Parashat for Shabbat August 15, 2020: Re'eh - “See"

"Rejoice in God's Commandments"

Moshe begins this sidra by putting the commandments of Yehovah into perspective – the choice of whether or not to accept and obey the commandments of the Torah is nothing less than the choice between blessing and curse. Man has the free choice either to accept or to reject God's commandments – there is no gray area in the Kingdom of God. “See, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse. A blessing, if you hearken the commandments of Yehovah your God, which I command you this day. And a curse, if you will not hearken the commandments of Yehovah your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you this day, to go after other gods, which you have not known” Devarim 11:26.

The Parashah starts with the word "see" (re'eh), implying that the blessing and the curse are not simply abstract promises but something tangible that people could actually see in their own lives. Most people are satisfied with mediocrity, but God urges His people to strive for great heights and should feel that the alternative is nothing less than a curse. It will come a time – it seems like we are already living in that time – when the society will move so far from God that only very few will not hunger for bread nor thirst for water – symbols of the materialistic world – but hunger to hear the word of God. The blessing will come to us on the condition that we hearken the commandments of God. “Hearken,” in this context, is a metaphor for blessing, because the only way a person can attain God’s blessing is if he has the ability to "hear" spiritually and assimilate what the Torah wants of him. Thus, the "blessing" will consist of mere the ability to pick out and hear the word of God from the flurry of competing messages with which people are inundated from the world – the Internet, TV, cell-phone, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter...

When God made the covenant with Avraham, He made it unconditional to never forsake his descendants. In the midst of the unconditional promise which God will never take back, however, for a blessed life, God put conditional portions. “The continuance of the blessings depends upon us keeping His commandments." We must remember that God's commands are His propositional statements about His character. They are not arbitrary. God has a character, and His character is the law of the universe. Torah is grace in that it reveals what the fulfilling of His character is. God was telling His people that if they lived in the light of His character - His commandments - then would come the blessing. If they failed to do this, then the blessing would stop and that it will seem like a curse, even though God will never forget the covenant made with Avraham.

We see in God’s commandments a continuity of the authority of the written Scriptures, and an emphasis on the fact that bare knowledge is not enough. It was not that the Torah gave these people knowledge, and that was the end of it. This knowledge demanded action. Similarly, once we have become believers, we have entered, by faith, by the grace of God, into the spiritual portion of the Avrahamic covenant; and the unconditional promise applies to us – we will never be lost again. While this is true, the Brit Chadashah makes it clear that for the believer there is also a conditional aspect. The moral aspect of the commandments is the expression of God's character, and we are not to set it aside when we become believers. Our obedience to it will make a difference in what happens to us both in this present life and in the believers' judgment in the future.

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