Deuteronomy/Davarim 11: "See, I place before you today a blessing or a curse:"

[Commentary from our excellent source book: Pentateuch and Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz; translation is EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.–Admin1.]
 

Deuteronomy/Davarim 11

1-9.  LET PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF GOD’S WONDROUS DEEDS ON BEHALF OF ISRAEL LEAD TO LOVE AND OBEDIENCE

 

1 So you are to love YHVH your God, 

you are to keep his charge, and his laws, his regulations and his commandments,

all the days (to come).

therefore thou shalt love. See ,20 where Israel is exhorted to ‘fear’ God.  The worship of God must be from a motive of love as well as reverential fear.

his charge.  The Divine precepts in general.

alway. lit. ‘all the days’.

2 You are to know today 

that it is not with your children

who did not know, who did not see 

the discipline of YHVH your God,

his greatness: his strong hand and his outstretched arm,

know ye. i.e., take note of, pay attention to.

for I speak not.  Better, that I speak not.

that have not seen. The contrast comes in v. 7, ‘but your eyes have seen.’

chastisement. Better, discipline; Heb. denotes moral education.  The sight of God’s wonders ‘ought to have exerted upon the Israelites a disciplinary influence, subduing waywardness and pride, and promoting humility and reverence’ (Driver). This word is the word in later Heb. for ‘moral exhortation’ or ‘ethics’.

3 his portents and his deeds that he did in the midst of Egypt

to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to all his land,
4 what he did to the army of Egypt, to its horses and its charioteers,

how he caused the waters of the Red Sea to flow over their faces when they pursued you,

so that YHVH caused them to perish, until this day;

unto this day. A mere rhetorical expression, ‘since once an enemy is put to death, he is destroyed forever’ (Nachmanides).  Some take this phrase here (as in III,14), in the sense of ‘finally, irrevocably’.

5 and what he did concerning you in the wilderness 

up to your arrival, up to this place;
6 and what he did concerning Datan and Aviram, the sons of Eliav, son of Re’uven,

how the earth opened up its mouth and swallowed them and their households and their tents 

and all existing-things that were under their feet

in the midst of all Israel;

Dathan and Abiram. See Num. XVI. Korah, who was the ringleader of the revolt, is not named here.  In the last chapter, X,8, Moses had spoken of the selection of the Levites, among whom must have been sons of Korah who had not perished (Num. XXVI,11).  It was consequently from consideration of their feelings that he omitted the name of their father.  On similar grounds he is not mentioned in Psalm CVI,17 since the Psalm was sung by the ‘Sons of Korah’.

7 indeed, it is your eyes that were seeing 

all the great deeds of YHVH that he did.
8 So you are to keep all the commandment that I command you today, 

in order that you may have the strength to enter and to take-possession of the land that you are crossing into to possess,

be strong. i.e. morally, as a consequence of faithfulness to the Torah; and physically, by reason of the Divine aid.

9 in order that you may prolong (your) days on the soil that YHVH swore to your fathers to give them and their seed, 

a land flowing with milk and honey.

10-17. CANAAN AND EGYPT CONTRASTED

Unlike Egypt, where it never rained and the fields must be watered by human drudgery, Canaan is dependent for its fertility upon the rain of heaven.  This would be witheld or granted according to Israel’s faithfulness.

10 For the land that you are entering to possess:

it is not like the land of Egypt, from which you went out,

where you sow your seed 

and water it with your foot like a garden of greens;

from whence ye came out. i.e. from the part of Egypt whence ye came, viz. Goshen (Sifri).

where thou didst sow thy seed.  Possibly a portion of the Israelites in Egypt were agriculturists; Egypt ‘was so fertile, that it seems even a tribe of shepherds could hardly have refrained from the opportunity which it offered for the richer feeding of their cattle’ (G.A. Smith).

with thy foot. i.e. with a wheel—shaduf—worked by the foot—a reference to the waterwheel and pump, that are worked by the feet.  Illustrations of the shaduf appear on the monuments.

as a garden of herbs. Fields in Egypt had to be watered in the same way as a vegetable garden, by arduous labour, artificially, and not by the natural source of rain, the direct boon of Heaven.

11 but the land that you are crossing into to possess (is) a land of hills and cleft-valleys;

from the rain of the heavens it drinks water;

a land of hills and valleys. And, therefore, with a larger rainfall than a flat country.

12 a land whose (welfare) YHVH your God seeks:

regularly (are) the eyes of YHVH your God upon it, 

from the beginning of the year until the afterpart of the year.

careth for.  The difference between the fixed climatic conditions of Egypt and those of Canaan can be compared to that between a son in receipt of a fixed annual allowance, and a son in his father’s house receiving his portion day by day.  Both should be equally filled with gratitude; but, as a fact, the latter would be held more guilty if he were not so (Harper).

13-21. REWARD AND PUNISHMENT IN JUDAISM.

13 Now it shall be 

if you hearken, yes, hearken to my commandments that I command you today,

to love YHVH your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your being:

to serve Him with all your heart. ‘What is heart-service?’ Service of the heart is Prayer’ (Sifri).  The institution of Prayer three times daily goes back to an early period; cf. Daniel VI,11,14.

14 I will give forth the rain of your land in its due-time, shooting-rain and later-rain;

you shall gather in your grain, your new-wine and your shining-oil;

I will give.  Moses speaks in the name of God.

in its season. The agricultural year in Palestine consists of two seasons, the one rainy and the other dry.  The whole of the winter is the rainy season.  The heavy rains towards the end of October are the yoreh, ‘the former rain.’  They open the agricultural year.  The rainfall increases throughout December, January and February; it begins to abate in March, and is practically over by the end of April.  The latter rain, malkosh, are the heavy showers of March and April.  Coming as they do when the grain is ripening, and being the last before the long summer drought, they are of great importance.

