Avot199

1:
While this mishnah is not specifically ascribed to any tanna there is no reason at all to doubt that the author of our present mishnah is Rabbi Akiva: he was the author of the two preceding mishnayot and he is the author of the next mishnah. Furthermore, as Rambam says in his commentary on this mishnah, its message is most appropriate for Rabbi Akiva, one of Israel's greatest sages.

2:
The first two clauses of our mishnah present the greatest theological paradox within traditional Jewish religious thought. One the one hand Judaism postulates a deity that is not only omnipotent but also omniscient: God is not only capable of doing anything and everything but also knows anything and everything. On the other hand, every person has free will and can choose, unhindered by divine intervention, whether to be good or bad, obedient or disobedient to the divine behest. In the juxtaposition of the two postulates lies the paradox: if man alone dictates his own behaviour how can God know in advance what will be each person's choice; and if God does not influence a person's choice how can God be considered to be omnipotent?

3:
It is a basic premise of the Torah that God is omnipotent. God alone and unaided created the universe and there is nothing that God cannot do to and in the universe and every single element in it.

4:
It is also a basic premise of the Torah that God is aware of everything. It is this thought that prompts the psalmist to agonize:

In what have become to be known as Rambam's 'Thirteen Principles' of Jewish belief this is stated categorically. In the poetic version of those principles – the well-known hymn, Yigdal – the principle is stated thus:

And the verb that the poet chooses for "God sees' is exactly the same as the verb in the first words of our mishnah.

To be continued.

I must apologise for a broken link at the end of the last shiur. My response should have read:

You may like to compare what Jacob implies here with an essay that I wrote about the problem of 'evil' in the world. It is accessible here.

In Avot 196 I brought a long quotation from the first chapter of Rambam's 'Guide for the Perplexed'. Amnon Ronel, who receives these shiurim in Hebrew, writes:

Why do the sages, both in the past and today, speak and write in a style that is so convoluted – as in Rambam's explanation of 'Divine image'? Or, alternatively, so short and concise that their comments require a commentary? A teacher whose explanations are not clear let him not be a teacher!

I respond:

If my own explanations are either too short or two convoluted I can only plead that I do the best I can. As far as Rambam is concerned: the Jewish people has probably never been blessed with so wonderful a teacher as Rambam. When he wants it his words can be crystal clear. And thereby lies a hint.

For reasons that we cannot go into here, Rambam did not want his "Guide for the Perplexed" to be crystal clear, as he makes very clear in his introduction. But the cause of Amnon's complaint in this case is not to be laid at the door of Rambam, but at the door of his translator. The Guide was written in Arabic. The good people of Provence, in southern France, wanted a translation into Hebrew (because they did not understand Arabic). Rambam did not want a translation, because any translation is an interpretation. But he had to give way to 'public pressure' and Shemu'el Ibn-Tibbon undertook the translation from Arabic into Hebrew. Rambam politely but firmly refused to discuss the translation with him, because he didn't want to have to explain matters that he wanted to be left to the individual reader's understanding. Ibn-Tibbon's translation is verbose and convoluted – and no doubt Rambam was delighted that in places it was almost incomprehensible.

I should have offered our Hebrew speakers a more modern translation. There is an excellent one done a few decades ago by Rabbi Yosef Kafiĥ z"l; a translation which uses vocabulary and style typical of Rambam in his Hebrew works. If I can find the time to do so I shall replace the excerpt in the archive with Rabbi Kafiĥ's version.