13 Principles of Torah-based Faith that were enumerated by Rambam (Maimonides):
9. I fully believe that this Torah is unchangeable, that there is no other, which comes from G-d.
Part 2
The Torah is unchangeable, because G-d is unchangeable. He Was, Is, and Will Be always the same.
G-d is not human to be capricious, Or mortal to have a change of heart… (Num. 23:19)
But You are the same, and Your years never end.(Tehillim 102:18)
For I am the L-RD—I have not changed. (Maleachi 3:6)
The Commandments and the Laws were there from the earliest times and will always be there.
I remember Your rules of old, O LORD, and find comfort in them.
Tehillim 119:52
Truth is the essence of Your word; Your just rules are eternal.
Tehillim 119:160
The L-RD exists forever; Your word stands firm in heaven.
Tehillim 119:89
Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov explained – about the verse of Tehillim 119:89 – that G-d’s utterance. “Let there be a firmament, etc..”stands forever in the Heavenly realms and is enclothed in them to give them existence – as it is written, “the word of our G-d shall stand forever (Jesaja 40:8), and His words live and stand firm forever (Jewish Siddur, in the morning service). For if the Divine uttereance would depart from the firmanet and return to its source, the Heavenly reals would instanstly cease to exist, as if they had never been created, and the creation would be as it was before the firmament existed.”
From these words of the Baal Shem Tov we see the importance of the eternal progression of His Word. Without His Word there is no world. Without His Torah there is no world, and therefore it is unchanging.
Because G-d is unchangeable, because His Word, His Torah is unchangeable, we humans should not detract from it or add to it.
G-d and His Word, His Torah are one. Therefore, no commandment of the Torah can ever be abrogated or changed.
If we add or subtract anything from His Torah, we are as it were adding something to G-d or subtracting something…that sounds like blasphemy to me.
The Torah warns us not to do so.
“You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor shall you subtract from it; you must keep the commandments of God your Lord, which I command you”
Deutr. 4:2 and
“Be careful to observe only that which I enjoin upon you: neither add to it nor take away from it.”
Deuteronomy 13:1
Let us be very alert to any teaching that teaches that the Torah has changed, as this cannot but be a false teaching, given the Eternal Value of the Torah and our unchangeable G-d.
By Angelique Sijbolts
Sources: Seven Gates of Righteous Knowledge p. 19
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