15 I will give forth herbage in your field, for your animals, 

you will eat and you will be satisfied.

grass. Better, herbage, for human beings as well as for cattle.

in thy fields. A sign of exceptional fertility (Sifri)..  It will not be necessary to drive the cattle some distance to open pasture-land to enable them to feed.  From the fact that Scripture here speaks first of pasture for the cattle and then continues, thou shalt eat, the Talmud deduced the regulation that a man must feed his animals before himself partaking of his own meal; see on XXV,4.

16 Take-you-care, 

lest your heart be seduced, 

so that you turn-aside and serve other gods and prostrate yourselves to them,

take heed. Similarly above, in VIII,11, after the words ‘eat and be satisfied’, the warning note, ‘take heed,’ is sounded.  Satiety easily induces forgetfulness.

your heart be deceived.  Into attributing the blessings you enjoy to ‘other gods’, the local deities worshipped by the heathen inhabitants of old.

17 and the anger of YHVH flare up against you 

so that he shuts up the heavens, and there is no rain,

and the earth does not give forth its yield, 

and you perish quickly from off the good land that YHVH is giving you!

and ye perish.  When the early rains or the latter rains fail, drought comes occasionally for two years in succession, and that means famine and pestilence.

18 You are to place these my words upon your heart and upon your being; 

you are to tie them as a sign on your hand, 

let them be as bands between your eyes

lay up these My words.  This and the two following v. are a repetition, with slight verbal differences, of VI,6-9.  The Sifri joins this on to the words which immediately precede, and interprets:  In the event of your perishing from the land–i.e. of being driven into captivity–even there in the land of exile, you must carry out the ordinances prescribed in VI,6.  As these verses are addressed to the nation as a whole, they are in the plural.

19 you are to teach them to your children, by speaking of them 

in your sitting in your house, in your walking on the way, 

in your lying-down, in your rising-up.

teach them to your children.  This was taken to mean help them to become learned in the Torah, and was therefore understood in the sense of, ‘teach them your sons.’

20 You are to write them upon the doorposts of your house, and on your gates,
21 in order that your days may be many, along with the days of your children

on the soil that YHVH swore to your fathers, to give them

(as long) as the days of the heavens over the earth.

as the days of the heavens. i.e. so long as the visible universe endures.

22 Indeed, if you will keep, yes, keep all this commandment that I command you to observe,

to love YHVH your God, to walk in his ways and to cling to him,
23 YHVH will dispossess all these nations from before you,

and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier (in number) than you.
24 Every place that the sole of your foot treads, yours shall it be:

from the wilderness and the Lebanon,

from the River, the river Euphrates, as far as the Hindward Sea

shall be your territory.

shall be yours. With the extent of Israel’s dominion as described here, Josh. I,4.

the wilderness. South of the Holy Land.

Lebanon. i.e. the boundary in the north.

Euphrates. Israel’s ideal territory is to extend to the Euphrates in the east.

the hinder sea.  The Mediterranean.  The opposite is the ‘front’ or ‘east’ sea (Ezek. XLVII,18) by which the Dead Sea is designated.

25 No man will be able to take-a-stand against you;

terror of you and awe of you, YHVH your God will place upon all the land upon which you tread, as he promised to you.

stand. ‘It is not force but truth that rules the world; and absolutely no limit can be set to the possibilities which open out to a free, morally robust, and faithful people who have become possessed of higher spiritual ideas than the peoples that surround them’ (Harper).

26-32. THE TWO WAYS

These seven verses form the peroration and summing up of the Second Discourse; and, at the same time, are an introduction to the Code itself, which begins with XII,1 and ends with XXVI.  It is an earnest appeal that a right choice be made between the Two Ways now before Israel.  The entire future of the nation depends upon the right choice.  This theme is further developed in XXVII-XXX.

26 See,

I place before you today a blessing or a curse:

I set before you. Both as individuals and as a nation they were endowed with free will, and the choice between the Two Ways rested with themselves.  All that Moses could do was clearly to define the alternatives, and point out whither each of them led; XXX,15.

27 the blessing, 

(provided) that you hearken to the commandments of YHVH your God that I command you today,
28 and the curse,

if you do not hearken to the commandments of YHVH your God, 

and turn-aside from the way that I command you today, 

walking after other gods whom you have not known.

which ye have not known. ‘new gods that came up of late, which your fathers dreaded not’; deities that have not shown and, being dead, could not show, the saving power they had experienced at the hand of God.

29 Now it shall be 

when YHVH your God brings you into the land that you are entering to possess,

you are to give the blessing on Mount Gerizim and the curse on Mount Eval

set the blessing.To impress the truth of the Two Ways more deeply upon Israel, Moses was to arrange a symbolic representation of the Blessing and Curse.

Gerizim . . . Ebal. The two most prominent hills on either side of what is the natural centre of Palestine.

30 -are they not in (the country) across the Jordan, along the path of the coming in of the sun,

in the land of the Canaanites, who are settled in the Plain, opposite the Gilgal/Stone-circle, near the Oaks of Moreh?

behind the way . . . sun. What is here described is the main road running from north to south, and passing through the Plain, east of Shechem.

over against Gilgal. Not the Gilgal of Josh. IV,19, in the vicinity of Jericho.  The word means ‘a circle’ (of stones), a cairn, and seems to have been used to designate several localities.  A Gilgal (Juleiji, the Arabic diminutive for Gilgal) has been discovered near Shechem.

the terebinths of Moreh.  See Gen. XII,6. The association of Moreh with the life of Abraham would have made it a well-known spot to the Israelites.