoh? Why should the Torah be yours?” These words seem to have nothing to do with keeping the Torah. He should have answered them at once with what he said afterward: “Do you do work? … Do you do business with one another? Is there jealousy among you? …”

5Let us open with the words of my holy father and teacher, zt"l, on the phrase further on in the verse, “on which no yoke has come.” The word ol, “yoke,” has the numerical value 100, alluding to the hundred blessings a person must say each day.⁶ Saying them brings a person to yiras Shamayim, the fear of Heaven, and makes him humble as well, since he recognizes that the world is not his. This is the meaning of “which has no blemish”: a person who thinks he has no blemish shows by this that no ol has come upon his soul. He is not careful to say the hundred blessings properly, with kavanah, for they would have brought him to lowliness of spirit, to the recognition that the palace has a Master and that everything comes from Him. Those are his holy words.

6aHere is the explanation. We find several times in the Torah, “And Bnei Yisrael did as Hashem commanded.” We also find it of Moshe and Aharon: “And Moshe and Aharon did as Hashem commanded.”⁷ Why is it not enough to say only “and they did so”? Why did the Torah need to add “as Hashem commanded”? This is all the more surprising with Moshe and Aharon. No one could possibly think, Heaven forbid, that they did not do as Hashem commanded. What need, then, did the Torah see to dwell on it and stress “as Hashem commanded”?

6bThe point is this. Chazal said in the Gemara, “Mitzvos were not given for benefit,” and Rashi explains: “They were not given to Bnei Yisrael for benefit, that keeping them should be a pleasure for them; rather, they were given as a yoke upon their necks.”⁸ That is, when a Jew keeps a mitzvah of Hashem, he must cast away all his personal interests in it, his own desires and the inclinations of his heart. His intention should be only to give satisfaction to the Creator, blessed be He, and to accept the yoke, because the King has so commanded. For we must keep the whole Torah, and every mitzvah of Hashem that we do, only because this is Hashem's command. That is why the verse says “as Hashem commanded”: to show that the mitzvos are kept only to fulfill Hashem's command, and not out of one's own desire.

7aThis is what the ministering angels were claiming: How can the Torah be given to human beings of flesh and blood? They are far from the level of the angels, whose whole desire is only to do their Maker's will, while human beings also have desires and interests of their own. That is what the angels meant by “What is one born of a woman doing among us?” How can a mortal keep mitzvos because Hashem commanded them, and only for the honor of His Name, when people have interests of their own and are not wholly given over to Hashem's will? Then they lack the very heart of keeping the Torah.

7bTo meet this claim, Moshe began his answer by saying, “Did you go down to Egypt? Were you enslaved to Pharaoh? …” He meant this: Hashem, blessed be He, wanted it to be from within the strong pull of this world's desires and inclinations that we draw ourselves to Him. We are to purify and refine ourselves until we want only to give Him satisfaction, for this is dearer to Him than anything. And we have the power to reach this. We were in Egypt, enslaved to the forces of nature and sunk in the forty-nine gates of impurity, the lowest depths of defilement. Yet now, as we receive the Torah, we have reached the level of “We will do and we will hear,”⁹ in the spirit of the Gemara's words, “first to do and afterward to hear.”¹⁰ This shows the innermost point of our hearts: we have always been truly ready, wanting only to do our Maker's will, even when we were among the kelipos of Egypt, its husks of impurity. From this you can see the great power and stature of a Jew's soul. His body may be sunk in its own desires, yet through toil he can reach high levels. That is why the Torah is fit to be given to us, for we too can certainly keep the mitzvos for the sake of Hashem's Name alone.

8The Midrash we cited, that when Moshe went up on high he heard Hashem occupied with the section of the red heifer, means the same thing. It shows that the whole Torah must be kept the way the mitzvah of the red heifer is kept. Since we do not know the reason for that mitzvah, we certainly keep it only because Hashem commanded us. And this is what the verse means by “This is the chok of the Torah”: the whole Torah must be kept like the red heifer, which we keep only because it is something “which Hashem commanded.” We have the power to reach this, even though we really are flesh and blood, bound up with the desires and vanities of this world. For it is from within all this that Hashem wants us to draw ourselves to Him and sanctify ourselves to Him, as we saw in Moshe's answer about Egypt.

9This is what my holy father was hinting at when he said that the word ol alludes to the hundred blessings. Before a blessing is said, everything belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He.¹¹ By saying the blessing, a person declares that everything comes from Him. He comes to recognize that this is Hashem's will, and he sets aside his own personal interests. By keeping the hundred blessings, he shows all of this.

10It follows from our words that we must take care not to be too clever when we keep the mitzvos. We should keep the Creator's mitzvos simply as something “which Hashem commanded,” and through this we will bring near the appointed time of the redemption. As Chazal said, “Israel is redeemed only in the merit of simple faith.”¹² Amen.