Eikev and Re’eh

The Blessing of Hearing

I keep thinking about the transition from Eikev into Re’eh, and how Re’eh does not really introduce a new theology so much as take everything Eikev has been saying and turn it slightly, until it means something deeper.

At first, Eikev seems straightforward enough. If Israel listens, blessing follows.

וְהָיָה עֵקֶב תִּשְׁמְעוּן אֵת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים הָאֵלֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם וַעֲשִׂיתֶם אֹתָם
“And it shall be, because you listen to these laws and observe and perform them…”
(Devarim 7:12)

And then immediately:

וַאֲהֵבְךָ וּבֵרַכְךָ וְהִרְבֶּךָ
“And He will love you and bless you and multiply you…”
(Devarim 7:13)

The pattern seems obvious:

hearing → blessing.

Israel listens, and Hashem responds with blessing. Children, produce, grain, wine, oil, herds, flocks. Hearing is the condition; blessing is what comes after.

But even the first words of the parashah feel less simple the longer I look at them.

וְהָיָה עֵקֶב תִּשְׁמְעוּן

The word עקב is already complicated. It can mean because of, on account of, as a consequence of. But it is also connected to עָקֵב, the heel, something that follows behind. There is this sense built into the word of one thing coming after another, following at its heels.

So the plain meaning is that blessing will follow because Israel listens.

But I keep wanting to move the pause:

וְהָיָה עֵקֶב: תִּשְׁמְעוּן

And the consequence will be: you will hear.

That is not the simple grammatical reading. But as a literary reading, it becomes harder for me to ignore as Devarim continues. Maybe hearing has consequences, but maybe hearing can also become a consequence. Maybe the more one listens, the more capable of listening one becomes. Maybe the more one understands, the more capable of understanding one becomes. And maybe the opposite is also true.

The Two Roads of Eikev

Toward the end of chapter 8, Moses gives the opposite possibility:

וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁכֹחַ תִּשְׁכַּח אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ
“And it shall be, if you surely forget Hashem your God…”
(Devarim 8:19)

If Israel forgets Hashem and follows other gods, they will perish. And then:

כַּגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר ה׳ מַאֲבִיד מִפְּנֵיכֶם כֵּן תֹּאבֵדוּן עֵקֶב לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּן בְּקוֹל ה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
“Like the nations that Hashem causes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you did not listen to the voice of Hashem your God.”
(Devarim 8:20)

The language almost folds back on itself.

The parashah begins:

עֵקֶב תִּשְׁמְעוּן

and here we get:

עֵקֶב לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּן

The two roads are already there:

עקב תשמעון

→ ברכה

עקב לא תשמעון

→ אבדון

Listen, and blessing. Do not listen, and destruction. But if עקב can carry this sense of consequence, I start wondering whether the consequences are not only external. Maybe listening leads to more listening. Maybe refusal leads to more refusal. Maybe one can refuse to hear until eventually one no longer knows how to hear.

And that immediately makes me think of Pharaoh.

Pharaoh and the Heavy Heart

The story of Pharaoh’s heart is complicated because sometimes Pharaoh seems to harden his own heart and sometimes Hashem hardens it. The line between what Pharaoh chooses and what Pharaoh becomes is not always clean.

But there is another part of the language that I think gets lost in English.

One of the words used for Pharaoh’s heart is כבד.

וַיִּכְבַּד לֵב פַּרְעֹה
“Pharaoh’s heart became heavy.”
(Shemot 7:14)

We often translate this as “hardened,” and that makes sense, but the word itself is about heaviness.

His heart becomes heavy. And that matters because כבד is not a bad root. It gives us כבוד, honor, glory, weightiness.

כַּבֵּד אֶת־אָבִיךָ וְאֶת־אִמֶּךָ

To honor someone is, in some sense, to give them weight. So the problem with Pharaoh is not that his heart has weight. The problem is that it has become so heavy that it cannot move.

There is weight that gives something significance, and there is weight that makes something immovable.

And then there is the opposite root, קל, light, and קלל, to make light of something, to diminish it, and eventually also to curse.

So Hebrew gives us this tension:

כבד — heavy

קל — light

But neither one is automatically good.

Weight can become כבוד.

Lightness can become קללה.

