“And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you.” Regarding being supreme over all the nations of the earth, it says and the Lord will set you, attributing this matter to the Holy One, blessed be He. But regarding the acquisition of other blessings, it says they will come on their own. This implies [a question]: who will pursue them, that it says and overtake you? The explanation is that whoever pursues authority, it flees from him; but whoever flees from authority, authority pursues him (Tanchuma Vayikra 3). And authority is the source of all blessings, for what a servant acquires, his master acquires. Therefore it says, and the Lord will set you supreme, etc. because this is the authority which is not fitting for you to seek or strive after, and nevertheless the Lord will give it to you. From then on, authority will pursue you and overtake you. And along with authority will come, of their own accord, all these blessings, for they follow in the footsteps of the authority that pursues you. Thus all blessings will pursue you without you turning after them, and they will overtake you because of the authority. For through it, you will acquire all the blessings of all the nations of the earth, because what a servant acquires, his master acquires.

Blessed is the fruit of your womb, etc. And afterward, He said Blessed is your basket and your kneading bowl, but in the curses He changed the order, mentioning your basket and your kneading bowl before the fruit of your womb. This is because logic dictates that the Holy One, blessed be He, would always perform a hidden miracle rather than a revealed miracle. The blessing of the fruit of the womb and the fruit of the land are all hidden miracles, for even if they increase beyond what is usual, this is not outside the realm of nature. However, [the blessing of] your basket and your kneading bowl, which contain detached fruits that have already been placed in vessels — if these increase, it is a revealed miracle. Whether one places two and finds three, as it says The jar of flour shall not be depleted, etc. (1 Kings 17:14), or whether one eats a little and it is blessed in their intestines — all of these are revealed miracles. Therefore, in the blessings He is saying: Not only will He perform a hidden miracle for you, but He will even perform a revealed miracle for you. And in the curses, it is the opposite — [expressing] “not only this, but even that [worse thing].”

And what is said immediately after “Blessed are you in your going out” [is] “The Lord will deliver your enemies, defeated, before you.” And in the curses, it does not mention immediately that they will be defeated, but only after several verses, because logic dictates that as soon as the enemies see that all the inhabitants of that land are successful and blessed in their coming and going, then the nations will become jealous of Israel and will leave their homes to fight with Israel to drive them from that good land. And about this it is said By one road they will come out against you, etc. meaning that the nations will come against Israel. But in the curses it says By one road you will go out against him, meaning on the contrary, that Israel will leave their land to fight with the nations. And this is because in the curses, the nations who saw the plagues of the land and its diseases will presumably not desire the land of Israel because they will not see any success in it. Therefore, it is not said after Cursed are you in your going out [that] The Lord will deliver you, defeated, before your enemies referring to enemies who will come against you, because they certainly will not come. Rather, you will go out from your land to them because you will see that their land is better than yours, but not immediately, only after all the bad promises that He mentioned are fulfilled, from The Lord will send upon you the curse until The Lord will make the rain of your land powder and dust, etc., And your heavens which are over your head shall be bronze, and the earth which is under you iron. Why does it specify over your head and under you? Don’t we already know that the heavens are over your head and the earth is under you? Rather, it means specifically that part that is over your head and under you will be corrupted, but the heavens and earth that are above and below the lands of other nations will not be corrupted. And specifically the rain of your land [will be] powder and dust, not the rain of the lands of other nations. Therefore, your heart will persuade you to leave your home to the lands of other nations that are better than your land, perhaps you will be able to drive them out to settle in their place. Therefore, it says The Lord will deliver you, defeated, before your enemies; by one road you will go out against him, and by seven roads you will flee before him, and this is a precious reason.

The Lord will command the blessing [to be] with you in your storehouses. Since it is said You will decree a thing, and it will be established for you (Job 22:28). When a righteous person decrees something, the Holy One, blessed be He, agrees with him, as in Sun, stand still at Gibeon (Joshua 10:12), and like Elijah who said, The jar of flour shall not be used up (1 Kings 17:14), and in the Tractate Taanit (25a) regarding Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa, “Let your beams reach,” and many similar cases. Therefore it says, The Lord will command the blessing to be with you, meaning when you command blessing, then God will command along with you and will concur with your blessing and your command.

