Torah Posting: עקב
We’ve made it to my bar mitzvah parashah. Have you heard the one where I refused to have a bar mitzvah on anyone else’s terms, became a secret Wiccan, and then was unable to convincingly deliver the big “I don’t believe in God” speech I had planned to stun my family? Yeah, that one. And when you read this parashah, I bet you’re going to understand why it motivated me to declare my rejection of the Jewish God in front of the scenic vista of the Old City of Yerushalayim. And here in my commentary, I’m going to have to try to demonstrate to you why my adolescent resistance was unable to withstand it.
We are moving into the plaintive middle of Mosheh’s final address to the children of Yisra’el before they leave him behind to enter the promised land. They haven’t done a very convincing job of listening to him over the past 40 years, and this is his last chance, so it’s time to get simplistic in the argumentation. This is hardly the Torah’s first time resorting to this sort of framing, but things are about to get very “If you are good, God will be nice to you. If you are bad, God will punish you beyond your wildest imaginations of how bad things could be,” up in here.
The parashah begins with the encouragement part. It’s all set up as a big conditional, though — if you obey etc. etc. etc., then yadda yadda yadda. I am reminded, though, of ויצא, where Ya’akov Avinu imposes the very same condition on God for his obedience. So, fair enough. The relationship between God and Those Who Struggle With God is a sort of deal. An arrangement.
So, if the people follow God’s laws carefully, God will maintain the covenant God made with their ancestors. God will multiply the issue from their wombs, their livestock, and their lands. Ethnocentric flattery and unrealistic biological promises are deployed. Conquest, as usual, is promised. Just as God did to the Egyptians for these people, so shall God do to the peoples inhabiting the land God has promised them. The people have nothing to fear.
If.
The text deploys an unusual repeated idiom referring to God that to me connects to the second chapter of Bereishit starting in verse 4, the second creation story. I didn’t make much hay about this in my commentary because I felt there were bigger fish to fry about the difference between these stories, but it is clearly worth pointing out that Bereishit 2 repeatedly refers to God with a double name, “יהוה אלהים,” combining what I might call the Cosmic God-aspect and the Personified God-aspect into one appellation. Here in Dvarim 7, it’s a little bit different, owing in part to this book being written in Moshe’s voice, although here the perspective has moved from his first-person account to the second person, addressing the people as “you.” And here Mosheh begins to repeatedly refer to God as “יהוה אלהיך” — “your God, יהוה” — which to me has a curiously opposite effect metaphysically.
It is popular amongst people of my bent to point out that אלהים — the name used alone in Bereishit 1, as well as other places — is a plural name; you could translate it overly literally as “gods.” Given the way it is used alone in the creation of the universe, with the mysterious yet manifest name יהוה added in the second chapter, the creation of the world from a human perspective, I tend to understand the plurality of אלהים as an expression of the innumerable facets of reality — of everything — that add up to a Totality beyond any comprehension. That’s why I call it the Cosmic God-aspect.
Whereas יהוה — people of my bent are also fond of pointing out — is like some kind of singular and unprecedented (higher-dimensional?) conjugation of the verb “to be,” as is strongly suggested by the longer epithet — “אהיה אשר אהיה,” I Will Be What I Will Be — God uses when appearing for the first time to Mosheh in the burning bush episode. This is why I call it the Personified God-aspect, as it is sort of the best God can do to explain Godself verbally to a person — “I just kind of Am.”
So in the creation story, when God is called יהוה אלהים, it could mean, “This particular God, who is really the whole of Reality.” Whereas here in Mosheh’s big speech towards the end, we’re coming to understand that the Hebrew word אל — which certainly may have come into Hebrew as a name for some particular divinity, as some scholars believe — functions by the time of written Hebrew text as sort of the lower-case-g word “god,” so that Mosheh can specify to the people that יהוה is your god, reminding them here over and over again that their relationship with Being is this particular one.
