God Welcomes the Bold Arguments of the Righteous

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said: "For has it been told to God, 'I have borne [punishment], I will not offend'?" (Job 34:31)—this is what is written, "and I will forgive the whole place for their sake." "I will not destroy" (lo echbol): I do not take them as a pledge, as you say, "If you take a pledge" (Exodus 22:25); yet they take Me to task with words and say, "He does not judge fairly." "Apart from what I see" (Job 34:32): [God says,] "Set Me aside; go examine the judgment, and if I have erred—'You teach me, and if I have done iniquity'—with the earlier ones 'I will not do it again,' with the later ones 'I will not be silent over their fabrications.'" To you I am silent, and to those who issue from you: to Abraham, who said, "Far be it from You"; to Moses, who says, "Why, O LORD, does Your anger burn?" (Exodus 32:11); to Joshua, who says, "Why did You bring this people across?" (Joshua 7:7); to David, who says, "Why, O LORD, do You stand far off?" (Psalms 10:1). "And the matter of His mighty deeds and the grace of His arrangement" (Job 41:4): grace He placed in the arrangement of his lips at the hour when he sought mercy upon the Sodomites.