Why Some Divine Judgments Can Be Reversed and Others Cannot: The Limits of Prayer in Parshas Vaetchanan

In this week's Torah portion, Vaetchanan, Rav Kalatsky opens with a distinction drawn by the 19th-century commentator known as the Malbim between two forms of divine anger described in the Torah. One is like an arrow still in flight, which can still be called back before it lands. The other, once released, cannot be recalled.

Moses's plea to enter the Land of Israel falls into the second category. It was a final decree, issued for the sake of the entire nation, that no amount of prayer could undo. The medieval commentator Rashi explains why Moses was told to stop pleading: his own greatness would have made continued prayer look like a public embarrassment to God rather than an honor. The same principle, the Rav shows, explains why Pharaoh's heart was hardened before the Exodus, and why later generations abandoned religious practices that had only ever been performed for appearances.

But nothing sincere is ever wasted. The Talmud states that Moses was credited with every good deed he would have performed had he entered the land. As the influential 20th-century rabbi known as the Chofetz Chaim wrote, a generation that fails to rebuild what was lost is treated as though it destroyed it itself.