After the conquest part, Mosheh turns to the relationship between the people and God, getting into why it had to be so tumultuous through all these years of wandering. It was a test, an ordeal, a training. God had to learn that the people would stick it out, and the people had to learn that all things are provided through God’s miracles, even if they require a ton of human work.
Lest these unpleasant and paternalistic lessons go on too long and begin to quash morale, Mosheh turns back to listing all the delicious things that will grow in the land, thanks to God, but then reminds the people that they must faithfully remember and thank God for all this as soon as they have eaten our fill. Excerpts from this parashah (among many other excerpts) are recited in the daily grace after meals.
The risk, it seems, is that it is easy to forget that God is behind worldly events — and that God has carried us through great difficulty to get here — when times are good and we feel satisfied. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this remembering is the core religious function in Jewish life, especially in the rabbinic religion established after the destruction of the Temple and the exile from the land, the land and the Temple being the direct embodiments of this whole covenant.
With that lesson as instilled as it can be for the moment, Mosheh exhorts, “שמע ישראל,” again. Listen up! I guess people are starting to get bored and check their phones as the old man repeats himself. He returns to the subject of the land they are about to enter, the people they are about to conquer, and how God will go before them as a “devouring fire.” An interesting clarification is made: It is not because of the virtuousness of the children of Yisra’el that they shall be victorious but rather because of the wickedness of those they are dispossessing.
Mosheh reminds them of how he fasted for 40 days and 40 nights downloading all this material for them, and they screwed it up immediately. God wanted to bail on the whole project, and Mosheh had to pray for mercy to save them. And that was not the last time; Mosheh lists the other times the people’s faithlessness in the wilderness almost cost them everything. And Mosheh tells them the secret weapon he used to get God to listen: He got God to worry that other peoples would believe God was powerless if God did not deliver the people God had chosen.
On the one hand, the lesson is realistic about people’s capacity to be good. On the other hand, it is a threat about what happens to any people — the people Yisra’el included — for letting things get too bad. But most amusingly, it is a lesson that this people’s God is not everyone’s God, and that God needs the respect of other peoples as much as God’s people do.
Then things turn sweet again. Mosheh implores them with love this time, as in the previous parashah, saying that they don’t have to be a “stiff-necked people” anymore. In some fairly florid language that is maybe the best we can do for the metaphysics of circumcision in the Torah, Mosheh tells the people to “מלתם את ערלת לבבכם” — to circumcise the foreskins of their hearts. Remove the thickened layer that insulates their hearts from feeling. Then he evokes God’s mercy, upholding the cause of orphans and widows and strangers, and he says that the people, too, must be like this:
וַאֲהַבְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־הַגֵּ֑ר כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃
“And love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Mitzrayim.”
So, no mercy to the wicked ones who dwell in the land now, of course. But for those who are not children of Yisra’el but dwell among them, they are to be treated with the same dignity with which children of Yisra’el treat each other. It’s something.
The final chapter in this parashah emphasizes another basis for the people’s faith: that the people themselves directly experienced God’s miracles on this journey, that it’s not just a story they received from ancestors. Now, that’s rich given that this is the second generation since Sinai because of all the aforementioned stiff-necked idolatry, but this generation has still seen some thangs, it’s true. Hopefully, in light of all that, this daunting task of conquest in front of them seems more doable.
To help, Mosheh lays it on thick again, talking about the miraculous fecundity of the land and the rains and whatnot. But he can’t let it go without another stick, another warning that all this goodness will be stamped out if the people go astray. The talismanic remembrance practices from the previous parashah are restated; the people will need to be surrounded by physical reminders to keep all this in mind and in practice. This section is recited twice daily as the second paragraph of the Shema.
The parashah concludes with one more “If, then,” statement, summing it all back up: If you people can live in this way, all the peoples who stand in your way shall be dislodged, this land ahead of you shall be yours, and no one shall stand up to you.
It’s even more poignant when you know how things turn out in the end.
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