A heart can be too light, treating everything as if it does not matter. A heart can also be too heavy, unable to move no matter what it encounters.

Maybe what we need is something in between. Weight without deadness. Seriousness without rigidity. A heart that can give things weight and still be moved.

And then Re’eh opens with:

בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה

blessing and curse.

The word קללה itself is sitting there, tied to this language of lightness.

So blessing cannot simply mean lightness, and curse cannot simply mean heaviness.

The question becomes something else: can the heart still respond?

See the Blessing

Then Re’eh begins:

רְאֵה אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה
“See, I set before you today blessing and curse.”
(Devarim 11:26)

And something changes.

Throughout Eikev, Moses has been saying what will happen.

If you listen, this. If you do not listen, that.

And now suddenly:

רְאֵה

See.

It is almost as if Moses takes the two possibilities and puts them down in front of Israel. Look. Here they are.

And I keep thinking about the movement from שמע to ראה.

Devarim is full of hearing. It contains the famous Shema Yisrael, though that is not even the first or only place where the phrasing of שמע ישראל is used. Listen. Respond.

And then Re’eh begins with seeing.

But what exactly are they being asked to see?

אֶת־הַבְּרָכָה אֲשֶׁר תִּשְׁמְעוּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת ה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
“The blessing, that you listen to the commandments of Hashem your God…”
(Devarim 11:27)

And then:

וְהַקְּלָלָה אִם־לֹא תִשְׁמְעוּ אֶל־מִצְוֺת ה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
“And the curse, if you do not listen to the commandments of Hashem your God…”
(Devarim 11:28)

The wording is strange. It does not say:

הברכה אם תשמעו

in exact parallel to:

הקללה אם לא תשמעו

Instead, it says:

הברכה אשר תשמעו

and:

הקללה אם לא תשמעו

And אשר makes me want to hear the first phrase differently.

אֶת־הַבְּרָכָה: אֲשֶׁר תִּשְׁמְעוּ

The blessing: that you hear.

Not only, “You will be blessed if you listen.” But maybe also: The fact that you can listen is already part of the blessing.

And suddenly the strange possibility I heard in עקב תשמעון comes back.

At the beginning of Eikev:

והיה עקב: תשמעון

The consequence: you will hear.

And now in Re’eh:

הברכה: אשר תשמעו

The blessing: that you hear. It becomes circular: hearing → blessing → hearing.

Maybe the blessing is not only grain and wine and oil and children and livestock. Maybe part of the blessing is remaining the kind of person who can still hear. Who can still be addressed. Who can still be affected. Who can still respond.

And then maybe the curse is not only what happens after לא תשמעו. Maybe there is already something cursed in becoming unable to respond at all.

A Heart to Know, Eyes to See, Ears to Hear

This becomes even more interesting because Devarim is full of sensory language.

Earlier, Moses describes the gods Israel will worship in exile:

אֱלֹהִים מַעֲשֵׂה יְדֵי אָדָם עֵץ וָאֶבֶן אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יִרְאוּן וְלֹא יִשְׁמְעוּן וְלֹא יֹאכְלוּן וְלֹא יְרִיחֻן
“Gods made by human hands, wood and stone, which do not see and do not hear and do not eat and do not smell.”
(Devarim 4:28)

They do not see. They do not hear. They do not eat. They do not smell. They cannot respond because there is no life in them. And against that, Israel keeps being commanded:

שמע.

Hear.

ראה.

See.

It starts to feel like more than obedience. To hear and to see is to remain alive enough to respond.

And eventually Devarim says this explicitly:

וְלֹא־נָתַן ה׳ לָכֶם לֵב לָדַעַת וְעֵינַיִם לִרְאוֹת וְאָזְנַיִם לִשְׁמֹעַ עַד הַיּוֹם
“Hashem had not given you a heart to know, eyes to see, and ears to hear, until this day.”
(Devarim 29:3)

A heart to know. Eyes to see. Ears to hear. And those things are described as things Hashem can give. That complicates everything again. Israel is commanded to hear, but hearing is also something that can be given. Israel is commanded to see, but seeing is also something that can be given. So maybe the blessing is not only a reward for having obeyed. Maybe responsiveness itself is a gift.

The Heart of Stone and the Heart of Flesh

And this makes me think of Ezekiel.

