Life and good.
2023-09-08 06:24![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asher553'Behold, I have set before you today life and good, and death and evil ...'
[Deut. 30:15]
טו רְאֵ֨ה נָתַ֤תִּי לְפָנֶ֨יךָ֙ הַיּ֔וֹם אֶת־הַֽחַיִּ֖ים וְאֶת־הַטּ֑וֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּ֖וֶת וְאֶת־הָרָֽע:
Notice that the verse does not say "life and death, good and evil", as if these were two different pairs of contrasting opposites. No, it is "life and good" on one side, "death and evil" on the other. It is the same choice.
This is the Torah's powerful affirmation that life is good, and we are commanded to choose it.
--
Dennis Prager on Deut. 30:19: "The commandment to choose life over death must have struck many readers throughout history as strange: If given the choice between life and death, who would choose death?"
But choosing life over death is a conscious choice. Prager notes that "the desire to have children has been regarded as a given", yet in fact it's a choice that "fewer and fewer people are making."
Even choosing life for oneself is a conscious decision, in a day when powerful interests want to persuade us of the attractiveness of stepping across to the other side - with the express goal of decreasing the population.
To value human life is an affirmative choice, and a duty to the Creator in Whose image we are created.
[Deut. 30:15]
טו רְאֵ֨ה נָתַ֤תִּי לְפָנֶ֨יךָ֙ הַיּ֔וֹם אֶת־הַֽחַיִּ֖ים וְאֶת־הַטּ֑וֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּ֖וֶת וְאֶת־הָרָֽע:
Notice that the verse does not say "life and death, good and evil", as if these were two different pairs of contrasting opposites. No, it is "life and good" on one side, "death and evil" on the other. It is the same choice.
This is the Torah's powerful affirmation that life is good, and we are commanded to choose it.
--
Dennis Prager on Deut. 30:19: "The commandment to choose life over death must have struck many readers throughout history as strange: If given the choice between life and death, who would choose death?"
But choosing life over death is a conscious choice. Prager notes that "the desire to have children has been regarded as a given", yet in fact it's a choice that "fewer and fewer people are making."
Even choosing life for oneself is a conscious decision, in a day when powerful interests want to persuade us of the attractiveness of stepping across to the other side - with the express goal of decreasing the population.
To value human life is an affirmative choice, and a duty to the Creator in Whose image we are created.
