Gersonides

The answer is, this is bona fide, a divine agent who is telling Shaul what to do.

Malbim, also Ralbag, notes that even if you take the view that Malach is a human agent, still it's inescapable that this is Hashem's hashkacha.

This is Hashem directing everything that's happening, even if it's a human agent.

The fact that this person comes here just like that, out of nowhere, is very clearly Hashem acting to save the David.

Who commanded this three year drought? So if you look at the Ra'al Bagh for example.

Rabbi Levi Ben Gershom says.

Eliyahu was sent by God.

In order to withhold the dew and the rain.

Yet we see as soon as we end up, like you go to Jews in Spain in the golden age, in medieval period is a great example, we see an insane amount of Jewish innovation.

You see people like Abraham Zakutov, with navigational technology and Levi Ben-Gershon, the astrolobe, the Kreska family making the maps, much of the age of exploration, which was the great innovation of that period of time in the 16th century, albeit with many negative consequences for the indigenous that were discovered, is a byproduct of Jewish thinking.

Much of the trade network set up in the medieval world, the Silk Road, were done by people like the rat night traders who ran the Silk Road.

And, you know, this is just a Jewish thing looking for ways.

You have like Rabbi David Gans, you have the Ibn Ezra, who astrology and astronomy were were part of his contributions.

You had Rabbi Levi Ben-Gershon, right, Gersonides, who contributed to the actual books and tools, the navigation tools that were being used by Columbus to discover the New World.

And so my favorite story is that Columbus took a total of four trips back and forth.

And so on the fourth one, he becomes shipwrecked in Jamaica.

Now, I don't know how you can call that providence, but Plotinus' view is very influential in antiquity and beyond.

Gersonides, the medieval thinker Gersonides, he denies that God knows the future.

I've done an episode on whether or not Gersonides is an open theist.

I think Gersonides is actually just trying to be a good Aristotelian since Aristotle denies that God knows future contingents.

Well, actually, Aristotle denies that God knows any contingent truths.

So it's a pretty strong claim.

But, um, you know, many times we've, we've found that, that, uh, science is wrong and it changes, and that's normal and that's part of the process.

So sometimes, you know, we think we have a certain conclusion based on, you know, a certain carbon data extrapolation, carbon dating extrapolation- And as, uh, uh, Zachary once me-mentioned, the Ralbag said that how could it say that Abra-- uh, that, uh, the children of Klal Yisrael are gonna be like the stars? There's only, you know, 1,000 something stars like the Greeks are saying, and this is, you know, much far along after the Gemara.

This is, you know, Rishon.

And he says, "It must be, man, the way that it looks that people at the time thought there were so many stars." And, and now, now we know there's so many stars.

Everything before that is millions, billions of years.

And one of my favorite acknowledgments I remember from a medieval Jewish philosophy class 100 years ago was that in the... you know, 15th, 16th century, there was a rabbi, Gersonides, who said that the Earth was about 15 or the universe was about 15 billion years old.

And he did that without any modern technology.

And, you know, when we talk about the age of the universe today, from a scientific perspective, you got reasonably close to that.

The second point is that it would seem like the land is not producing as much as it did before.

If you take a look here, Eretz Kavul, says the Ralbag, Eretz Chol, it's a sandy land which doesn't produce very much.

But I think the Gemara in Masechet Shabbat, says it even better.

He says, The people of Eretz Kavul were stuck in a very high standard of living.

Uh, I, I will also get protected." Of course, the question to that is, well, where was Hashem for Nov? Um, but that's, um, [lips smack] that's a third, um, possible read.

Ralbag has a piece here about Aviatar bringing the Ephod to David, but this is a separate point I'm not getting into right now.

Is David really as liable as he says he is? So you could make the argument that no, and some have made the argument that no, David is not liable.

We have a discussion in Halakha about a person being liable if he hires somebody to do a job, and then that person is hurt while performing the work.

Why does he, uh, try to do this by bringing enemy soldiers to Shomron only to send them home? If he's trying to defend himself, he should just confuse them and lead them across the border back to Aram, where there's no longer a threat.

What's the message over here? So the Ralbag suggests that the idea of giving the soldiers a big meal was to motivate them never to return to attack us.

Rabbi Chanan Samet, uh, the famous Tanakh teacher in Har HaTzion, explains based on Mishlei, [Hebrew], "If your enemy is hungry, feed him bread, and if he's thirsty, give him water to drink, 'cause you're gonna be scooping coals to put on his head, and Hashem will reward you." In other words, when you can transform an enemy to a friend, uh, by being kind to them, that's an ideal.

So the Ralbag says that's pretty much the message that was going on over here.

However, Rabbi Chaim Jachter in his Sefer, From David to Destruction, Mining Essential Lessons from Sefer Melachim, he suggests a different answer.

He says you have to understand that, uh, Bnei Yisrael, um, uh, and, uh, are being, uh, given a mission over here that Elisha is supposed to carry out.