Ekev (Because) Deut. 7:12-11:25 HafTorah Isaiah 49:14-51:3
1.Do you see hints in this Torah portion to what can be the biggest danger or challenge to our spiritual life? How did Moses tell the people to guard against this happening to them?
We may look back and consider all we have come through and believe we have overcome it all by our own strength, our own intelligence, our own hard work, our own effort. So, here’s the bottom line: the real challenge in life is not poverty but affluence, not slavery, but freedom, not homelessness but wealth. Deut. 8:11-17 warned the people what might happen if they got too comfortable in the land. Verse 17 says, “And you say in your heart, my power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth.”
Moshe was warning we are most at risk when we begin to believe our own illusion that all I have is because of what I have done myself in my own strength. Our greatest challenge is to stay strong in our faith and remember what G-d has done for us in the past when everything is going so easy for us.
Moshe gave us the secret here in our passage as well as other verses. The guardian of a consistent life as a child of G-d is memory, remembering.
1. We see it used in Deut. 5:15 from last week, remember you were slaves in Egypt. Shabbat was G-d’s way of saying, we are not slaves to our work, we can rest.
2. Deut. 8:2 Remember how G-d has always been with us leading us.
3. Deut. 9:7 Remember how you provoked the L-rd your G-d in the desert.
All through this book we read where Moshe was calling the people to remember. Memory should help us all to retain our footing in such a fast moving, materialistic world. It is easy to forget and jump on some idea or cause that may lead us to places we would never have considered.
We can see this same theme in the Messianic scriptures.
John 14:26
Phil. 4:8
Phil. 1:3-5
Luke 16:25
These are but a few verses that speak to us about the importance of memory.
2.Usually we have understood G-d’s relationship with Israel as being defined by the word covenant as in Exodus 19:5, “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession….
In our Torah portion this week it says in Deut. 7:12, “Therefore it shall come to pass, if you give heed to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the L-rd your G-d shall keep with you the covenant and the mercy which he swore to your fathers;” So why was the word chessed in Hebrew, or love or mercy in English added to covenant in this verse? Are there other places in scripture where covenant and love/mercy are mentioned?
It might help us to look at other times these two words appear together in the Hebrew Scripture. I think there are only three places, here in our Torah portion Deut. 7:12, I Kings 8:23 where Solomon, in his prayer at the consecration of the Temple says, “L-rd G-d of Israel, there is no G-d like you in heaven above or on earth below. You who keep the covenant and love with your servants who continue whole heartedly in Your way.”
We also see these two words used by Nehemiah in Jerusalem when he renewed the covenant after the people returned from exile, “Now, therefore, our G-d the great G-d, mighty and awesome who keeps His covenant and love.” Nehemiah 9:32.
Many translations incorrectly translate these verses to say covenant of love instead of covenant and love. The minor change of one word changes the important meaning of the verses. The verses are not talking about a covenant of love.
So, we have these three places where we see the people at the threshold of a new beginning. In all three, the speaker was reassuring the people as they began a new walk that G-d had put before them. It seems that covenant and love are both part of what G-d was saying to them and is saying to us.
Loving kindness or mercy is something we grant to someone who has no claim on us, something they may not even deserve. It is an act of pure grace. The person has done nothing to deserve it.
The book of Ruth is known to be a book of chessed. Its point is to teach us, what chessed or love is. Remember when Naomi returned to Israel her two daughters-in-law started off with her. Only Ruth continued to Israel with Naomi even though there was no obligation on her part to do so. She did it out of chessed or loving kindness.
Later Boaz went out of his way to help Ruth, later even marrying her. She was a foreigner and he had no obligation to help her. But he showed her loving kindness. So chessed was shown as good done for someone who had no claim on the other person. It was unmerited grace. Does that phrase sound familiar?
So to wrap up, a covenant is essentially a reciprocal agreement. Such as, I will do this if you do that. Exodus defines it very well in Exodus 19:5. If you do this I will do that, if not, it will go badly for you. However, when we add chessed to a covenant there are no “if – then” phrases. Where chessed comes in G-d says, you may break My covenant and there will be consequences but I will not throw you away. G-d’s relationship with Israel has been rocky. However, His chessed will never let them go and will never let us go either. He is always there calling us back to Him.
3.One more question on Covenants. There are some people who only consider the Messianic scriptures as having any authority for Christians. Look at Ephesians 2:11-13, “Being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope and without G-d in the world. But now in Messiah Yeshua you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Messiah.” Which covenants are being talked about in these verses?
In this scripture quoted above, the word covenants is used in the plural form. I believe this is talking about those covenants found in the Hebrew scripture.
