ספר במדבר

Numbers 11,28. he said: “my lord Moses lock them ‎up!” To this Moses responded by saying: (11,29), “I wish that the ‎entire people of G’d would be filled with prophetic ‎insights!”, Whereas we know that the righteous are able ‎to bring about a cancellation of Divine decrees that would ‎negatively affect our people, this rule holds true only as long as ‎the decrees in question have not been written down by the ‎prophet who had announced them. Once the decree has been ‎committed to writing, it is beyond the ability of the righteous to ‎bring about its reversal.If this is so, surely we must ask ‎ourselves how it is possible to cancel the prophecies about the ‎disasters that will befall us during the period described in the ‎Talmud as the ‎חבלי משיח‎, “the birth pangs of the messianic age?” ‎If you would question why in light of this the prophets ‎committed these decrees to writing in the first place, the answer ‎is that unless they had been written down people would deny ‎that such prophecies had existed and would claim that had they ‎known of them they surely would have taken them to heart and ‎would have done teshuvah, repentance. Not only that, but ‎people would have claimed that the fact that these dire ‎prophecies did not come true was not due to repentance, but ‎that they were the words of false prophets in the first place.‎Maimonides in the sefer Hamadda as well as in hilchot ‎melachim (chapter 12,2) writes that what the prophets wrote ‎does not describe the period immediately preceding the coming of ‎the messiah; from this it follows that we cannot pray for ‎cancellation of decrees of which we have no knowledge. When the ‎messiah will come he will also explain to us writings of the ‎prophets which we were unable to understand until then.‎Even if it were true that the prophets’ writings did describe ‎the period preceding the coming of the messiah, seeing that ‎when the messiah comes all of the Jewish people will possess ‎intimate knowledge of G’d, just as did the prophets of old, as we ‎know from Joel 3,1‎ונבאו בניכם ובנותיכם זקניכם חלומות יחלמו בחוריכם ‏חזיונות יראו‎, “your sons and daughters will prophesy, and your ‎elders will dream dreams, and your youngsters will experience ‎visions.” At that time, when all the Jewish people are on the level ‎of prophets, no one will accuse the prophets of having ‎prophesied falsely, so that there is no need to record their visions ‎in writing. They will then realize that the righteous that lived ‎shortly before the advent of the messiah had been able to cancel ‎these decrees so that their non occurrence is no proof of their ‎having been falsehoods.‎When Joshua told Moses to lock up Eldod and Meydod for ‎having prophesied his death and Joshua’s becoming his successor, ‎this prophecy could no longer have been cancelled as it has been ‎recorded in the Torah. [actually it was not spelled out. ‎Ed.] Moses, by saying that he wished that all the Jews ‎could prophesy already meant, that if that were the case the ‎prophecy of Eldod and Meydod could become void then without ‎their being called false prophets. The righteous of his time would ‎then be able to override that decree although it had been ‎recorded in writing. In other words, even when prophets have ‎been told of certain decrees G’d has issued Himself, it is within the ‎power of the righteous to bring about an annulment. This is the ‎meaning of Devarim Rabbah 3,11 stating when explaining ‎the meaning of Deuteronomy 9,1 when Moses commences to ‎describe Israel as crossing the Jordan with the words: ‎אתה עובר ‏היום את הירדן וגו'‏‎, “you are about to cross the river Jordan today, ‎etc,” that Moses implied that he himself was not allowed to cross ‎the Jordan, but that he hoped that the intercession of the ‎righteous on his behalf might result in G’d revoking His decree ‎concerning this. To his dismay, the people did not understand the ‎hint Moses gave them in that verse. He had hoped that although ‎he had told them that he was about to die (on the east bank of ‎the Jordan) they would pray for a remission of G’d’s decree. ‎Moses, according to that Midrash was clearly not afraid that ‎if as a result of Israel’s prayers he would be allowed to cross the ‎Jordan, that they would consider him a false prophet, seeing he ‎had told them himself that he would not.‎