וְנָתַתִּי לָכֶם לֵב חָדָשׁ וְרוּחַ חֲדָשָׁה אֶתֵּן בְּקִרְבְּכֶם וַהֲסִרֹתִי אֶת־לֵב הָאֶבֶן מִבְּשַׂרְכֶם וְנָתַתִּי לָכֶם לֵב בָּשָׂר
“I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you; I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.”
(Yechezkel 36:26)

The contrast with Pharaoh feels almost impossible not to see.

Pharaoh’s heart becomes heavy. Ezekiel imagines a heart that has become stone being made flesh again. But what I love is that Ezekiel does not promise a לב קל. He does not promise a light heart.

He promises a לב בשר. A heart of flesh. Flesh still has substance. It still has weight. But it can feel. It can be touched. It can change.

Maybe that is the opposite of Pharaoh’s heart. Not weightlessness. Responsiveness.

The problem is not that things have weight. Some things should have weight. Words should have weight. Human beings should have weight. Responsibility should have weight. Even כבוד itself comes from the language of heaviness. The problem is when weight becomes stone.

And perhaps the opposite problem is when everything becomes too קל, so light that nothing matters enough to move us.

The heart of flesh is neither. It can take something seriously and still be changed by it. Maybe that is part of what it means to hear. To let something have weight without letting the weight turn you to stone.

The Circumcised Heart

And then in Nitzavim, this whole pattern returns again.

וּמָל ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֶת־לְבָבְךָ וְאֶת־לְבַב זַרְעֶךָ לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ
“Hashem your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love Hashem your God with all your heart and with all your being, so that you may live.”
(Devarim 30:6)

Again, Hashem changes the very thing Israel is supposed to use to respond to Hashem. The heart itself is transformed.

And why?

לְמַעַן חַיֶּיךָ

So that you may live. Then only a few verses later:

רְאֵה נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ הַיּוֹם אֶת־הַחַיִּים וְאֶת־הַטּוֹב וְאֶת־הַמָּוֶת וְאֶת־הָרָע
“See, I have set before you today life and good, death and evil.”
(Devarim 30:15)

The language sounds almost exactly like Re’eh.

In Re’eh:

רְאֵה — נֹתֵן — לִפְנֵיכֶם — הַיּוֹם — בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה

And in Nitzavim:

רְאֵה — נָתַתִּי — לְפָנֶיךָ — הַיּוֹם — חַיִּים וְטוֹב / מָוֶת וְרָע

What Re’eh calls blessing and curse, Nitzavim eventually calls life and death.

And then:

וּבָחַרְתָּ בַּחַיִּים
“Choose life.”
(Devarim 30:19)

And this is where the whole thing becomes strange and beautiful to me.

Hashem says:

ומל ה׳ אלהיך את לבבך … למען חייך

Hashem will circumcise your heart so that you may live. And then:

ובחרת בחיים

Choose life. Hashem enables life. Israel chooses life. The two things are not opposites. We choose, but we also need help becoming the kind of people who can choose. We listen, but perhaps the ability to listen is itself something we receive. And choosing life, then, might mean keeping one’s heart neither too light nor too heavy.

Not קלות, where nothing matters enough to move us. Not the heaviness of Pharaoh, where the heart becomes so כבד that nothing can move it. That is why Ezekiel’s image feels so powerful. He does not promise a light heart. He promises a לב בשר, a heart of flesh: something substantial, something that can still be touched.

Read this way, the movement through Devarim becomes less about a simple sequence of command, reward, and punishment, and more about the formation of a heart.

And perhaps idolatry is about more than worshipping the wrong thing. Maybe part of the danger is becoming like the things we worship. The things we give weight to determine what kind of people we are. Idols are made of wood and stone. Things that cannot see. Things that cannot hear. Things that cannot respond because there is no life in them. Maybe the blessing set before us is not only what we receive for listening. Maybe the blessing is that we can still hear. That we can still see. That something outside ourselves can still reach us. That our hearts can remain neither too light nor too heavy.

And we are not left alone in trying to become that kind of person. We can turn to Hashem for a heart that can know, eyes that can see, ears that can hear. We can turn to each other when we lose our bearings.

Maybe choosing life is partly this: letting things matter without letting the weight we give them turn us to stone.