"A Wise and Understanding People"

וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם וַעֲשִֹיתֶם כִּי הִוא חָכְמַתְכֶם וּבִינַתְכֶם לְעֵינֵי הָעַמִּים אֲשֶׁר יִשְׁמְעוּן אֵת כָּל-הַחֻקִּים הָאֵלֶּה וְאָמְרוּ רַק עַם-חָכָם וְנָבוֹן הַגּוֹי הַגָּדוֹל הַזֶּה: כִּי מִי-גוֹי גָּדוֹל אֲשֶׁר-לוֹ אֱ-לֹהִים קְרֹבִים אֵלָיו כַּה' אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ בְּכָל-קָרְאֵנוּ אֵלָיו: וּמִי גּוֹי גָּדוֹל אֲשֶׁר-לוֹ חֻקִּים וּמִשְׁפָּטִים צַדִּיקִם כְּכֹל הַתּוֹרָה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם

Keep therefore and do them; for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the nations, which shall hear all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. For what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day?

In its simplest reading, this passage (Deuteronomy 4:6-8) states that when Israel's neighbors encounter the mitzvot of the Torah, they will react with admiration. It thus presumes that the commandments have a universal, even self-evident, quality. As if to say: When it comes to the Torah, what’s not to like?  

But, in reality, the idea that the non-Jewish world can easily identify with our laws is not at all a given. In fact, we have been taught from an early age that the moral barriers between Israel and the nations are too high to overcome. When God offered the Torah to each of Israel’s neighbors, as we know from the oft-repeated midrash, they rejected it as fundamentally incompatible with their core beliefs and practices.  

This latter view may have led some of the Sages to minimize the scope of the verses above. For example, Rabbi Shmuel (Shabbat 75a) attributes the “wisdom and understanding” of this passage to one particular aspect of the law, i.e., astronomical and calendrical calculations. Such knowledge is undeniably universal:

אמר רבי שמואל בר נחמני אמר רבי יוחנן: מנין שמצוה על האדם לחשב תקופות ומזלות? ־ שנאמר (דברים ד) ושמרתם ועשיתם כי היא חכמתכם ובינתכם לעיני העמים. איזו חכמה ובינה שהיא לעיני העמים? ־ הוי אומר זה חישוב תקופות ומזלות

Rabbi Shmuel bar Naḥmani said that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: From where is it derived that there is a mitzva to calculate the seasons and the movement of constellations? As it was stated: “And you shall guard and perform, for it is your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations” (Deuteronomy 4:6). What wisdom and understanding is there that is "in the eyes of the nations"? You must say: This is the calculation of seasons and the movement of constellations.

Mastery of astronomy -- an empirical, objective science required for establishing the halahkic calendar -- will surely impress the nations. Particularistic laws, such as Shabbat and kashrut, could never achieve the same result.

Maimonides, on the other hand, took a maximalist approach to these verses. He cites them in the Guide of the Perplexed (III:31) within an impassioned argument for the existence of intelligible reasons for all the mitzvot, including the hukkim (as traditionally understood, seemingly unintelligible statutes). After all, he says, the hukkim are singled out in this passage by name:

. . . The sole object of the Law is to benefit us. Thus we explained the Scriptural passage, "for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day" (Deut. 6:24). Again, "which shall hear all those statutes (hukkim), and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people" (ibid. 4:6). He thus says that even every one of these "statutes" convinces all nations of the wisdom and understanding it includes.  But if no reason could be found for these statutes, if they produced no advantage and removed no evil, why then should he who believes in them and follows them be wise, reasonable, and so excellent as to raise the admiration of all nations?

This view should be expected from Maimonides, the foremost medieval rationalist, with his unshakeable confidence in the rational basis of every mitzvah, without exception. Because the reasons for the mitzvot are based on universally acknowledged goods, it is only natural that they display universal “wisdom and understanding.” 

It is interesting to contrast this interpretation with a much later one, by the brilliant nineteenth-century Lithuanian rabbi known as "Netziv" (R. Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, d. 1893, Ha'amek Davar, Deut. 4:6). Like the Talmudic sage R. Shmuel, he too narrows the subject of these verses, but in a very different direction. For Netziv, they refer to the "Oral Law," i.e., the Talmud. The Gentiles will one day acknowledge the Oral, rather than the Written Law, as the defining achievement of the Jewish people, he says, since Talmudic logic and methodology -- this, Netziv says, is how we should interpret the word hukkim -- are clearly the product of Israel’s “wisdom and understanding.” The ever-expanding universe of Talmudic law, even more than the written Torah, will bring honor to the Jewish people:

As you continuously add to the abundance of the [Oral] Law, over and above the Written Law, the nations of the world will be amazed [to discover] how expansive and exalted it is, due to the wisdom and understanding of Israel.

Note the two ideas implicit in this argument, alluding to hot-button issues of Netziv's day (and, indeed, our own):

1. Torah study vs. secular studies: The Talmud, rather than the sciences, represents the crowning intellectual and moral achievement of the Jewish people. Recognition by and respect of the Gentiles will be achieved only by looking inwards -- by mastering Jewish law rather than secular studies.*

2. Priority of Talmud over Tanakh: Christians have also accepted (at least part of) the Written Law and the prophecies of the Hebrew Bible. But the Oral Law is superior to the Written Law, it defines Judaism, and is unavailable to the nations.

Netziv's highly creative and apparently original interpretation of Deut. 4:6 may have been influenced by an earlier towering figure of the nineteenth century, R. Moses Sofer ("Hatam Sofer," d. 1839). R. Sofer lists a number of sciences (astronomy, geography, botany, anatomy, music, theology) whose knowledge is a prerequisite for observing many biblical mitzvot. And yet, of course, there is no mention of these at all in the Torah itself. What will impress the nations, R. Sofer suggests, is not that the Jewish people have mastered the sciences from secular books,** but that they were able to derive scientific wisdom from the Bible by means of their "understating," i.e., through esoteric hints within the words of the Torah, an epistemologically all-encompassing text (Derashot, ed. Y. N. Stern, p. 202).

*On Netziv's approach to secular studies, see Hannah Katz, Mishnat Ha-Netziv (Jerusalem, 1990), pp. 109ff.

**In practice, Sofer's attitude towards secular studies was much more nuanced. See Eliezer Katz, Ha-Hatam Sofer (Jerusalem, 1960), pp. 101ff.