There are several covenants in the Hebrew Scripture, but five covenants are crucial for understanding G-d’s redemptive plan: the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, The Mosaic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant and the New Covenant.
I say all this to emphasize the rich treasure we have forsaken far too long. Consider this when you read and study your Bible. Study it in its entirety.
Covenant with Noah Genesis 9:8-17 “Then G-d said to Noah and to his sons with him: I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” And G-d said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life.Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.” So G-d said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”
Covenant with Avraham Genesis 12: 1-3 The L-rd had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”[
Mosaic Covenant is found in Exodus 19 and 24
Davidic Covenant After the people disobeyed the commands made in the previous covenant, God made the Davidic covenant as a means to bring them back into relationship with Himself. The key passage for this unconditional promise is 2 Samuel 7:12-17: “When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come forth from you, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.”
New Covenant: In Jeremiah 31:31-34 the prophet wrote, “The days are coming,” declares the L-rd, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was husband to them, declares the L-rd. This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the L-rd. I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their G-d, and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the L-rd,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the L-rd. For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
4.In Deut. 9:1 we read, “Hear O Israel or in Hebrew, Shema. This word means so much more in Hebrew than just to listen. Do a little research as to the full meaning of this Hebrew word, how it differs from the English word to listen and how that affects what G-d is saying to the children of Israel. When we really listen to what G-d is saying in Deut. 10:11-13 what do we hear Him saying to them?
We have talked of this word shema before but I want us to go over it in some depth. This word appears over 90 times in this book of the Bible. It can be seen as the key to understanding what Moshe is communicating to the people in his last speech before his death.
In Hebrew shema can mean “to hear, to listen, to pay attention, to understand to internalize or to respond.” It is the closest word in biblical Hebrew to express the term, “to obey.”
Sometimes for us, as part of the western culture, hearing is not something that we do naturally on a deep level. The sense we use most often is seeing. This is a holdover from the Greek influence in our lives. We see this in our language, I see, foresight, hindsight, insight, vision and phrases such as “seeing is believing”, “it appears.” These are only a few of the ways sight dominates our thoughts and language.
By contrast the world of Moshe and Yeshua was immersed in hearing, really hearing. It was a culture of the ear more than the eye. We read this word “Shema” or one of its derivatives used to express proof of a certain point like, come and hear, hear from this, he could not hear it.
G-d wishes to communicate with us by hearing. In Biblical Hebrew there is no word for obedience. Modern Hebrew borrowed a word from Aramaic to mean obedience. G-d wants us to listen not just with our ears but to let His word penetrate into our deepest being. By doing this we will obey because we will grasp the truth of His word. We will have a deeper understanding of what His desire is for us. We see this expressed in Exodus 19:8, “All that the L-rd has spoken we will do.”. Hearing, really hearing will have an impact on how we live, what we do and what we do not do. It will not only be head knowledge it will also be heart knowledge. Hearing is the bridge between us and the Father.
It is also the bridge between us and our fellow man. We relate by hearing what others think and feel. I mean by this, really hearing is when we make the effort to pay attention and take time to listen. When a friend talks to us they deserve our undivided attention, our time. This is a lesson Moshe is trying to get across here to us. We find this over and over in the Messianic Scriptures. Yeshua and the rich young ruler, the woman at the well just to name two. He listened to them and then was able to speak to them in a way that could change their life if they could hear Him. Our challenge is to listen.
Finally, what was G-d saying to the people in Deut. 10:11-13? This is a summary of what G-d requires of His people. It sounds simple enough. However, when we really listen to what G-d is saying here what do we hear?
As an example, I read a short story this speaks on this issue. This involved a young Yeshiva student in Montreal, Canada. This young man enrolled in school without much background in how to live as a religious Jew in the world today. As the year went on his teachers were amazed at his ability to grasp reading and understanding difficult passages of scripture and commentaries. In a very short time he had mastered both the language and the ability to analyze difficult passages. However, at the end of the year he surprised his teachers by withdrawing from school. When pressed for an explanation he gave the following, “As a secular person I would get up each morning and ask myself how I wished to spend the day. Now, after my year of study, I must get up each morning and ask myself how does G-d want me to spend the day. The pressure is simply too intense for me to deal with.”
Our faith is not about only doing things, even if they are good things. Our faith requires us to listen to the voice of G-d and dedicate our time, our actions, our lives to His will. We don’t get days off where we do what we please. We are His and we listen, really listen to His voice and it changes us. We revere the L-rd. We walk in His ways. We love Him and serve Him with all our heart and soul.