And from the fact that it says “in your storehouses,” “in all the undertakings of your hand,” and “He shall bless you in the land,” it can be inferred that separate matters are being taught here, and each is a blessing in its own right. Perhaps they correspond to what is said When you walk, it will guide you (Proverbs 6:22) — in this world; when you lie down, it will watch over you — in the grave; and when you awake, it will speak with you — in the World to Come (Avot 6:9). When it speaks of blessing in your storehouses [asameicha], it alludes to the World to Come, which is hidden [samui] from the eye, for blessing is only found in things that are not measured or counted, but rather hidden from sight (Bava Metzia 42a). This hints that the prosperity of this world is not a complete blessing, because all worldly things are measured and counted, having limit, boundary, and end, and are not eternal. The exception is the reward of the World to Come, which “no eye has seen,” which is eternal and is the essence, as it says Like the dew of Hermon that falls on the mountains of Zion (Psalms 133:3). This is the dew with which the Holy One, Blessed be He, will revive the dead, and it descends upon the mountains of Zion, for there is the gate of heaven and the place for souls to ascend to the Garden of Eden. And it says, For there the Lord commanded the blessing, life everlasting. Because those lives are eternal and everlasting, there is the essence of the blessing, but not in things that are measured and counted, which have an end and limit. Regarding this blessing it says, The Lord will command the blessing to be with you in your storehouses, referring to the World to Come which is hidden from the eye. Therefore it says with you, because this acquisition is with you and attached to you, as the immortality of the soul is not separate from the person but is always with him. This is not the case with the reward of this world, which is sent away from him, as Maimonides wrote [in Shemonah Perakim] that monetary acquisition is external to a person and not attached to him, but rather passes from hand to hand, for it is a wheel that turns in the world. And about this it says, and in all the undertakings of your hand, which is the reward for when you walk in this world.

And afterward he mentioned the middle boundary, which is between these two boundaries, and it is when you lie down in the grave in the land, for the dead of the Land of Israel do not suffer the torment of the grave’s beating and the rolling of tunnels, and they are revived first. And on this he said, and bless you in the land, at the time when you lie in the midst of the land that the Lord your God gives you, for specifically the dead of the Land of Israel are privileged in this. And after mentioning the time of lying in the land, he mentioned the time of rising, and said, the Lord will establish you as a holy people, and this rising is as it is said Behold, you will lie down with your fathers and rise (Deuteronomy 31:16), meaning the rising that will happen in the future, and as is written Your dead shall live, my corpses shall rise; awake and sing, you who dwell in the dust, etc. (Isaiah 26:19).

And if you wish to say, that it is appropriate to arrange these three times in the order of their occurrence, as they are mentioned in the verse When you walk, it shall guide you (Proverbs 6:22), then we can say that what it says The Lord will command the blessing [to be] with you in your storehouses and in all that you undertake (Deuteronomy 28:8) speaks of the reward in this world, according to its simple meaning. And He will bless you in the land refers to when you lie down in the grave. The Lord will establish you for Himself refers to the time of rising for the World to Come.

Another explanation [of] “in your storehouses” refers to storehouses of grain, and because it is the way of storehouses to be preserved by placing in them some of the soil from that place, as Rashi explains on the verse the field of the city that was around it, he put inside it (Genesis 41:48). Therefore, it says here and He will bless you in/with the land. By placing some of the earth into the storehouse, it will be preserved.

And regarding what was written “The Lord will open for you His good treasure,” this refers to that treasure that the Holy One, blessed be He, creates in heaven from your fear of God, for it is His treasure, as it is written, the fear of the Lord is His treasure (Isaiah 33:6). This means [it belongs] to the Holy One, blessed be He, as Rabbi Bachya explained (Exodus 19:5) that every king makes a treasure and a valued possession from something that is not readily available to him at all times, like precious stones. Similarly, “everything is in the hands of Heaven except for the fear of Heaven” (Berakhot 33b). Therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, makes a treasure from the fear of God that is within you. And lest you mistakenly think that God has some need for this treasure, the verse therefore says, The Lord will open for you His good treasure. The Blessed One has no need for that treasure; rather, it is preserved for you, to give you from there all your needs and to sustain you from there. And the Holy One, blessed be He, does not entrust the key of this treasure to a messenger; rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, Himself in His glory holds it in His hand, because this treasure is very precious to Him. This explains what our Sages said in the tractate of Taanit (2a) that “three keys were not handed over to a messenger: [the key] of childbirth, of rain, and of the resurrection of the dead.” Understandably for childbirth and resurrection, this makes sense, because He, blessed be He, is the source of life for all who are born and for the time of resurrection. However, regarding rain, how is it different from other things? Rather, it is because its source is from that treasure of the fear of God, as it is written, He will open for you His good treasure, the heavens, to give rain to your land, because the rain is placed in that chamber where God’s treasure is.

“And it shall be if you do not listen, etc.” All these curses are stated in the singular, while those in the portion of Bechukotai are all stated in the plural, And if you [plural] do not listen, etc. For even among these [curses in Deuteronomy] there are many afflictions directed at the community as a whole, such as “And your heavens that are over your head shall be copper.” And likewise, “The Lord will lead you and your king, etc.” And many others besides these. And what is the reason that those in Torat Kohanim [Leviticus] numbered forty-nine, while these are doubled in number to ninety-eight? Is this not a significant matter?

