We read in this weeks’ Torah portion how Moses tells the Jewish people that it will be because (Eikev) you will listen to these ordinances, and you will observe and perform them, that God your God, will safeguard for you the covenant and the kindness that he swore to your forefathers, and then God will love you, bless you, and make you numerous etc.
Something seems amiss. If God made a covenant with our forefathers that he would love us, bless us, and make us numerous etc, why is he making it conditional on us listening to his ordinances?
To understand this we first must get a better understanding of a covenanted relationship.
Generally there are two types of relationships; the first type is the common friendships. When we are good to our friends and acquaintances, we usually know that they will reciprocate in kindness. So it is worth it.
The second type of relationship is the covenanted relationship. This happens when two people love each other to the point that they don’t want anything ever to disrupt their love, so they make a covenant, which ensures that their love will endure even during the most trying times.
The covenant we are most familiar with is the marriage covenant. When our spouse is, God forbid, unwell we will take care of them even though they are unable to reciprocate. We act in this selfless way because of the covenant of love that we made under the Chupah. It is this selfless love that extracts the deepest feelings.
Our relationship with God is of the covenanted kind. The word ‘Eikev ‘ literally means the heel. Our sages tell us that the heel is referring to the commandments we consider unimportant. Those that do not demonstrate any obvious manifestation of God in them. The commandments that seem to be insignificant acts that don’t have any connection to the divine. The commandments that we get no spiritual gratification from performing.
We often consider all of the commandments to be the Eikev (heel) and unimportant and some times even irrational. We only perform them because of the covenant that we made with God. It is selfless love, borne out of a covenant, that we have for the Divine that causes us to follow the Mitzvoth.
However, this still seems all very much one sided and unfair. In order for us to receive what was promised we must first show selfless love towards the Divine. Does a covenant not work both ways?
Although the divine has become obliged to give to us all that was promised to our forefathers nonetheless the universal law remains: in order to actually receive it in the material world one needs to act in a way that attracts the correct energies.
So we are, therefore told us to do something conceptually similar to the reward we are going to receive.
If we will perform His ordinances that are Eikev (heel)–even though it gives us no pleasure, and at times seems irrational–only because of the covenant we made, the energies of the universe will reciprocate, with rewards that go beyond reason. Meaning, we will receive all the promises that are stated in the portion we read this week, and only because of the covenant between Him and us.