ספר דברים

Deuteronomy 17,3 “or to the sun or the moon or to the ‎celestial constellations that I never commanded you.” ‎‎Rashi explains this line as if the words “to worship ‎them,” had been left out at the end of this verse, and the reader is ‎expected to add them himself. The Talmud Megillah 9, ‎appears to take the same approach when it tells us that the ‎Septuagint, the 72 scholars forced by the Greeks/Egyptians under ‎King Talmay to translate the entire Torah into Greek while each ‎was incommunicado with anyone else. They all translated the ‎verse in that way. [The reason they had been separated ‎was for the Greeks to point to discrepancies in the translations, ‎and to use these as a pretext to invalidate the Torah. Ed.]At that time, each one of these scholars added some words of ‎their own being guided by the Holy Spirit. In the case of our ‎verse, they added the word: ‎לעובדם‎, “to serve them.‎‏"‏In this instance, Rashi presumably bases himself on the ‎meaning of the word ‎השתחוה‎, not always meaning “to worship ‎G’d.” In Kings I 18,7 we find that term applied to man, when ‎Ovadiah made an obeisance to the prophet Elijah. Although ‎Ovadiah himself was a prophet, he deferred to Elijah. We even ‎find that G’d Himself on one occasion referred to Yaakov as ‎א-ל‎, “a ‎divine power.” He did so because Yaakov observed all the laws ‎that later were to appear in the Torah. (Compare comment in ‎Talmud Megillah 18) All the righteous people are entitled to ‎this attribute, so that it is permissible to make an obeisance called ‎השתחוויה‎ to them. The same is not true of sun, moon, or the ‎celestial constellations, seeing that they have not been charged ‎with observing the Torah. The meaning of ‎אשר לא צויתי‎, “that I ‎have not commanded,” is that seeing that G’d did not command ‎these powerful forces in nature to observe the Torah, they do not ‎qualify for any obeisance to them to be made by man, i.e. ‎Israelites, who have been commanded to keep the Torah. ‎‎[The problem in our verse is that on the face of it, it seems ‎that the words ‎וישתחו‎ and ‎ויעבוד‎ are used to create the impression ‎that when the Torah did not repeat the specific prohibition to ‎make an obeisance through ‎השתחוויה‎, this form of obeisance ‎might have been permitted. Ed.]‎ ‎