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Vaetchanan: Does it Permeate?
Submitted by on July 23, 2006 – 5:15 amNo Comment | 6,730 views
An Echo
This week’s Parsha recounts the Ten Commandments. The Torah tells us that the commandments were delivered in “a powerful voice that was never repeated.” Our sages explain that this voice did not have an echo. Why is the absence of an echo important?
An echo is caused when a voice bounces off a surface, very much as a ball bounces off a wall. The wall forms an obstruction to the forward momentum of the ball thereby forcing it to reverse its course and guide it’s momentum in the opposite direction. The wall and the ball are two separate entities; one cannot absorb the other. Their meeting is by definition ill fated.
No Obstacle
Not so with the word of G-d. When G-d speaks, his voice permeates all of creation. Nothing stands in His way for He is at the very core of creation. When G-d’s voice encounters the surface of a material object it is welcomed and absorbed. In other words G-d’s word is never forced to reverse its course and it always achieves its goal.
If this is true of an inanimate object then how much more so of a human being. When we study Torah we must ensure that G-d’s voice permeates all. Not only intellect and emotion but thought speech and action as well.
Tags: echo, permeate
