Revealing God's Choice

This you may do only on the place that God your Lord will choose from among all your tribes, as a place established in His name. It is there that you shall go to seek His presence.                                                                          Deuteronomy 12:5

            This verse is the first of seven times that we read the phrase “the place that God your Lord will choose” in our parasha. One gets the impression that the Torah, as it were, exerts itself to avoid mentioning the name of “the the place that God your Lord will choose:” Jerusalem.

            Rabbi Moshe Zuriel comments that within the wording of the verse we can find two explanations for the avoidance of naming Jerusalem.

            1] The final words of the verse: “It is there that you shall go to seek His presence” are understood by our Sages as an obligation to seek the site through a prophet:

You might think that you should wait until the prophet informs you, therefore the verse states: “You shall go seek,” teaching that you must seek and find the site and then the prophet will inform you.                                                 Sifrei 62:5

God’s will is that we make the effort in order to reach sanctity, rather than His presenting it to us on a golden platter. Panim Yafot (Rabbi Pinḥas haLevi Ish-Horowitz [1731 – 1805]) phrases the point thus:

The point is that Israel should first arouse itself to seek and to pray that God bring His presence closer, and dwell within them in the Temple, for the arousal by the recipient leads to a greater appreciation.

            2] Rabbi Zuriel himself explains that the phrase “as a place established in His name” is an appellation for Jerusalem, which defines the essence of the Holy City, whose lofty status derives from the fact that God Himself chose her, as the verse states: “For God has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His habitation.” [Psalms 132:13] Thus, while not using the name “Jerusalem,” the verse employs one of the Holy City’s other sixty-nine names.

Rabbi Zuriel suggests our verse’s use of the future tense “that God your Lord will choose,” must be understood in the sense of “God will reveal His choice,” since our Sages taught that God’s choice of Jerusalem, as it were as His dwelling place on earth, preceded the creation of the world.