Parashat Va'etchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23-7:11)

Have you ever been overwhelmed at what seemed like an impossible task? We can respond to this in one of two ways. The first is to give up without even trying, because we instantly know that we will not be able to complete the task. The alternative, however, is to get our minds off of the impossibility of the task and onto the responsibility at hand. If we focus on the immediate requirements of the task and work our hardest on what we can do, then we might accomplish more than we realize.

Moses was faced with a similar problem in this week’s Torah portion. In Deuteronomy 4 we read, “Then Moses set apart three cities in the east beyond the Jordan.” But the problem with this verse is that this is not actually what it says in the original Hebrew. If we were to read the actual Hebrew text, we would understand it to say, “Then Moses will set apart three cities.” This helps us understand why most translations change this to read in the past tense. It doesn’t seem to make sense on the surface that Moses will, at some point in the future, separate these cites of refuge. How is Moses going to do this at some future time if he has been barred from entering into the Holy Land? Moses had a problem without a solution in sight. He had been given an impossible task. 

Many people look at the task of living out a Torah-centered life in a similar way. We’ve wrongly been taught for far too long that living out the commandments of Torah is impossible. Therefore, most people shrug it off without much thought. “No one can live it out perfectly,” many have said. But are we required to live out the precepts of the Torah flawlessly? Or are we commanded to give our best efforts each and every day?

Devarim (Deuteronomy 1:1-3:22)

In our Torah portion this week, Moses begins by giving a brief overview of the last forty years of the Children of Israel’s journeys in the wilderness. One of the first events he brings to their attention is the evil report about the Land, and how that report put fear into their hearts, keeping them from entering the Land as the LORD intended. He makes a point to remind them that, because of this one event, all of God’s plans for them were put on hold and they had been suffering the consequences of this for the last forty years:

Then I said to you, “Do not be in dread or afraid of them. The LORD your God who goes before you will himself fight for you, just as he did for you in Egypt before your eyes, and in the wilderness, where you have seen how the LORD your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you went until you came to this place.” Yet in spite of this word you did not believe in the LORD your God (Deuteronomy 1:29-32).

In this rebuke, he says that the Children of Israel “did not believe in the LORD your God” (1:32). What did Moses mean when he said that they did not believe in God? Does it mean they didn’t believe in His existence? How could they not? They had seen His miracles, His signs, and wonders. They had seen His deliverance firsthand! So what did Moses mean?