Moses is speaking to the Israelites from the Eastern side of the Jordan River. He is preparing them to enter the Promised Land without him. Throughout the book of Deuteronomy, he worries about the new challenges that the people will face as they transition from wandering in the desert to settling in the Promised Land. So he tries to set them up for success.
Moses reiterates how, during the past forty years, God has provided for all of their needs. They ate manna from heaven. Their clothes never wore out, and their feet did not swell. God’s providence was immediate and direct. As a result, the people were constantly aware of their dependence on God for daily survival.
All of this will change when they cross the Jordan. First, the good news. The land is “a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey, a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper.”
In other words, the Israelites will no longer need to rely on God’s miraculous daily beneficence. Their prosperity will now come from the land itself. And so Moses instructs them: “When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Lord your God for the good land which He has given you.” V’achalta v’sava’ta u’verachta. This is the basis of the obligation to recite Birkat Hamazon – the grace after meals. It is a reminder, recited multiple times a day, that one of the most mundane activities of which we take part, eating, is a manifestation of Divine grace.
But Moses knows that this will be insufficient. In the very next verse, he offers a warning against what will inevitably follow success and prosperity. Hishamer L’kha – “Take care.” Literally, “Guard yourselves, lest you forget the Lord your God and fail to keep His commandments, His rules and His laws, which I command you today.”
Moses predicts that when the Israelites become wealthy and successful, they will forget all about God who brought them out of Egypt and sustained them through the wilderness. Their hearts will become haughty, and they will say to themselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” This attitude will ultimately lead to their downfall. They will suffer the same fate as the Canaanite nations who dwelt there beforehand.
In these brief verses, Moses expresses two opposite views of human character. In the first, he sets a perfectly reasonable expectation on the Israelites to give thanks to God when we eat. To acknowledge and praise the ultimate source of blessing in our lives. It seems to me that this is a fairly easy commandment to follow. Observant Jews do not seem to have too much difficulty reciting brachot over food. We’ll be doing exactly that for kiddush in a few minutes.
But then, immediately afterwards, Moses all but admits that it is not going to work. Either we are going to forget to express our gratitude altogether. Or, our expressions of gratitude will not matter, and we will succumb to hubris, crediting all of our success to our own efforts and hard work.
The commentator Nachmanides explains Moses’ warning. The Israelites will forget about what it was like when they were enslaved in Egypt, when they did not have power and wealth. Back then, it was much more obvious that basic survival depended on God. But when they become successful, they will forget about those former times when they had no power. They won’t realize that the strength that enabled them to prosper came from God as well.
Moses’ predictions are born out in the biblical history of ancient Israel. It seems to me that they are pretty accurate depictions of basic human tendencies as well. We tend to relate to our material success as something we earned. Either because I worked really hard for it, or because I am just a really great person who deserves what I have, or because I am too lazy to really think about how I got to where I am. Moses warns that saying “Thank you” to God is not enough.
When kids are really young, we try to teach them to say thank you. I hand a treat to a toddler, and their parent says “What do you say?” Don’t get me wrong, it is a valuable lesson, and an important habit to inculcate.
And, if I do something nice for someone, and they do not acknowledge it, it can feel pretty bad. Like I have been taken for granted.
Something I have learned in my house is that saying “thank you” by itself doesn’t really matter. Thanks are expressed through actions.
My spouse makes a beautiful meal. After enjoying it, I look deep into her eyes, utter a most heartfelt “thank you for that wonderful dinner. I especially loved how you slow roasted the brussels sprouts.” And then I walk over to the couch and start watching TV while the dirty dishes are all over the kitchen.
This is all purely hypothetical, of course.
Moses’ instructions to the Israelites are also quite simple. Gratitude is expressed through actions. This is a theme that Moses returns to over and over again. The way for the Israelites to express their gratitude for the blessings they enjoy is by following God’s commandments. But not only that.
Later on in the parashah, in another one of Moses’s warnings, he tells us to “cut away the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more. For the Lord your God is God supreme and Lord supreme, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing food and clothing.—You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Here, the counter to stubbornness and haughtiness is caring for the stranger. This is what the all-powerful God of the universe wants from us.
Moses draws the contrast between an attitude of self-importance, stubborness, and entitlement on the one hand – and gratitude, observance of the commandments, and caring for the weak and powerless on the other.
Almost three and a half thousand years later, not much has changed.
Rebyehoshua 