לא מרובכם, “not on account of your being so numerous, etc.;” Rash’bam understands this verse as linked to the first verse of the paragraph starting in chapter 6,10. He explains the sequence as follows: G–d does not like you because you are numerous, but He loves you, period. (Love is never motivated by logical considerations based on calculations). Furthermore, He is obligated to make good on the promise He made to your forefathers. If you were to argue then that if He loves us as a father loves his children, why should we burden ourselves with having to observe all His commandments? The answer is that His patience extends until one thousand generations in searching for one that merits His keeping the oath He has given to your forefathers. Whenever such a generation of descendants of these forefathers is prepared to observe the condition of His oath, namely to observe His commandments, all the promises He has made will become effective.

ומשלם לשונאיו אל פניו, “but He will make a reckoning with those who hate Him to their face,” i.e. He will make a reckoning immediately and not wait one thousand generations for their descendants to become penitents. But as soon as such people become penitents, they will become the beneficiaries of My promises to their forefathers. Therefore, as Moses said in Deuteronomy 7,12: והיה עקב תשמעון וגו', “it will come to pass as an immediate result of your listening to My voice that all My promises will be showered upon you.”

והיה עקב תשמעון, “it will be as a consequence of your hearkening, etc.” Rashi comments on why Moses used the word עקב, “heel,” here when he could have used numerous other words meaning: “as a result of.” He says that Moses refers here to the kind of commandments which the average person tramples underfoot with his heel, is hardly conscious of, for the observance of which meticulously the Torah promises great reward, even though it takes no effort to fulfill theses commandments. This is also what David had in mind in Psalms 49,6 when he said: למה אירא רע בימי עון עקבי יסובני, “why should I be afraid of trouble in days to come –seeing that I have fulfilled the most difficult commandments?-He answers rhetorically, “I have reason to be afraid of being punished for trespassing the commandments that are so easy to fulfill as it is to put one heel behind another.” Our sages in Ethics of the Fathers chapter 2 mishnah 1, warn us to be as meticulous to fulfill the commandments which are easy to fulfill as we are with fulfilling the commandments which are difficult and expensive to fulfill. Something along the same line has been written in Proverbs 5,6 where Solomon warns: ארח חיים פן תפלס נעו מעגלותיה לא תדע “she (the immoral woman who is the subject here) does not chart a path of life; her ways are unstable; you do not know them.” Solomon warns us not to apply our yardsticks to different commandments and taking credit for the ones we performed with a great deal of effort, while neglecting to fulfill the ones we considered as unimportant. We have no way of knowing how G–d values the performance of different commandments, so that we do not know what rewards are in store for their performance. This can be illustrated best by a parable. A king had an orchard; he brought workmen to that orchard to plant trees and did not tell them how much he would pay each for each tree that they planted. If he had told them beforehand which planting would be paid for most, he would find at the end that only half the orchard had been planted with trees, as the workers would, of course, all plant the trees for which they would be paid the most. According to Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai, G–d revealed the reward of only two of all the commandments; one is the commandment which is the easiest to fulfill, the other is the commandment which is the hardest to fulfill. Honouring father and mother is the easiest commandment to fulfill, it can be fulfilled several times daily without special effort. The other is the sending away of the mother bird when one plans to take the chicks it had hatched or was about to hatch. Both of these commandments are rewarded with same reward, long life of the person who fulfills them. The reason is that G–d wanted to show the world that there are commandments which we think must carry a great reward, and others which precisely because they are so easy to fulfill, and the opportunity to fulfill them is ever present, so that we might have thought that they cannot carry much of a reward. [The author continues with further elaborations, which I have omitted as the point has been made sufficiently. Ed.]