Step 05 — The Journey
Why these specific commandments?
The full treatment is in preparation. The classical position it develops is summarised below.
The short answer
If the purpose of a human life is to earn closeness to God, something has to be the means by which that is done. The commandments are what Judaism identifies as those means — the specific actions the Creator designated for acting on that relationship. On this account, "why these and not others" is a question about design, in the way that asking why a medicine has a particular composition is a question about how the body works.
Two common readings are ruled out by that framing. The commandments are not arbitrary tests of obedience, as though any set of instructions would have served equally and only compliance mattered. Nor are they merely useful social rules that a community happened to adopt and later ascribed to God. The tradition holds that each acts on the person who performs it, and on creation, in a particular way.
One point has to be stated honestly. The tradition openly admits that the full reason behind many commandments has not been disclosed — the classical writers say so themselves. What it maintains is that undisclosed is not the same as absent: the system is purposeful whether or not a given purpose has been made known.
Common questions
Short answers on why the mitzvot take the form they do.
Are the commandments arbitrary?
Not on the classical account. An arbitrary command would be one where the content did not matter and only the obedience did. Jewish thought treats the commandments instead as means fitted to an end — actions that do something to the person performing them and to the world — which is why the tradition invests so much effort in understanding their details rather than simply recording them.
This sits comfortably with the tradition also holding that the reasons for many of them have not been revealed. A reason can exist without having been disclosed.
What is the difference between mishpatim and chukim?
Mishpatim are commandments whose rationale is evident to human reasoning — the prohibitions of theft and murder, the obligations of honest dealing. Chukim are those whose rationale is not evident, and which would not have been arrived at independently.
The distinction concerns what is accessible to us, not which commandments have reasons. Both categories are understood to be purposeful; only one wears its purpose on the surface.
Why are there so many detailed laws?
Because the commandments are understood to govern how a life is actually lived rather than only what a person believes. Detail is what makes a principle applicable to a real case — when to act, with what, under which circumstances. The volume of Jewish law is largely the record of that application across every domain of ordinary life: eating, work, speech, money, time, and relationships.
Do the commandments change with time?
The law itself is treated as received rather than legislated afresh by each generation. What each generation does is apply it — determine how the received law bears on circumstances that did not exist before. That is the ordinary work of Jewish legal reasoning, and it is why the tradition can address new situations without holding that its content was revised.
This follows from how the tradition understands its own transmission. See how the Torah was transmitted.