The third fundamental dogma, Yediah, includes, according to Nachmanides, not only the omniscience of God—as the term is usually translated—but also His recognition of mankind and His special concern in them. Thus, he explains the words in the Bible with regard to Abraham, “For I know him” (Gen. xviii. 19), to indicate the special attachment of God's Providence to the patriarch, which, on account of his righteousness, was to be uninterrupted for ever; whilst in other places we have to understand, under God's knowledge of a thing, his determination to deal with it compassionately, as, for instance, when Scripture says that God knew (Exod. ii. 25), it means that His relation to Israel emanated from His attribute of mercy and love. But just as God knows (which means loves) the world, He requires also to be recognised and known by it. “For this was the purpose of the whole creation, that man should recognise and know Him and give praise to His name,” as [pg 122] it is said, “Everything that is called by my name (meaning, chosen to promulgate God's name), for my glory have I created it.”
It is this fact which gives Israel their high prerogative, for by receiving the Torah they were the first to know God's name, to which they remained true in spite of all adversities; and thus accomplished God's intention in creating the world. It is, again, by this Torah that the whole of Israel not only succeeded in being real prophets (at the moment of the Revelation), but also became Segulah,[88] which indicates the inseparable attachment between God and His people, whilst the righteous who never disobey His will become the seat of His throne.
The position of the rest of humanity is also determined by their relation to the Torah. “It is,” Nachmanides tells us, “a main principle to know that all that man contrives to possess of knowledge and wisdom is only the fruits of the Torah or the fruits of its fruits. But for this knowledge there would be no difference between man and the lower animated species. The existence of the civilised nations of the world does not disprove this rule both Christians and Mahometans being also the heirs of the Torah. For when the Romans gained strength over Israel they made them translate the Torah which they studied, and they even accommodated some of their laws and institutions to those of the Bible.” Those nations, however, who live far away from the centre of the world (the Holy Land) and never come into contact with Israel are outside the pale of civilisation, and can hardly be ranked together with the human species. “They are the isles afar off, that have not heard my fame, neither have seen my glory.”
What Nachmanides meant by maintaining that all knowledge and wisdom were “the fruits of the Torah, or the fruits of these fruits,” will be best seen from his Commentary on the Pentateuch. I have already made use of this Commentary in the preceding quotations, but, being the greatest of the works of Nachmanides, it calls for some special attention by itself. Its general purpose is edification, or as he says, “to appease the mind of the students (labouring under persecution and troubles) when they read the portion on Sabbaths and festivals, and to attract their heart by simple explanations and sweet words.” The explanations occupy a considerable space. As Dr. Perles has shown in his able essay on this work of Nachmanides, our author neglected no resource of philology or archæology accessible in his age which could contribute to establish the “simple explanations” on a sound scientific basis. The prominent feature of this Commentary, however, is the “sweet words.” Indeed, how sweet and soothing to his contemporaries must have been such words as we read at the end of the “Song of Moses” (Deut. xxxii.): “And behold there is nothing conditional in this Song. It is a charter testifying that we shall have to suffer heavily for our sins, but that, nevertheless, God will not destroy us, being reconciled to us (though we shall have no merits), and forgiving our sins for his name's sake alone.... And so our Rabbis said, Great is this song, embracing as it does both the past (of Israel) and the future, this world and the world to come.... And if this song were the composition of a mere astrologer we should be constrained to believe in it, considering that all its words were fulfilled. How much more have we to hope with all our hearts and to trust to the word of God, through the mouth [pg 124] of his prophet Moses, the faithful in all his house, like unto whom there was none, whether before him or after him.” A part of these sweet words may also be seen in the numerous passages in which he attempts to account for various laws, and to detect their underlying principles.
For though “the Torah is the expression of God's simple and absolute will, which man has to follow without any consideration of reward,” still this will is not arbitrary, and even that class of laws which are called chukkim[89] (which means, according to some Jewish commentators, motiveless decrees) have their good reasons, notwithstanding that they are unfathomable to us. “They are all meant for the good of man, either to keep aloof from us something hurtful, or to educate us in goodness, or to remove from us an evil belief and to make us know his name. This is what they (the Rabbis) meant by saying that commandments have a purifying purpose, namely, that man being purified and tried by them becomes as one without alloy of bad thoughts and unworthy qualities.” Indeed, the soul of man is so sensitive to every impurity that it suffers a sort of infection even by an unintentional sin. Hence the injunction to bring a Korban (sacrifice) even in this case; the effect of the Korban, as its etymology (Karab)[90] indicates, is to bring man back to God, or rather to facilitate this approach. All this again is, as Nachmanides points out, only an affluence from God's mercy and love to mankind. God derives no benefit from it. “If he be righteous what can he give thee?” And even those laws and institutions which are intended to commemorate God's wonders and the creation of the world (for instance, the Passover festival and the Sabbath) are not meant for His glorification, or, as Heine maliciously expressed it:—
Der Weltkapellenmeister hier oben
Er selbst sogar hört gerne loben
Gleichfalls seine Werke....
“For all the honour (we give to Him), and the praising of His work are counted by Him less than nothing and as vanity to Him.” What He desires is that we may know the truth, and be confirmed in it, for this makes us worthy of finding in Him “our Protector and King.”
The lessons which Nachmanides draws from the various Biblical narratives also belong to these “sweet words.” They are mostly of a typical character. For, true as all the stories in the Scriptures are, “the whole Torah is,” as he tells us (with allusion to Gen. v. 1.), “the book of the generations of Adam,” or, as we should say, a history of humanity written in advance. Thus the account of the six days of the creation is turned into a prophecy of the most important events which would occur during the succeeding six thousand years, whilst the Sabbath is a forecast of the millennium in the seventh thousand, which will be the day of the Lord. Jacob and Esau are, as in the old Rabbinic homilies generally, the prototypes of Israel and Rome; and so is the battle of Moses and Joshua with Amalek indicative of the war which Elijah and the Messiah the son of Joseph will wage against Edom (the prototype of Rome), before the Redeemer from the house of David will appear.[91] Sometimes these stories convey both a moral and a pre-justification of what was destined to happen to Israel. So Nachmanides' remarks with reference to Sarah's treatment of Hagar (Gen. xvi. 6): “Our mother Sarah sinned greatly by inflicting this pain on Hagar, as did also Abraham, who allowed such a thing to pass; but God saw her affliction and rewarded her by a [pg 126] son (the ancestor of a wild race), who would inflict on the seed of Abraham and Sarah every sort of oppression.” In this he alluded to the Islamic empires. Nor does he approve of Abraham's conduct on the occasion of his coming to Egypt, when he asked Sarah to pass as his sister (Gen. xii.). “Unintentionally,” Nachmanides says, “Abraham, under the fear of being murdered, committed a great sin when he exposed his virtuous wife to such a temptation. For he ought to have trusted that God would save both him and his wife.... It is on account of this deed that his children had to suffer exile under the rule of Pharaoh. There, where the sin was committed, also the judgment took place.” It is also worth noticing that, in opposition to Maimonides, he allows no apology for the attack of Simeon and Levi on the population of Shechem (Gen. xxxiv. 25). It is true that they were idolaters, immoral, and steeped in every abomination; but Jacob and his sons were not commissioned with executing justice on them. The people of Shechem trusted their word, therefore they ought to have spared them. Hence Jacob's protest, and his curse against their wrath, which would have been quite unjustified had he looked on the action of his sons as a good work.