Summary of the Parasha
“And it will be, because (Eikev) you listen to these laws”, God will keep His covenant: blessing of children, crops and livestock, no barrenness, and protection from disease. Moses reassures the people: do not fear the nations of Canaan, God will drive them out “little by little”. He commands them to burn their idols and not to covet their gold.
He recalls the lesson of the desert: God let you go hungry and fed you with manna, “to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that comes from the mouth of Hashem”. Your clothes did not wear out, your feet did not swell. He describes the land: “a land of wheat and barley, vines, figs and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and honey”, the seven species, then the source of Birkat Hamazon: “You shall eat, be satisfied and bless”. But beware of pride: do not say “my strength and the might of my hand won me this wealth”.
Moses insists: it is not because of your righteousness that you inherit the land, for you are a stiff-necked people. He proves it by retelling at length the golden calf, the broken tablets, his forty days of prayer, the anger at Aaron, then the second tablets placed in the wooden ark, Aaron’s death and the choice of the tribe of Levi.
“And now, Israel, what does Hashem your God ask of you? Only to fear Him, to walk in His ways, to love Him and to serve Him”. The Talmud reads “mah” (what) as “me’ah” (a hundred): hence the hundred blessings said every day, an institution attributed to King David. “Circumcise the foreskin of your heart”, love the stranger. The land of Israel is not like Egypt watered by the Nile: it drinks the rain of heaven, and “the eyes of Hashem are upon it from the beginning of the year to its end”. Finally, the second paragraph of the Shema, “Vehaya im shamoa”: rain in its season if we listen, drought and exile if not, with tefillin, study and mezuzah.
Summary of the Haftara
“Vatomer Tzion” (“Zion said”)
Text in Isaiah 49:14–51:3
The second haftara of consolation. Zion complains: “Hashem has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me”. God answers: “Can a woman forget her nursing child? Even if they forget, I will not forget you. I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.” Her children will return in such numbers that she will say: “Who bore these for me?” The kings of the nations will be her nurturers. The prophet concludes: “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you: he was alone, I blessed him and made him many”, and God will make Zion’s wilderness like the Garden of Eden.
Parasha-Haftara Connection
In the parasha, Moses fears that Israel will forget God in prosperity; in the haftara, it is Zion who fears that God has forgotten her. The answer is the same: the covenant is eternal, and memory runs both ways.