God’s message to Joe Biden

ITEM: In his July 5th interview with ABC News, President Joe Biden said only God could convince him to drop out of the presidential race. Said he, “[I]f the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get outta the race’, I would get outta the race.” He added, though, that the “Lord Almighty’s not coming down.”

Actually, God already “came down” to address that issue. It is time for Biden to drop out.

Biden is a sincerely religious man. A Roman Catholic, he attends mass frequently and often talks about how important his faith is to his life and how it guides his conduct. Biden, for example, has often been praised for his ability to connect with people personally, particularly those grieving or going through difficult times. His empathy is almost legendary (“almost” only because “legendary” in its true sense implies something fictional, whereas Biden’s empathy is very real).

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His faith helped him through some of his most difficult times, as Biden often acknowledges. There were two such times in particular. First was the death of his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, and their infant daughter, Naomi Christina Biden, in a car accident in 1972. The second was the death of his son Beau from cancer in 2015.

Biden’s faith also influences his approach to politics. He is devoted to issues the Bible repeatedly emphasizes, such as social justice, caring for the marginalized, empowering the disenfranchised, protecting the public’s health, and protecting the environment.

One of his most difficult times — albeit not one on a par with the death of loved ones — was the 90-minute stretch he spent on nationwide television on June 27 debating former President Donald Trump. His supporters had hoped that Biden would blow away the ever-mercurial and often unpredictable Trump in that debate. Instead, many believe, what he blew away was his chance to be re-elected in November.

The 81-year-old Biden is the oldest president in U.S. history. His 78-year-old opponent has made that Issue No. 1 on the campaign trail. Starting in the 2020 election, Trump has harped on Biden’s “competence,” a euphemism he uses to avoid enraging elderly voters.

In that contest, then-President Trump referred to then-candidate Biden as “Sleepy Joe.” Said Trump: “He’s not going to be running the government. He’s just going to be sitting in a [nursing] home someplace.” In 2022, as the midterm elections loomed, he said, “Biden can’t put two sentences together. They wheel him out, he goes back to his basement; you know, they put him in the basement.”

Actually they put him in the Oval Office, which is where the voters put him in 2020, but truth is a rare commodity where Trump is concerned, as his debate performance proved yet again. However, Trump’s “Biden can’t put two sentences together” comment, while a gross overstatement, did seem to be borne out at times during the debate as the president stammered, stalled mid-sentence, and tried to finish what he had begun to say. It was exacerbated by revelations that he has done so often in private, at least during the last year.

Media coverage over the last year already lent credibility to Trump’s attacks long before the debate. According to a recently released Media Matters for America study, from January 15 through June 17, three of our most prominent national newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal — ran a combined total of 76 articles related to Biden’s age but only seven dealing with Trump’s age.

Beginning less than a day after the debate, Biden has acknowledged his poor performance and admitted that his age played a role in that—something he could not deny because it was there for all to see. However, he also insists that his age played no role in his ability to be president.

“I know I’m not a young man,” he said on June 28. “I don’t walk as easily as I used to. I don’t talk as smoothly as I used to. I don’t debate as well as I used to. But…I know how to do this job. I know how to get things done.”

That same day, the New York Times editorial board added fuel to the now raging age flame when it called for the Democratic Party to move Biden to the sidelines before it was too late. As the editorial board wrote: “The clearest path for Democrats to defeat a candidate defined by his lies [meaning Trump] is to deal truthfully with the American public: acknowledge that Mr. Biden can’t continue his race and create a process to select someone more capable to stand in his place to defeat Mr. Trump in November.”

The intense focus by Trump and the media on Biden’s age is why America was watching on June 27. Voters wanted to see for themselves whether Biden, in fact, was too old for what is described as the world’s most difficult job. Many in America came away believing that he was. Even before the debate was over, a bevy of Democratic politicians were questioning whether he should be their party’s nominee come November. That chorus has been rising ever since.

Voters also questioned his ability to serve. A post-debate YouGov poll with a 2 percent margin of error found that 72 percent of voters believe Biden lacks the cognitive ability needed to be president. Numerous polls since then have echoed YouGov’s findings.

This is where Biden’s religiosity comes in. The president said only God can convince him to drop out of the race. God already said as much, not directly to Biden, but in the Bible Biden holds so dear. The president should carefully study the text of Deuteronomy 3:23-28 and understand its message: A leader must know when it is time to step down and hand the leadership to another.

Moses, in that Deuteronomy text, is 120 years old. God has told him that his time is at an end and that Joshua will now be Israel’s leader. Moses is distraught, and he pleads with God.

He believed he had a good case. Leading Israel into Canaan and guiding them in conquering that land was the mission God gave him at the Burning Bush, and he should be allowed to complete that mission. After all, he had done all that God had asked of him. He even put up with the constantly rebelling Israelites for 40 years. He endured the calumnies they thrust at him time and again. Not allowing him to enter the land was a great injustice. As Moses, in the Torah tradition attributes to him, quoted Abraham in Genesis 18:5, “Shall not the judge of the whole Earth act justly?”

Moses was very special in God’s eyes, as God made clear to Aaron and Miriam in Numbers 12:6-8 when they dared to challenge Moses’ leadership.

“Hear these My words,” God said to them. “When prophets of God arise among you, I make Myself known to them in a vision, I speak with them in a dream. Not so with My servant Moses; he is trusted throughout My household. With him I speak mouth to mouth, plainly and not in riddles, and he beholds God’s likeness. How then did you not shrink from speaking against My servant Moses!”

Despite the special place Moses occupied with God, his plea angers God. Moses’ “eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated,” as Deuteronomy 34:7 tells us, but at 120 years old, leading a nation into battle was for someone younger to undertake, and Moses must realize that. He also must realize that the Israelites have only one objective at this point — conquering Canaan — and Joshua, not he, is best suited to lead them in that task.

“Enough!” God says. “Never speak to Me of this matter again…! You shall not go across the River Jordan. Give Joshua his instructions, and instill in him strength and courage, for he shall go across at the head of this people, and he shall allot to them the land…”

A leader must know when it is time to step down and hand the leadership to another. That is the message God gave Moses — and it is a message God gave to us, as well.

And that is a message President Biden, guided by religion as he always has been and given his insistence that only God could cause him to step down, needs to seriously consider well before the start of the 2024 Democratic National Convention on August 19.

Biden needs to consider another biblical text, as well, Ecclesiastes 3, which tell us: “There is a time set for everything…: A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted…; a time for seeking and a time for losing; a time for keeping and a time for discarding.”

Biden told ABC News, “I understand best what has to be done to take this nation to a completely new level.” If Biden truly does understand that best, he must recognize that there is a time for coming and a time for going — and this is his time for going.

Shammai Engelmayer is a rabbi-emeritus of Congregation Beth Israel of the Palisades and an adult education teacher in Bergen County. He is the author of eight books and the winner of 10 awards for his commentaries. His website is www.shammai.org.