“And I will grant peace in the Land, and you will lie down with no one to frighten [you]; I will remove wild beasts from the Land, and no army will pass through your land;” —Leviticus 26:6
“Five of you will pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you will pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall by the sword before you.” —Leviticus 26:8
With each Torah portion I notice that I have a problem. Isn't the Torah clever the way it can become about me so quickly.
G_d is making promises again about what will happen if you do what he says. We know that they are false promises in the literal sense. S--t happens, whatever you do. In fact, the promises are ridiculous if you take them literally.
But imagine the inner peace that comes from doing the right thing. Though the beasts and warriors may overwhelm us, we have an inner peace that can't be shaken.
Another issue I have is with this line, “You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall by the sword before you;”—Leviticus 26:7
So why does God protect us and not them. It would be like praying for G_d to help us win a football game. Does G_d not love everyone?
In Buddhism, our enemies are not the “other,” but rather greed, hate, and delusion. I think we can think of enemies here in similar ways. They are not the “other side,” but rather that part of ourselves that circumvent our holy side.
I wrote about this also in another of my blogs: http://blog.kimmosley.com/2014/09/rage-is-empty.html
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Thanks for commenting. One cannot study the Torah alone.