Weekly Torah Portion

Haftorah in a Nutshell

Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25

In the Parshah of Eikev (“Because”), Moses continues his closing  address to the children of Israel, promising them that if they will fulfill the commandments (mitzvot) of the Torah, they will prosper in the Land they are about to conquer and settle in keeping with God’s promise to their forefathers.

Moses also rebukes them for their failings in their first generation as a people, recalling their worship of the Golden Calf, the rebellion of Korach, the sin of the spies, their angering of God at Taveirah, Massah and Kivrot Hataavah (“The Graves of Lust”). “You have been rebellious against God,” he says to them, “since the day I knew you.” But he also speaks of God’s forgiveness of their sins, and the Second Tablets which God inscribed and gave to them following their repentance.

Their forty years in the desert, says Moses to the people, during which God sustained them with daily manna from heaven, was to teach them “that man does not live on bread alone, but by the utterance of God’s mouth does man live.”

Moses describes the land they are about to enter as “flowing with milk and honey,” blessed with the “seven kinds” (wheat, barley, grapevines, figs, pomegranates, olive oil and dates), and as the place that is the focus of God’s providence of His world. He commands them to destroy the idols of the land’s former masters, and to beware lest they become haughty and begin to believe that “my power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.”

A key passage in our Parshah is the second chapter of the Shema, which repeats the fundamental mitzvot enumerated in the Shema’s first chapter, and describes the rewards of fulfilling God’s commandments and the adverse results (famine and exile) of their neglect. It is also the source of the precept of prayer, and includes a reference to the resurrection of the dead in the messianic age.

Shabbat Shalom.