- פרשת משפטים is the other side of קבלת התורה – it is פרשה of the ברית element of תורה which is why משה רבינו writes here ספר הברית and even makes the ברית, הנה דם הברית, ויקח ספר הברית. It is only here in the context of this ברית that we find נעשה ונשמע. This aspect of ברית becomes similar to the main ideas of משפטים that we find in the first פסוק! a. מה הראשונים מסיני אף אלו – ואלה כל מקום שאמר אלה פסל את הראשונים… which means that there is something unique about משפטים – כל התורה כלה is from הר סיני! It must be that משפטים itself is part of ברית בהר סיני! Which means that even if you hold that משפטים occurred before מתן תורה nontheless the תורה is מעידה that there is something unique about these משפטים that relate to כריתת הברית – which is something evident in the הפטרה as well, where we talk about כריתת ברית with משפטים; b. and the second דיוק of אשר תשים – כשלחן ערוך, i.e. explain things to them to the point they understand it and all the things that went into it, you must set it like a table with food. This means that the setting and being ready to eat means that the setting goes beyond the consumption. Now that means the ability to begin having תורה (ingestion) requires the understanding of הלכה and פירושים – it is only then that you can start. The irony that the שלחן ערוך was written without טעמים ופירושים and therefore is not תשים לפניהם. The implications of what one who learns in the fashion of the שלחן ערוך even if he is that he has never started learning! The elements of ברית and the ingestion and part of how you view reality and understand the world, it just makes you sit down at the table but until you have eaten you have not done a thing; and c. לפניהם ולא לפני עכו"ם.
These three elements fundamentally interrelated: what makes תורה something that is not the same as what the אומות העולם have is specifically the unique משפטים; and that is אשר תשים. This relates to נעשה ונשמע— up until that point we have no עשייה only שמיעה. In order to have נשמע you must have understanding of what it is all about. It therefore it makes sense that the פרשה that is מייחד ישראל בברית חדשה, that has to be from them and not from עכו"ם. That is וי"ו even though סיני is עשרת הדברים this is nonetheless issues that allow for ברית
If that is the case the last thing that should be is משפטים we could indeed imagine case – the things that should have been written – it means that we are programmed to respond to these things because they “make sense to us” vs חוקים (although if you hold that עריות is חק but nonetheless if there is taboo – it makes much more intelligence to marry your own relatives – taboo doesn’t make sense but– if that is the case then what is מייחד us from the אומות has got to be חק not משפט! More disturbing, תורה seems to use the emotive sense of how you feel about things as the justification of משפט – ואתם ידעתם את נפש הגר is that what makes it משפט that I feel it? That level of משפט is very strange. The extent in which these משפטים express ברית. The sense you would expect to find in משפטים and we read here of אם לא בריתי יומם ולילה חוקות שמים וארץ לא שמתי.

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