Does God accept bribes?

Parashat Ekev features one of the most majestic statements of God’s role as the God of din, strict justice: At Devarim 10:17, Moshe tells his brethren: “For the Lord, your God, is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes”.

This statement of God’s impartiality is paralleled by a Mishnah in which Rabbi Elazar HaKappar expands the catalogue of God’s judicial attributes: “He is the One who fashions, He is the Creator, He is the One who understands, He is the judge, He is the witness, He is the plaintiff—and He will judge. He is blessed since before Him there is no iniquity, no forgetfulness, no favouritism and no taking of bribes” (Avot 4:29).

The description of God as a deity who does not take bribes immediately attracts our attention. It is axiomatic that the world runs on three things—truth, justice and peace (Avot 1:18)—and that God is the ultimate source of true justice (Devarim 32:4). If it is unthinkable that God’s justice is founded on anything other than His appreciation of the truth, why should both the written and oral Torah take the trouble to tell us that He does not take bribes?

Rambam addresses this question in his Pirush Mishnayot.  Since it is quite unimaginable that anyone can buy God’s favour by giving Him money, this cannot be what the Mishnah teaches. Rather, Rambam opines, it advances the important practical consideration that a person cannot “buy” God’s goodwill through the performance of good deeds: even if a person performs a thousand good deeds and just one bad deed, God does not allow the performance of those good deeds to provide a mechanism for overlooking that one bad deed. Rather, He will make a point of both rewarding the thousand good deeds and holding the person who performs them accountable for even the one bad deed. Rambam cites two examples of God’s judicial impartiality: the punishment of the otherwise impeccable Moshe for angrily striking the rock instead of speaking to it and, to contrary effect, the rewarding of Eisav, despite his generally execrable conduct, on account of the exemplary way in which he honoured his parents.

One might imagine that there was nothing further to say on the subject, but this is not so. Sforno links this mishnah to that of Rabbi Elazar Ish Bartota (“Give Him from His own, for you and your possessions are His…”: Avot 3:8). Even by performing a mitzvah, ostensibly as a bribe, one is only rendering unto God that to which He is already entitled. Another example of fine-tuning of Rambam’s position comes from Rabbi Liepman Philip Prins. Concluding Rabbi Marcus Lehmann’s commentary on Avot, Rabbi Prins felt that Rambam’s commentary itself required elucidation: individual good deeds and bad deeds cannot cancel one another out because the footprints of their personal and communal impacts are not coextensive. God must therefore address each on its own terms. Maharal (Derech Chaim) employs a similar metaphor: quite simply, the mitzvah does not cover the sin.

Other commentators frame this Mishnah within an entirely different Torah context. Thus Rabbi Yaakov Chagis (Etz HaChaim) sees it as a counter to the text of the Birkat Kohanim (Bemidbar 6:26) which, taken at face value, suggests that God indulges in favouritism, as does the Talmudic proposition (Pesachim 8a) that a person whose son is ill might purchase the favour of God by giving a perutah to a poor man. These matters, explains the Rabbi, relate to God’s active involvement in this world—not to His judgment in the World to Come.

More surprising is the statement of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau (Yachel Yisrael) that “many commentators … disagree with Rambam, and state that the heavenly court can exchange sins for mitzvos, a position that is supported in many Rabbinic statements”. To support this proposition Rav Lau looks beyond the commentaries to considerably earlier sources: he cites a discussion at Sotah 21a to the effect that “a sin extinguishes a mitzvah”. With respect, neither this quote nor the passage in which it appears provide overt support the proposition that God takes bribes. Rav Lau does however point to a more persuasive source: a citation from Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim 670, where King David describes God as accepting bribes in the form of “repentance, good deeds, and prayer”. This midrash would however appear to be seeking to advocate the efficacy of repentance, good deeds and prayer rather than to be furnishing proof that God takes bribes.

Even if we do not speak in the emotive terminology of bribery and favouritism—two words that we should be reluctant to apply to God if we are uncomfortable at applying them to ourselves—the mere possibility of trading a good deed for a bad one raises issues that extend beyond the scope of this short piece. One is the status of the mitzvah haba’ah be’averah, an action that simultaneously encompasses the fulfilment of one command and disobedience to another.  There is also the status of the averah lishmo, where a transgressor pleads in mitigation his or her belief that the wrongful act has been committed, as it were, for God’s benefit. The relationship of God’s (non)acceptance of bribes to mitzvah haba’ah be’averah and to the averah lishmo are issues that are too large and complex to be developed here. If there is sufficient interest, I shall endeavour to tackle them in a separate post.

The Jewish position on bribing God invites comparison with early Christian practice relating to the grant of indulgences. This was a prominent feature of Catholicism until the Council of Trent began the process of bringing it under control in 1562. Although the purchase of indulgences by sinners was sometimes regarded as a means of paying for the privilege of committing a sin, it was technically no more than the purchase by the sinner of a reduction of the punishment incurred for the committing of a sin that had already been forgiven. Some indulgences involved the payment of cash, which may indeed have looked like a bribe, while others were granted in exchange for the sinner agreeing to make a pilgrimage, recite one or more prayers or perform such acts as the Church might specify. Initially granted at the request of martyrs awaiting execution and those who were unable to bear the full burden of penances imposed upon them, indulgences became an attractive source of income for the Church and were so frequently subject to abuse on both sides that they provided the centrepiece for Martin Luther’s blistering attack on the Church’s mismanagement in 1517.

To conclude, let us return to the verse from parashat Ekev which opens this piece and which clearly and unambiguously establishes that God is a just God, a fair and impartial judge who dispenses justice in a manner that lies way beyond mortal bribery. We can say that the mishnah of Rabbi Elazar HaKappar does not diminish this proposition. Together with the various commentaries on it, its teaching sensitises us to the need to recognise that God is not open to negotiation. Since we cannot trade off mitzvot for the sake of being allowed to escape punishment for the sins of our choice, it is for us serve Him in the manner that He requires; we should be content with the reward He sets aside for us in the next world in return for our own honest service.