Parashat Ekev – G-d’s Threats

In this week’s portion, Moses continues his farewell address to the Jewish people. This portion contains the second verse of the Shema, where G-d tells of all the good that will come if they follow G-d’s commandments, and the bad that will happen if they don’t

A friend was talking to me about the Shema. He told me that he has a lot of trouble with the second verse, and often he can’t bring himself to say it. His problem was that he didn’t like being threatened. In the verse G-d tells that if we follow his commandments, then we’ll have rain in the proper time, we’ll have cattle, crops, and everything will be good. But if we don’t, then we’ll get no rain, no crops, and we’ll be banished from the land. My friends feeling was that we should be serving G-d out of love, not fear. He said he doesn’t respond well to threats.

At first I didn’t know how to respond, I tried various things, showed him various commentaries on the passage, but nothing helped. He said “I don’t think that anyone can change my mid on this”. That’s when I knew what the problem was. When you hears a phrase like that, you know the person is stuck in a mindset, and to get them to see the other side will require them to look at the issue from a totally different angle. After thinking about it for a few days, here is my response to them.

Don’t look at this passage as a threat, think of it as a warning. The difference is subtle, but important. Consider this situation. A blind man is walking near the edge of a cliff. As he approaches the edge, you calls out and tells him to stop. You tells the blind man that if he walks towards your voice, you’ll grab his hand and take him to safety, but if he steps away from your voice, he’ll fall off the cliff and plummet to his death.

Are you threatening him, or warning him?

This is what’s going on in the verse. Israel is the blind man, and your voice was the voice of G-d in the second verse of the Shema. We are walking around the world oblivious to what is good and bad for our souls. G-d is telling us the facts of the world. Just as neglecting our body will cause us pain, so will neglecting our soul. G-d gives us his commandments, which are instructions from what is good for the soul. If we follow them, we’ll obtain pleasure, if we neglect them, we’ll experience the pain. It’s not a threat it’s a warning. Just as the blind man can’t sense the danger he was in if we would have walked away from you, we can not sense the spiritual danger we’re in if we walk away from G-d.

With this new outlook, hopefully my friend will be able to recite the entire Shema twice daily and continue to serve G-d out of love, not fear.

Shabbat Shalom.