Forgiveness from God

Every night during selichot, and throughout the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers, we make a reference to the יג מדות הרחמים, the Thirteen Attributes of Mercy:

The LORD passed before him and proclaimed: “The LORD! the LORD! a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He does not remit all punishment, but visits the iniquity of parents upon children and children’s children, upon the third and fourth generations.”

There is a fascinating Gemara in Rosh Hashanah 17b that discusses these pesukim: 

"God passed over his face and called": Rabbi Yohanan saidIf the text itself did not say this, no one would be able to! It teaches that the Holy Blessed One wrapped himself like a congregational leader and showed Moshe the sequence of prayer.  God said to him: Every time that Israel sins, they should do this sequence before me and I will forgive them."H', H': I am the One before a person sins and I am the One after a person sins and repents"Merciful and compassionate God": Rav Yehudah saidIt is covenant that the thirteen attributes always work, as it says (Exodus 34:10) Behold, I make a covenant

How can we understand the statement, "every time that Israel sins, they should do this sequence before me and I will forgive them"? What we are being told here is mind boggling. As a nation we commit the worst sins, perpetrate the worst evils, commit the worst crimes, but as long as we make sure to read a few verses we are forgiven? That is not the way the world operates. How can we attain God's Forgiveness through a simple recitation? 

Human Forgiveness

When we hurt a friend that is dear to us we must come to them asking for their forgiveness. Maybe we said something about them that deeply hurt their feelings. Maybe we did something that has made them upset. Because of this hurt they have completely changed how they interact with us. Whereas before they were warm and friendly, willing to do anything for us they now refuse to interact with us. 

The first step in rectifying our relationship is to apologize to them and to change how they feel about us. If they are angry or sad we work to try and make them feel better. We apologize, we find ways to make things up to them, we work to make sure they realize how much we care for them. Once we are successful we focus on rebuilding the relationships. We work to make sure to change their interactions to re-establish the warm relationship. 

Is this the model that we should apply to re-establishing our relationship with God? 

God's Forgiveness 

"H', H': I am the One before a person sins and I am the One after a person sins and repents" tells us no. God did not change when you sinned and God will not change when you do teshuva. Your prayers, supplications, and mitzvot are not changing God in any way. 

This should immediately tell us that receiving forgiveness from friends is not anything like receiving forgiveness from God. We do try to change the friend and his feelings about us. Nothing we do will change God. 

Then what should be our model in seeking forgiveness? While God does not change, can our prayers change God's Plans and Interactions with the world? 

33:19: And He answered, “I will make all My goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim before you the name LORD, and the grace that I grant grace to and the compassion that I show compassion to.

This is the statement that God Makes to Moshe in regards to Moshe's plea for mercy and for knowledge of God. The double language used in the pesukim "grace that I grant grace to" and "the compassion that I show compassion to" is odd. Why the redundancy? The Ralbag provides a beautiful explanation:

"That which I showed grace is that which I will show grace in the future. And that which I showed compassion to, I will show compassion to in the future. And there is no change in Me to show grace now and to show compassion now to that which was not my way in the past to show compassion and grace towards. And this is the truth without a doubt, because God the Almighty will not attach personal providence to this individual referenced from it being this individual. Rather [God Will] attach his providence to any person that will be on the level for the relationship to be there. It is not fitting to ask from God that He should Attach His personal providence for he is not befitting of it."

In other words, what God is telling Moshe is that God's mechanisms for interacting with the world do not change. They do not change based on the person asking nor on the time that they are asking. It is not proper to ask God to change the mechanisms by which He operates. If God's way is not to show forgiveness before then he will not show forgiveness now. 

This is completely different from our normal experience of forgiveness. When we ask for forgiveness from others we are specifically working to: A) Change the person's feelings about us B) Change the way the person interacts with us. If neither of these things are changing, than what is changing? 

The answer is us. A change in God's relationship with us comes through an internal change within ourselves. The Rambam illustrates this idea beautifully:

Many of the attributes express different acts of God, but that difference does not necessitate any difference as regards Him from whom the acts proceed. This fact - namely, that from one agency different effects may result, although that agency has not free will, and much more so if it has free will - I will illustrate by an instance taken from our own sphere. Fire melts certain things and makes others hard, it boils and burns, it bleaches and blackens. If we described the fire as bleaching, blackening, burning, boiling, hardening and melting, we should be correct, and yet he who does not know the nature of fire, would think that it included six different elements, one by which it blackens, another by which it bleaches, a third by which it boils, a fourth by which it consumes, a fifth by which it melts, a sixth by which it hardens things-actions which are opposed to one another, and of which each has its peculiar property. He, however, who knows the nature of fire, will know that by virtue of one quality in action, namely, by heat, it produces all these effects. If this is the case with that which is done by nature, how much more is it the case with regard to beings that act by free will, and still more with regard to God, who is above all description.

If the fire were like our friend, sometimes friendly and sometimes angry, then he would be like the fire that sometimes bleaches and sometimes blackens. But the fire is unchanging: all it is doing is producing heat. And the blackening, bleaching, boiling and burning comes about not through a change in the fire or a change in what the fire emits- heat, but a change in the substance that is brought near the fire. 

Similarly, the different attributes reflected in God's providence towards us is not a difference in God's interactions with the world but is a difference in us. If we are like metal we will be melted. If we are like water we will be boiled. When we seek forgiveness from God we are not enacting a change in Him nor are we enacting a change in God's Providence. We can only experience a change in God's Providence by enacting an internal change within ourselves that will make us fit (and would have made us fit all along) to be the recipient's of God's providence and forgiveness. 

What Kind of Internal Change Does Forgiveness Require? 

Establishing a new providential relationship with God (forgiveness) comes through an internal change in the person, not in God and not in the ways in which God interacts with the universe. But what kind of change are we enacting? What exactly are we doing when we "change ourselves"? 

The Rambam, in his commentary on the following pesukim from Yermeyahu explains: 

 Guide for the Perplexed 3:54  

“Thus said Hashem: Let not the wise man glorify himself with his wisdom, and let not the strong man glorify himself with his strength, let not the rich man glorify himself with his wealth. For only with this may one glorify himself - contemplating and knowing Me, for I am Hashem Who does chesed, mishpat, and tzedakah on earth, for in these is My desire - the word of Hashem”

Rambam: The object of the above passage is therefore to declare, that the perfection, in which man can truly glory, is attained by him when he has acquired-as far as this is possible for man-the knowledge of God, the knowledge of His Providence, and of the manner in which it influences His creatures in their production and continued existence. Having acquired this knowledge he will then be determined always to seek loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness, and thus to imitate the ways of God.

The change that is required for the shift is knowledge. When we gain knowledge of God and knowledge of His Providence, and not just an abstract intellectual knowledge, but knowledge that is real to us, that makes us determined to seek loving-kindness, judgement and righteousness in order to imitate the ways of God, then our experience of God's Providence (i.e. seeking of forgiveness) changes. 

Reciting the 13 Attributes of Mercy is that first step. It is a study and an internalization of the knowledge of God and of the knowledge of how God interacts with our universe. Each of the 13 Middot offer us a new element in our understanding of God. It is only through that understanding, that internal change, that we begin to see changes in God's Providence towards us. But that change comes within.