The Torah writes not in a vacuum but in response to human frailty. A good example of this comes in the Torah’s discussion of the sabbatical years. The Torah doesn’t just present the law and expect the Jewish people to trust God, that even if they leave the land fallow for a year, it will turn out alright.
Trust in God means that we know that He runs the show and that we have to do what he wants regardless. But it also means that God is looking out for us and he will supply us with our needs whether or not we plant, reap and harvest our crops. Of course, as Netziv points out, observing the sabbatical year is equal to relying upon miracles, which normally is something God does not expect from us and according to rabbinic tradition is even considered a bad thing to do. But this is not the only situation where God expects this from us. Faith means responding to demands that we wouldn’t think of taking on were we left to our own devices.
Even though the religious individual is willing to place his trust in God, there are things that are so contrary to our experience that we have a hard time putting them into practice. I am reminded of Woody Allen’s quip of God coming to someone holding on for his life to a dangling branch at the edge of a cliff. God tells the man that He is there to save him but that the man just has to let go of the branch. The man looks at the branch, looks at God and looks back at the branch and then looks past God and yells out, “Is there anybody else up there?”
Regarding the sabbatical year, God anticipates this type of attitude and first promises the Jews bounty. But He doesn’t stop there, but rather places the following words into the mouths of the Jewish people; “And you will say, ‘what will we eat in the seventh year, behold we will not sow and we will not harvest our produce’” (Vayikra 25:20). To which God gives the actual details of what ideally need not be spelled out, “And I have commanded my blessing to you in the sixth year… (Ibid, 26).
The rabbis say that the word “ki” which can also mean ‘if’ (i.e. if you say) here means when, that it will definitely happen, meaning that the Jews will definitely need God’s reassurance and will not put their best foot forward. But rather than castigate them for behaving like … people, God understands who He is dealing with. After all, he created them. In the role of the patient father, God knows what he needs to do to get his children to behave in the best way, even if it is not the ideal of what He would like to see.
If God knows not to expect the ideal level of trust and loyalty from his children, it certainly should make us realize that we must not overestimate the capabilities of others. But that doesn’t mean belittling them or get upset at them. Rather, it means doing what we can to help them do what can be expected of them, to do good.