The reason for this is that those [curses] in Torat Kohanim [Leviticus] were stated before the mutual responsibility that Israel accepted upon themselves with the oath at Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal. Therefore, they came in the number 49, corresponding to the 49 gates of understanding that were created in the world, all of which were given to Moses except for one (Nedarim 38). From this you learn that it is possible for humankind to enter the chamber of the palace of wisdom and understanding through the 49 gates that are open before them. These are the gates of righteousness before God, through which the righteous enter to gain understanding and knowledge of God. But the sinner, who is possessed by a spirit of folly and whose heart is too thick to understand, sees 49 gates of understanding open before him yet does not enter any of them. Therefore, he is struck with 49 [punishments]. Before [the acceptance of] mutual responsibility, it states if you do not listen in the plural form, meaning specifically that only if everyone together becomes corrupt are they deserving of those collective punishments, while the righteous among them would save themselves. However here, after [the acceptance of] mutual responsibility, each person bears both their own sin and the sin of their fellow. Therefore, the punishments come in the number 98, doubled to correspond to one’s own sin and the sin of their fellow. And it states and it will be if you do not listen in the singular form with collective punishments, telling you that even an individual sinner brings curse upon the collective, as it is written Lest there be among you a man or woman… (Deuteronomy 29:17-21) and it is written and they will see the plagues of that land. This teaches that many will bear the sin of the individual, as was the case in the incident of Achan (Joshua 7). Therefore it states if you do not listen — that even an individual who does not listen causes punishments for many, these being the collective punishments mentioned in the passage.

Another explanation: It is because it says “And God has not given you a heart to know, etc. until this day.” And it is written (Proverbs 2:3–4), If you call to understanding, give your voice to discernment; if you seek it like silver and search for it as for hidden treasures. And they expounded on this: why is the number 49 mentioned twice? That is, 49 aspects of purity and 49 aspects of impurity [equivalent to the numerical value of “and his banner” (vediglo) — Jerusalem Talmud Sanhedrin, chapter 4, halakha 2]. And a person cannot come to this investigation except through the understanding of the discerning heart that comprehends the 49 gates of understanding, for it first states if you call to understanding. For understanding is twice as much as wisdom, as the discerning person understands one thing from another. And the verse says that they did not have a heart to know, meaning understanding, until this day. Therefore, specifically on this day they were warned about the 98 curses for not interpreting the Torah in the two times 49 ways. But those curses in Leviticus [Torah of the Priests] were spoken before they became people of understanding, able to understand one thing from another, meaning 49 from 49. Therefore, those curses came only in the number 49, because they should have understood at least the primary concepts that come in the number 49 at the very least.

“The man who is tender among you and very delicate, etc.” It should have said “The man who is tender and delicate among you.” Why did it say among you after tender and very after delicate? And regarding the woman, it says and delicate but does not say “very.” Furthermore, it doesn’t say “the woman who is tender among you” but simply says the tender among you. And concerning the man, it says his eye will be evil against his brother and the wife of his bosom, but regarding the woman, it says her eye will be evil against the man of her bosom and does not mention her brother. And regarding the woman, it says for she will eat them in secret, for lack of everything, but for the man, this is not mentioned. And furthermore, what is the connection between his eye will be evil or her eye will be evil to tenderness and delicacy, since it is established that every pampered person is generous [lit: has a good eye].

The explanation is that the tenderness mentioned is not the tenderness of pleasure, but rather tenderness of heart, for one who is naturally compassionate has a tender heart and does not harden it. Therefore, it says that the man who is tender among you, among all of Israel — even to those distant, he was generous and his heart was tender to show compassion even to you, among all of Israel. But now, his eye will be evil even toward his brother, etc. Similarly, the very delicate man who would eat only delicacies will now eat the flesh of his sons. However, the word among you [bekha] does not fit in this way after and the delicate. Since not every man is by nature a pleasure-seeker like a woman, the text needed to add the word very after and the delicate, to indicate specifically that a man who is very delicate, who exceeds the nature of other men — for him it is noteworthy that such a very delicate man would eat the flesh of his sons. But for an ordinary delicate man, it is not surprising that he would eat his sons’ flesh, because a man is naturally hard-hearted. For a woman, however, it is surprising even for an ordinarily delicate woman, without the qualifier “very,” that she would eat something so disgusting, because women are naturally tender with the tenderness of pleasure, as mentioned afterward, from being delicate and tender. That is, the tenderness of pleasure. But the phrase the tender woman among you refers to the tenderness of being generous, as mentioned above. Since ordinary women are stingy with guests, and this woman departs from the norm of ordinary women — she is compassionate and seems as if she’s not a woman but has the ways of men — therefore it doesn’t say “the tender woman” [without qualification]. And since a man has the power to give of his own to his brother but won’t give, therefore it says his eye will be evil toward his brother. But a woman is under others’ authority and is not permitted to give anything to her brother, therefore it doesn’t say “her eye will be evil toward her brother.” And if you ask, what does it mean when it says her eye will be evil toward the husband of her bosom? How could she not give to her husband when everything belongs to him, and how could she not give to him? To this, it says for she will eat them in secret — she will hide the eating from her husband. But regarding giving to her brother, she fears that the matter will be revealed, and perhaps her brother himself will later reveal it, for nothing remains secret when shared with another.

