Parshah Ekev - BECAUSE - Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25
Torah Reading for Week of 17-23 August 2008 - Av 16-22 5768
Bread from Heaven
|
The name of this week's Torah portion is Ekev which translates 'because' and continues Moses' final words to the children of Israel just a few short weeks before his death. They are about to enter the Land God promised them and, because he cannot go with them, Moses like any father, has things he wants to say to them before they set off.
Here, in 7:12, he begins by reminding them: '... because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers ...'
He really wants them to get the message that covenant blessings are conditional upon their faithfulness to God and obedience to His Torah (Law). It was because they heard the voice of the Lord at Sinai and accepted His covenant and it is because when they listen to God and obey His Word that they will experience all the blessings of living in covenant relationship with God. Then they will know fruitfulness in their families, livestock and harvests and experience divine protection over their health; and the promise of God to send them rain if they are faithful in loving and serving Him. Moses also wants them to see the Land not only as the fulfilment of God's promise but as a gift from the Lord, and his description is quite poetic.
'But the land that you are going over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water by the rain from heaven, a land that the LORD your God cares for. The eyes of the LORD your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year.' (11:11-12)
Moses then draws their attention to their fears; what if the nations seem stronger or more powerful than they are? But, again, Moses reminds them that it was God who brought them out of Egypt and they saw His miraculous power at work on their behalf. He reminds them of what God has done so that they would be confident in what God can do in the future and promises them great victories against their enemies. There is an eternal principle at work here - when we understand that we cannot, in our own strength, defeat our enemies we need not fear - but, instead, look to the Lord who will do battle for us.
'You shall not fear them, for it is the LORD your God who fights for you.' Moses is reminding us that all the victories to all of our battles lie in God's hands (cf. 3:22).
As Moses recounts their journey, he also recalls their sins; of how he came down the mountain after 40 days to find them sinning with the golden calf and how he pleaded with God for another 40 days for mercy for them and how, finally, the Lord invited him up the mountain again to receive the second set of stone tablets on which the 10 Commandments were written. Moses wants them to remember not only how good the Lord has been to them but also how easily they turned against Him, and so he speaks to heart of the matter. He tells them in 10:12 exactly what the Lord requires of them: 'And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God require of you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul ...'
Moses wants the motivation for all that they do to be love. In other words, Torah observance and obedience should flow out of a heart filled with love for God. Moses is telling them obedience without love is hollow and empty. Like a husband who plonks an anniversary gift on the table and says to himself, I have done my duty as a husband. This gift is, in fact, no gift and dishonours his wife; so, too, service to God without love being its source and motivation is an empty gesture that dishonours God and leaves us vulnerable to pride and sin. Moses warns the children of Israel about this saying: 'Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, "It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land," whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you' (9:4). So he tells them to 'circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no longer stubborn' (10:16).
Circumcision (bris), performed on all Jewish male infants at 8 days old, is a physical sign that declares that a relationship exists between the Jewish people and God. It has become a mark of Jewish identity and inclusion into the Jewish People. The Rabbis explain that keeping Torah (The Law) and performing Mitzvot (good deeds) forge new connections with God while the bris reveals this relationship. So, now, when Moses tells them to circumcise their hearts, he is telling them to go beyond the physical and mark not only their bodies but their hearts as belonging to God. While the outward mark can be seen, the internal circumcision of the heart can be seen only by God, but the evidence will be recognised by humility and a deep commitment to the Lord and His ways.
Maimonides (Rambam), the medieval Jewish philosopher, taught when bris is performed a man is diminished or made less perfect physically pointing to the need to perfect man's moral shortcomings. It is also seen as a tool for holiness and, in case we forget, Moses makes it clear - circumcise your hearts! He is calling us to holiness.
Moses wants their focus to be on the Lord and in this speech he tells them three times to remember the Lord and three times not to forget the Lord, but only once to remember and not forget how they provoked the Lord. Although he has reminded them on a number of occasions of their sins and rebuked them, his goal is not to crush them but to encourage them in their walk with the Lord. He also wants to remind them and reassure them of God's care and compassion by drawing their attention to the fact that in 40 years of God's discipline in the wilderness, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet swell.
In last week's Torah portion we read in Deut 4:20, 'I have taken you out of an iron furnace' (kur ha-barzel). The expression 'kur ha-barzel' refers to the Egyptian exile. Rashi, the great Jewish commentator, defines the word 'kur' (furnace) as a crucible 'within which gold is purified' - conveying the idea that God sent the children of Israel to Egypt into a furnace because He considered them to be precious gold. What goes into the furnace as rock comes forth as pure and precious gold; the dross and impurities removed, it is ready to be moulded and fashioned in the Master's hands.
Moses, in this week's Torah portion in Deuteronomy 8, continues this idea of refining and says that Lord used the 40 years in the Wilderness to test them and to humble them in order for them to know what was in their hearts, even causing them to hunger so that He could feed them with manna (see painting, Bread from Heaven, by James Tissot). For how can we circumcise our hearts if we do not know what is in them? And how can we cut away the sin, those things which separate us from God, if it is not revealed to us? Just as He took the children of Israel through the wilderness on a journey of self-discovery, so He does with us. And we, too, need to be reminded of this truth: '... that He might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.' (8:3)
The Rabbis teach that this is a reference to the 'divine utterance' - namely, at the core of every living being is the divine utterance that created it. In other words, we live because God spoke us into being and our very existence remains dependent upon Him.
There is a rabbinic tale which explains why the manna fell daily, except on Fridays when a double portion was given. There was a king who gave his son an annual allowance and found that his son visited only once a year. Sad at the lack of time he spent with his son, he began to give the allowance daily so that he might see his son more often. So it was with Israel; concerned that they would not die of hunger, they turned their attention to their Father in Heaven. God was teaching them to be dependent on Him by feeding them bread from heaven (cf. Exodus 16:4). He was showing them that He meets not only their physical needs but also their spiritual - He was teaching them to hunger for Him, to be expectant, looking for His daily provision. Yeshua (Jesus) taught us to pray: 'Give us this day our daily bread.' For 'the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world .... Jesus said to them, 'I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst' (John 6:33-35).
Yeshua, after the feeding of the five thousand, reminds them that it was not Moses who gave them Bread from Heaven but His Father. He warns them that it is futile to work for bread that spoils but instead work for that which endures to eternal life, explaining that He is the true Bread from Heaven and that He alone satisfies this deep hunger in the soul of man for spiritual life. For when God created man, He created our physical bodies out of the earth; but we became living beings or living souls, that is, truly alive when God breathed His Breath of Life into us.
God created in us a spiritual nature and a hunger that needs to be fed by Him because it is only truly satisfied when we feed on the true Bread from Heaven, when we nourish our souls with Yeshua. When His words become for us eternal life and we are sustained by what He achieved for us on the cross, only then can we say with the Apostle Paul, 'For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain' (Philippians 1:21).
|
|
|