G-D vs the Rabbis: Who’s right? Who wins?

Sefer Devarim, perorated by Moses by Divine inspiration and comprising the final book of the Torah by Divine edict, contains a full two hundred (out of the 613) mitsvot which are either entirely new or are outgrowths of previous mitsvot.  One of the most supremely challenging of them is the mitsva listed by the 13th-century author of Sefer haChinukh as no. 496.

 If you cannot reach a decision in a criminal case, a civil case, a ritual case or in any case of dispute within your borders, arise and go up to the place G-D will select.  Approach the Kohanim [for ritual matters] or the judges [for criminal and civil matters] who will exist at that time. Inquire of them and they will declare to you a legal decision.  Do as they instruct you … observe to carry out what they teach you.  Keep the Torah as they interpret it for you and follow the laws they legislate for you, not straying … to the right or left! (Deut 17:8-11)

Lest Am Yisrael imagine they are only to follow G-D’s law, comes this mitsva to affirm unmistakeably that the Rabbis’ authoritative interpretations are also part of Torah, with full Divine approval.

As if this weren’t enough, the Midrash Sifrei, famously redacted by Rashi, adds the pithy comment on the seemingly redundant words “right or left”:

 [You must follow them] even if they tell you right is left and left is right!   How much more so when they tell you right is right and left is left.

 Had the Sifrei not added the “how much more so” clause, it would have been perplexing enough.  But this second observation adds to the perplexity. To obey the rabbinic judges when they tell you that right is left (or, as we would say in English, “black is white”) is not only counter-intuitive but appears to place the Rabbis on a pedestal as being infallibly correct – right even........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)