Reward for Faithfulness
The parsha takes its name from Moshe's (Moses) promise that if Israel heeds God's laws and keeps them, God will keep the covenant of love He swore to their ancestors. He describes the blessings that will follow: fruitfulness of family, field, and flock, protection from illness, and victory over every enemy. Moshe tells the people not to be afraid of the mighty nations they will face, for God will clear them away little by little, so the land does not grow wild before Israel can fill it. Their task is to trust, to obey, and to destroy the idols of those nations utterly rather than be drawn to their gold and silver.
Lessons of the Wilderness
Moshe calls the people to remember the whole forty-year journey through the wilderness, when God humbles and tests them to reveal what is in their hearts. God lets them hunger and then feeds them manna, teaching that a person does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Through all those years their clothes do not wear out and their feet do not swell, for God cares for them as a parent disciplines a beloved child. Moshe warns that when they enter a land of wheat and barley, vines and figs, and eat their fill, they must bless God and not tell themselves that their own strength has won them this wealth.
Not by Your Merit
Moshe cautions the people against imagining that God gives them the land because of their own righteousness; it is rather because of the wickedness of the nations and the promise made to Avraham (Abraham), Yitzchak (Isaac), and Yaakov (Jacob). To puncture any pride, he reminds them how often they anger God in the wilderness, above all at Chorev (Horeb) when they make the Golden Calf. He recounts how he climbs the mountain, receives the tablets, and comes down to find the people worshiping an idol, so that he shatters the tablets and falls before God for forty days and nights, pleading for the nation and for Aharon (Aaron). Israel survives, Moshe makes clear, only because God is forgiving, not because the people have earned it.
The Second Tablets
Moshe recalls how God tells him to carve a second set of tablets and to make an ark to hold them, and how God again inscribes the Ten Commandments and renews the covenant. He describes how the tribe of Levi is set apart to carry the ark, to serve God, and to bless in His name, receiving God Himself as their portion rather than a share of land. Moshe remains on the mountain a second time, and God listens to him and agrees not to destroy the people. The story of the calf, which might have ended the covenant, becomes instead a story of mercy and second chances.
What God Asks of You
In one of the Torah's most stirring passages, Moshe asks what it is that God truly requires: to revere God, to walk in all His ways, to love and serve Him with all one's heart and soul, and to keep His commandments. He calls the people to circumcise the foreskin of their hearts and to stop being stubborn, for God is great and awesome, showing no favoritism and taking no bribe. God, he says, secures justice for the orphan and the widow and loves the stranger, and so Israel too must love the stranger, remembering that they were once strangers in Egypt. From a nation of seventy souls who went down to Egypt, God has made them as numerous as the stars.
A Land of Rain
Moshe describes the land Israel is about to inherit as one unlike Egypt, a land of hills and valleys that drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land God watches over from the beginning of the year to its end. He teaches the passage that becomes the second paragraph of the Shema: if the people love and serve God, the rains will come in their season and the harvest will be full, but if they turn to idols the skies will close and the land will fail. Once more he charges them to take these words to heart, to bind them as tefillin and teach them to their children. If they keep faith, Moshe promises, no one will stand against them, and every place their feet tread, from the wilderness to the great river, will be theirs.