If you follow My laws and observe My commandments and perform them; then I will provide your rains in their time, and the land will give its produce and the tree of the field will give its fruit. Your threshing will overtake the vintage, and your vintage will overtake the sowing; you will eat your bread to satiety and you will dwell securely in your land…………But if you do not obey Me and do not observe all these commandments, if you reject My laws and spur My rules, so that you do not observe all My commandments and you break My covenant, I in turn will do this to you………Leviticus 26:3
Divine reward and punishment as laid out in this week’s parasha is always a sticky theological concept for those of us who provide pastoral care, spiritual direction, chaplaincy to people whose lives are heaped with suffering.
“Why me,” “why now” questions often are an attempt by the individual who is suffering to understand his/her own concept of God. And if that person were to open to this Torah portion (also either Ekev or Ki Tavo) they might conclude that, if abundance, health and good things come to pass when we follow God’s commandments and famine, disease, war, subjugation and all other bad things happen when we stray from those commandments, their suffering must be punishment for failing God. Though the passage speaks to collective Israel, we come to Torah to shed light on our own journey and rarely make a distinction between the collective and the personal – especially at a time of pain.
Does it help us to know that even within Tanach, the process of softening these texts begins and is continued by the rabbinic tradition? Ezekiel will tell the suffering exiles that, contrary to the words of Torah, they are not being punished for the sins of previous generations (Ezekiel 39:22). Isaiah (53) will reconfigure for the exiles that, far from being a punished discarded people, they are the righteous remnant of Israel – they are God’s “suffering servant.” This trend of equating bad things happening with Divine retribution then peaks with the book of Job. It is the story of a man who is righteous and suffers nonetheless, for reasons that are unknowable.
To establish that suffering does not necessarily equal punishment, do we not also have to conclude that health, prosperity and military success do not necessarily equate with Divine Reward?
This text that is so obviously concerned with the concrete, material rewards for fulfilling the commandments – the rain will fall, crops will be abundant – and alternatively which uses, as noted by Ibn Ezra, great details in describing the punishments that will befall us as means “awing us in to obedience,” pays little attention to our inherent connection to our Creator. The phrase that stands out as addressing the deepest needs of the soul to align with God’s commandments is, “v’achaltem l’svaa” – you will eat your bread to saiety (Lev 26:5). The reverse phrase appears in the curses column, “V’Achaltem v’lo t’sba-u” – and though you eat, you shall not be satisfied (Lev 26:26).
If these laws, these chukkim, are as the midrash says (Vayikra Rabbah 35:5) lit: inscriptions, engravings on our soul, then the sense of completion, wholeness and alignment with that Inner Compass happens when our outer actions match the inside. It is only then we feel sated, filled.