“If you do not observe to do all the words of this Torah, etc.” It is not pleasing to the Master to say it in such a way that if you do not perform all the words of the Torah, even if you are only missing one of them, then the Lord will make your plagues extraordinary — this would be a decree that the public cannot withstand. And what does it mean when it says to fear the glorious and awesome God? Why are these attributes mentioned here more than in other places? And furthermore, it is difficult based on the Talmud in Tractate Shabbat (138b), where they interpreted from the verse the Lord will make your plagues extraordinary that the Torah is destined to be forgotten from Israel, as it says the Lord will make extraordinary and it is written elsewhere Hence I will again do a marvelous work among this people, a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish (Isaiah 29:14). Is it really the attribute of the Holy One, blessed be He, to lock the gates of wisdom from Israel so that they will rot in their sin?

But certainly the prophet Isaiah speaks of a generation that fulfills the commandments, but not out of fear of God, rather due to some external purpose that compels them, or out of fear of some person who forces them to act against their will. This causes a desecration of God’s name because undoubtedly the Holy One, blessed be He, examines hearts and sees that their actions are not done for its own sake, and He punishes them for their evil thoughts. Those who see them engaged in Torah and commandments will complain against God. Therefore, our Sages said (Berakhot 63): “If you see a generation upon which the Torah is not beloved, withdraw, etc.” They did not say a generation that does not study Torah at all, but rather one that studies, but not for the sake of Heaven. Therefore, the Torah is not inherently and primarily beloved to them, but rather some imagined purpose is beloved to them. And one who is compelled in a matter certainly has no affection for it. In such a generation, restrain your pleasant words; do not let Torah teachings and moral instruction be heard from your mouth to such a perverse generation whose Torah and deeds are merely external and superficial. God will also arrange circumstances to cause the wisdom of the wise men of such a generation to be lost, for there is no satisfaction before Him, blessed be He, in such Torah study and commandment observance.

And about this the prophet said (Isaiah 29:13–14) “Because this people draws near [nigash].” For they are compelled [negusim] and forced in all their deeds and they do not act out of fear of God but out of fear of people who force them to act, and this results in with their mouth and with their lips they honor Me, but their heart is far from Me because the one who compels can only compel regarding speech but not the intention of the heart, for who knows the secrets of their fellow? And their fear of Me is a commandment of men learned by rote. They call their fear of Me what is merely a commandment of men, for it is commanded by people who force them to act and is not a commandment of God. Hence, I will again do a marvelous work among this people, a marvelous work and a wonder; and the wisdom of their wise men shall perish. The explanation is not, God forbid, that the wise men will be lost, for it does not say and the wise men shall perish. Nor is the explanation that wisdom will be lost from the wise men, for it does not say and wisdom shall perish from their wise men. Rather, the explanation is that their wisdom will be lost to the people of the generation, for God will put in their hearts that they should not make their voice heard outside and they will conceal their wisdom in a generation that does not cherish the Torah, so that they will not know and not understand, they will walk in darkness and pine away in their iniquity. Since it is revealed before Him, blessed be He, that even if they were to learn and do, they would not learn and do for its own sake, because anything done under compulsion lacks perfection, for when the compulsion is removed, they will return to their ways. Therefore, God commanded to publicize them and reveal their evil in the congregation about a generation that only acts out of compulsion for some imagined goal such as wealth and honor, to which one lifts up one’s soul, as is the custom in our generation. About this it says, If you do not observe… and it speaks of a generation that observes and learns and does, but not out of fear of God. This is what is meant by If you do not observe to do all the words of this Torah… to fear the glorious and awesome God. That is to say, indeed you observe all the words of the Torah, but not to fear the glorious and awesome God, but rather out of fear of people who compel you, and you substitute and exchange the fear of the glorious and awesome God for the fear of man who is like grass, who will be held in contempt and wrath. For you fear that your deeds will not please people, like the flatterers in our generation who act in order to find favor in their eyes so they will honor them and enrich them. Then the Lord will make your plagues extraordinary — this is the wonderment of Torah — and He will cause men of truth to gather in their Torah’s radiance in a place where it will not be seen or found, and let their portion not be with you, and then all nations will know that God’s judgments are true.