Parashat Ekev - Seventh Aliyah
Read the biblical text and try to understand it on your own, before reading the commentary.
The end of the parasha moves from the heart to the field: what happens inside, love, walking and cleaving, becomes movement across the land. This is an aliyah that translates spirit into geography.
The engine of the walking
“Ki im shamor tishmerun et kol hamitzvah hazot” (if you carefully keep this entire commandment, 11:22), and immediately three inner axes: “le’ahavah et Adonai Eloheichem lalekhet bechol derachav uldavkah vo” (to love Adonai your God, to walk in all His ways and to cleave to Him, same verse). Rashi fills two of them with practical content. On walking in His ways: “He is merciful and you shall be merciful, He does acts of kindness and you shall do acts of kindness”. And on cleaving he adds a qualification: “is it possible to say so? Is He not a consuming fire? Rather, cleave to the students and to the sages, and I will account it to you as though you had cleaved to Him” (Rashi on Deuteronomy 11:22). This is how spirit gives birth to a path, and not to belief alone.
A geography of promise
From here the effect pours outward: “Vehorish Adonai et kol hagoyim ha’eleh milifneichem virishtem goyim gedolim va’atzumim mikem” (Adonai will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations greater and mightier than you, 11:23). And then comes a statement made entirely of movement: “Kol hamakom asher tidroch kaf raglechem bo lachem yihyeh” (every place on which the sole of your foot treads shall be yours, 11:24). The sole of the foot becomes an instrument of covenant, and every step is charged with meaning. Even the borderlines are given in the language of walking: “min hamidbar vehaLevanon min hanahar nehar Perat ve’ad hayam ha’acharon yihyeh gevulchem” (from the wilderness and the Lebanon, from the river, the river Euphrates, and to the western sea shall be your border, same verse). The wilderness, the Lebanon and the Euphrates are the points of departure, and the western sea is the far edge that is reached.
The reversal of fear
At the opening of the second aliyah of this parasha stood a frightened question: “mi yityatzev lifnei bnei Anak” (who can stand before the sons of Anak, 9:2). Here the same root returns inverted: “Lo yityatzev ish bifneichem pachdechem umora’achem yiten Adonai Eloheichem al pnei chol ha’aretz asher tidrechu vah” (no man will stand before you, Adonai your God will place the dread and fear of you over the whole land on which you tread, 11:25). Rashi distinguishes between the two terms: “your dread is upon those who are near and the fear of you upon those who are far; dread is a term for sudden alarm, fear is a term for anxiety over many days” (Rashi on Deuteronomy 11:25). When the heart cleaves, the land opens. Not out of power without end, but out of a right inner order.
The tuning of the heart widens a border. When love, walking and cleaving work together, every small step receives a large space.