Portion Ki Tavo, Deuteronomy 26:1-29:9

 Who wouldn’t want that?

 

“And it will be, if you shall listen carefully to the voice of Yehovah your El, to guard and to do all His commandments which I command you today, Yehovah your El will set you on high above all nations of the earth.” (Deu 28:1)

 

It’s a simple instruction; listen to what Elohim instructs us to do, guard His instructions, and actually do what He tells us to do, and an entire list of blessings will follow.

 

“You shall be blessed in the city, and be blessed in the field. The fruit of your body shall be blessed, and the fruit of your ground, and the fruit of your cattle, the increase of your cows, and the flocks of your sheep. Your basket and your store shall be blessed. You shall be blessed when you come in, and blessed when you go out. Yehovah shall cause your enemies that rise up against you to be stricken before your face. They shall come out against you one way, and flee before you seven ways. Yehovah shall command the blessing on you in your storehouses, and all that you set your hand to. And He shall bless you in the land which Yehovah your El gives you. Yehovah shall establish you a holy people to Himself, as He has sworn to you, if you shall keep the commandments of Yehovah your El and walk in His ways. And all the peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of Yehovah, and they shall be afraid of you. And Yehovah shall prosper you in goods, in the fruit of your body, and in the fruit of your cattle, and in the fruit of your ground, in the land which Yehovah swore to your fathers to give you. Yehovah shall open to you His good treasure, the heaven to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. And you shall loan to many nations, and you shall not borrow.” (Deu 28:3-12)

 

Who wouldn’t want those blessings?

 

The first criteria is listen carefully, shema, to what Elohim says. This isn’t the, in one ear and out the other, kind of listening. It’s the kind where dad sits you down and says “LISTEN to me!” It’s the kind where if you “listen” and then don’t do what he tells you to do, you didn’t really listen in the first place, you might have heard, but you didn’t listen.

 

The second criteria is to guard, shomer, the instructions. Notice the root of both shema and shomer are a shin and a mem. In Hebrew, when words have common roots, they have common meanings. To guard the instructions means to keep them from being changed by adding to them or subtracting from them, and from changing their original intent. One example is changing “You shall not incline after the majority to do evil,” to “You shall incline after the majority,” which the rabbis did change.

 

The third criteria is to do, asah, His instructions. This means to actually do what we are told to do. If Elohim says “Keep the Sabbath Day holy,” that’s what he wants us to do. He doesn’t expect us to make up loopholes so we can do what we want on the day He has set apart. We learn in the Torah and the Prophets some of what not to do, buy and sell, work, engage in commerce.

 

Unfortunately, looking at history, too many people who claim to follow the God of the Bible ignore many of His instructions so they can live their lives the way they want to live them. As committed followers of the LORD of Hosts, the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Yeshua, our calling is to love Him with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength, and that includes doing what He says, the way He says to do it, and finding joy in doing so.