ספר דברים

It is this thought ‎that Moses expressed in our verse when he said: “and ‎‎Hashem has guaranteed you this day that this nation be a ‎precious nation for Him, etc.”‎. ‎If you were to ask that if G’d, Who is all knowing, obviously ‎knew all this in advance, why did He bother to create the gentile ‎nations altogether? The answer is that G’d created the other ‎nations ‎לשם ולתפארת ולתהלה‎, “for His name, glory and splendour,” ‎so that He would be able to glory in Israel’s accomplishments by ‎comparison. If there were no inferior people who had started out ‎with the same attributes as the Israelites, Israel’s ‎accomplishments would not be appreciated as outstanding. The ‎word: ‎תפארת‎, “splendour,” is an alternate adjective used in ‎connection with the garments of the High Priest, (Exodus 28,2) a ‎garment worn externally, meant to reflect the inner beauty of the ‎wearer. When the prophet Micah 7,19 speaks of G’d ‎יכבוש עונותינו ‏ותשליך במצולות ים‎, “squeezing out our sins and throwing them ‎into the depths of the ocean,” the image before the mental eye of ‎the prophet was that of the person laundering dirty linen, and ‎seeing that not only the dirt has disappeared but the result being ‎something splendid, ‎תפארת‎. Showing someone how a person ‎thoroughly soiled by his sins, has become rehabilitated is surely ‎reason for the owner of that “garment” to boast about the ‎‎“reincarnation” that has occurred, especially when it was ‎spontaneous.‎ This is also the meaning of Rosh Hashanah 17 where the ‎process of removing sins is described as occurring ‎מעביר ראשון ‏ראשון‎, usually translated as “removing the sins in the order in ‎which they have been committed starting with the first.” Our ‎author understands this to mean that G’d had used the first sin ‎committed by the repentant sinners as something to decorate ‎Himself with as His first garment. It is appropriate therefore that ‎once the sinner turns penitent, that not the last, but the original ‎sin he has committed should be “turned inside out,” by being ‎converted into a merit.‎[When a sinner persists in sinning, the “garments” in ‎which G’d wraps Himself, far from becoming something splendid, ‎become symbols of His progressive distancing His essence from ‎such a sinner, of course. Ed.]‎