Observation: The Torah stipulates capital punishment for a child displaying gluttony and disobedience to parents. However, Chazal, in their interpretation, adopted an exceptionally hyper-literal reading of the text – a method they applied in few other situations – in order to render the directive nearly impossible to execute.
Question: What prompted them to do this?
Answer: According to their own sense of morality it was unacceptable to kill children for trivial crimes. So they re-read the verse.
However, I do not think they viewed their reinterpretation of the Torah as a case of their moral judgment superseding God's divine wisdom.
I assume they held a fundamental belief in God's inherent goodness. When they encountered passages in the Torah that appeared morally questionable, they didn't question God's morality; rather, they assumed they must be misunderstanding the text.
In their view, their reinterpretations and glosses on the Torah weren't an act of correcting God, but rather an attempt to uncover what they believed was the true, moral essence of the text.
They saw their role as interpreters, striving to align the Torah with their own moral standards.
So, it wasn't a matter of saying, "This law is immoral, let's change it," but rather, "At first glance, this law may seem immoral, but how could the Torah be immoral? Let's uncover its deeper, morally sound meaning through interpretation."
Halivai Rabbis of today did this, too.
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