This is Shabbat HaGadol, the Great Shabbat, the one before the beginning of Passover. It is traditional, among those that follow this particular tradition, for the community to gather and hear a sermon on Shabbat HaGadol, such sermon being specifically about all the things that we should be doing to prepare for Passover. Sadly, it’s too late. It’s Shabbat now, and by the time Shabbat is over, Passover will have begun. Let this be a lesson to us, along with the special haftorah Malachi 3:4-24:
Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years. And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in [his] wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger [from his right], and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts. For I [am] the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept [them]. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the LORD of hosts. But ye said, Wherein shall we return? Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye [are] cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, [even] this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that [there shall] not [be room] enough [to receive it]. And I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her fruit before the time in the field, saith the LORD of hosts. And all nations shall call you blessed: for ye shall be a delightsome land, saith the LORD of hosts.
Your words have been stout against me, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, What have we spoken [so much] against thee? Ye have said, It [is] vain to serve God: and what profit [is it] that we have kept his ordinance, and that we have walked mournfully before the LORD of hosts? And now we call the proud happy; yea, they that work wickedness are set up; yea, [they that] tempt God are even delivered. Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard [it], and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the LORD of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God and him that serveth him not.
For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do [this], saith the LORD of hosts.
Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, [with] the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.
The numbering will be off if you are using a Christian Bible (as I am using the KJV); the Christians split Malachi into four, rather than three chapters, just to irritate YHB.
There’s a lot of paths to enter this text, but what strikes me today is this idea of robbing the Divine. How have we robbed the Divine? In tithes and offerings. But we don’t do tithing and offering at the Temple anymore, because there is no Temple anymore (praise be). So how have we robbed the Divine? In prayer, in avodah, in study, in tikkun olam?
This idea of robbing the Divine at all is not simple. After all, the Divine is everywhere, and everything belongs to the Divine, or is part of the Divine, depending on how you look at it. That doesn’t mean that everything is sacred (or at least it doesn’t for me, others will feel differently), but it seems counter-intuitive that it is within the power of people to take things away from the Divine. But then, with tithes and offerings, what is going on is not things being taken from the Divine, but promised things being denied to the Divine. Perhaps, then the robbing is not so much robbery as defaulting. And since this is one of those words that is only used in Malachi (and once in Proverbs, where it is translated despoil; I have a sense that everybody is guessing. Strong’s seems to think of it as hiding away something from someone who is looking for it.
I like that image. I like the idea that when we fail to pray (or to study, or to do deeds of lovingkindness, for those are the three legs upon which the world balances) we are hiding part of the Divine from Itself. If we want to stretch the metaphor, we could then say that the following image, where the Divine says If you bring me my tithes, I will open a window from Heaven and pour down so much blessing that it will overflow the storehouses is not so much (as it originally sounds to me) a sulky quid pro quo as an explanation, almost a yearning.
Imagine, then, the Divine as a buddy that we’re asking to give us a ride into town. The Divine would like to do you a favor, but the car keys are missing. If you get up and help the Divine look for the car keys, you will soon discover that they are in between the cushions of the couch, but as long as you are stretched out on top of them, the car isn’t moving, and you aren’t getting a ride. It’s not that the Divine doesn’t want you in the car, it’s that the keys are under your lazy ass, and you won’t get to town that way.
Not that the Divine, being Divine, doesn’t have spare keys. But that’s not the point, is it?
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.