[EDIT: This thread is a fork from the Divorced, Abandoned, Put Away, or Kicked to the Curb thread. We're looking here at the relationship between the things we hear directly from God and those things that are revealed in the scriptures, focused particularly on how it came to pass that Abraham was about to slay his son Isaac when interrupted by God and offered a substitute sacrifice.]
So the conundrum is to figure out if God will hold you responsible for not violating His Word when He tells you to? Do you obey what He's written to the world or what He's whispered in your heart? If the two commands conflict then one must be obeyed and thence one is disobeyed.
That is a hard position to be in. You want to be obedient but God has called you to disobey Him. You have to disobey to obey or obey and thus disobey.
Either way you're violating His Word, the written or the received. That is a thorny issue that I can't resolve.
Hashem does not violate His commands.
The issue at hand can be clarified if we examine the Hebrew behind these words.
The command to not murder is "Lo Tirtsach"
לא תרצח
It is important to realize that *murder* is not the same thing is taking a life.
We have different words for different ways of ending life in Hebrew:
הרג רצח שחט כלה המית לקח-נפש תמותת שפך-דם temotet lakach-nefesh Himiyt, kileh, shafakh-dam, shachat, ratsach, harag .... and I'm sure others if I think about it more.
A soldier, for example, is exempt when he takes a life in war (yes there are circumstances where he's not permitted as well...)
this classification of *killing* "tamot" למות does not rise to the level of רצח, murder as can be seen by the righteous action of Pinchas when he shoved his spear through the copulating couple and was deemed zealous for G-d for his action ... i.e. it was a *righteous killing* of a man and a woman.
The extermination orders
חרם HeReM to wipe out entire cities were not
רצח, murder because they were warfare commands.
Similarly, commanding Avraham to offer up Yitschak is not *ratsach*. If a general can order you to kill someone and it's not a sin, how much more the Koneh Hashamayim vaarets (Maker of Heaven and Earth)...
*******************main issue done, secondary issue follows concerning belief G-d is countermanding His own commands*****************************
... now regarding the "but what if the G-d of Jacob tells me to do something forbidden in scripture...?"
I don't believe He does that. Forbidden things are detestable to Him and He's smart enough to not need those mechanisms to reach His ends. It also opens up a can of worms for how to parse it by any spectators etc... this opens up another issue chillul Hashem (profaning G-d's reputation)
He's got the resources to make things happen "The Earth and the fullness of it all is mine...the cattle on a thousand hills are mine" - Psalms
We
can find an example of such a scenario in New Testament writings.
Keyfah (Peter) sees a vision of forbidden animals for food and is commanded by a voice from heaven to slaughter and eat (book of Acts).
Keyfah knows it's impossible for G-d to command him to do something in violation to scripture so he rightly REFUSES the voice.
3x this happens, Keyfah never eats which is a good thing because the interpretation comes later "you silly goose, Gentiles are the animals I was showing you, let them in now-[of course I would never tell you to violate my commands!]".
Thankfully He is a G-d of order, not chaos and doesn't operate out of confusion to order His servants to violate His own commands.
So if Peter through his righteous example refuses to violate even a minor portion of scripture (having seen a VISION AND heard a voice), that can serve as a good example of behavior that if we think it's G-d telling us to break that commandment ... it just might be
somebody else talking to us...
I'm grateful our G-d is consistent and unchanging, ברוך שם כבוד מלכותו לעולם ואד
