NOTES for Deu 32:2

The comparison of teaching or instruction with rain pouring onto dry ground, with life-giving moisture, is a commonplace of this kind of hymnography, and not only biblical hymnography. Of course, representatives of any spiritual or religious school, as a rule, regard their teaching as a source of life and truth. But in this case the subject is not specific people, not Moses or Aaron, but the Torah, the revelation given by God. And for that reason the traditional words begin to sound different, in a new way.

After all, the Torah is not only legislation; it is also a way of life corresponding to that legislation, as well as a spiritual state that makes it possible to live such a way of life. And if one can formally observe the legal norms prescribed by the Torah by one's own strength, then a fallen person cannot in principle make his life correspond to the Torah fully and to the end. To do that he would have to avoid every sin without exception, because every sin is in one way or another a violation of one of the Ten Commandments and of one, usually not just one but several, norms of the Torah.

Only then does it become clear that one can observe the Torah to the end and become righteous only if the Torah becomes not merely a set of laws, but a living revelation that God gives to those who want to walk the path of righteousness here and now; that it is revelation first of all, and only afterward legislation and a moral code. And if revelation is involved, then, as we see, the Torah can be understood only in the context of a revelation that changes a person's whole life. The Torah becomes, to use modern language, the algorithm of these changes. And, in the apostle's words, a "guardian leading us to Christ."