ויקרא משה, Moses called, etc. It is conceivable that as a result of the conquest of the lands of Sichon and Og the Israelites were scattered over a large area at that time. This made it necessary for Moses to call them together. Alternatively, up until this point Moses had addressed only the men; now that he wanted to review the Ten Commandments he made sure that everybody would be present. At the original revelation the entire nation including children had also been present.

ה׳ אלוקינו כרת עמנו ברית בחרב, "The Lord our G'd concluded a covenant with us at Chorev." Moses did not spell out the nature of this covenant. Was it the covenant to keep the Torah as is written in Exodus 24,8: "here is the blood of the covenant which G'd concluded with you concerning all these matters?" Or was it the covenant mentioned in Exodus 34,10: "here I am concluding a covenant in the presence of your whole nation?" In that connection our sages explained that G'd undertook not to allow His presence to rest on the nations of the world. Logic suggests that this is the covenant Moses spoke about at this time, and that he hinted at this when he said: "the Lord G'd concluded a covenant with us." This implied that He would be our G'd exclusively and that He would not conclude a covenant with any other nation. What follows in our chapter is a repetition of this covenant. The whole paragraph then was intended as a compliment to Israel from G'd. Verse 3 would confirm all this.

לא את אבותינו כרת ה׳ את הברית הזאת, "G'd did not conclude this covenant with our fathers, etc." Rashi adds the word לבד. He means that G'd concluded the covenant "not only with our fathers." This is problematical as there was no need for the Torah to write this seeing it had already referred to the covenant G'd concluded "with us" in verse 1. According to my explanantion that the covenant mentioned in verse one refers to the covenant in Exodus 34,10 that G'd would not allow His presence to rest on the Gentile nations, we can understand the sequence of these verses as follows: "G'd did not specifically conclude this covenant with our fathers as we do not find this spelled out anywhere. As a result the reference in verse one to G'd having concluded a covenant with us was not sufficient as the word עמנו, "with us," does not preclude G'd from concluding similar covenants with other nations. Moses therefore went on record in our verse that the covenant he is talking about is indeed an exclsuive covenant between G'd and Israel. The principal message of the verse is that the present generation was given an assurance which even their fathers had not been given.

כלנו חיים, "all of us who are alive." How could Moses say this? All the people with whom G'd had made the original covenant were dead already as they had died in the desert? Besides, many of the people who faced Moses at this time had not even been born at the time G'd concluded the original covenant with the Jewish people! While one could answer that what Moses said applied only to part of the people, this would be a forced explanation. Besides, what news did Moses convey to people by telling them they were all alive? Did they not know this without having to be told?

Perhaps we may say that Moses emphasised that all of them who had heard the voice of G'd at the time of the revelation at Mount Sinai and who were alive at this time had survived that experience. This in spite of the fact that G'd had spoken to them out of fire, etc, i.e. that the experience had been extremely overpowering. The words כלנו חיים therefore must be understood as belonging to what follows in verse 4 rather than to what preceded it.

אנכי עומד בין ה׳ וביניכם, "I was standing between the Lord and between you, etc." This verse means that for part of the Ten Commandments G'd spoke with the people face to face, whereas during part of the Ten Commandments He spoke to them through an intermediary. The reason G'd employed an intermediary for part of the Ten Commandments was not His unwillingness to speak to the people directly, but to their fear of dying.

ולא עליתם בהר לאמור. "and you did not ascend the mountain, saying." This means that G'd forbade you to ascend the mountain because of His wanting to say: אנכי ה׳ אלוקיכם, "I am the Lord your G'd, etc."

שמור את יום השבת, "Observe the Sabbath day, etc." Rosh Hashanah 27 teaches that the formula שמור את יום השבת (in Exodus 20) and the formula שמור את יום השבת (here) were articulated simultaneously. According to this interpretation we can understand the words כאשר צוך in our verse as a reference to the word זכור in the first report of the Ten Commandments in the Book of Exodus. We find in the Mechilta on the parallel verse in Exodus that the word שמור was enunciated later. [The Mechilta there quotes other examples of laws which were articulated by G'd simultaneously, i.e. by His using two words to describe them, and which also had to be written separately due to our limited ability to reproduce words articulated simultaneously as such. Ed.] We must ask why the Torah did not write the words זכור and שמור sequentially in Exodus instead of waitng till here to write this word. Perhaps the Torah intentionally separated these words in order that we should not think that the latter expression refers to the time during which the זכור aspect of the Sabbath applies. We might have understood the two words to mean: "remember to observe the Sabbath (at a certain time)." By separating the apparance of these two words the Torah conveyed that it spoke about two separate commandments one of which applies at the beginning of the Sabbath, the other at its conclusion. It is even possible that G'd Himself only uttered the word זכור; however, intelligent people realised that this word implied both the meaning associated with the word זכור and the meaning associated with the word שמור.

וזכרת כי עבד היית, "remember that you used to be a slave, etc." These are Moses' words. Moses meant that the Sabbath legislation also contains an element which relates it to the Exodus. When someone rests and does not have to perform labour for someone else he will feel that it was G'd who enabled His people to rest up from all its problems and he will concentrate on gladly accepting the laws given by G'd who took the people out of that particular bondage. Pessachim 117 teaches that these words are the reason we have to mention the Exodus from Egypt in the benediction over the wine on the Sabbath.

You may ask why he [Moses] omitted the reason for the Sabbath that God said in the first instance of the Ten Commandments, "that in six days..." [and on the seventh day of creation God rested] (Exodus 20). This reason is the essential reason for this commandment, not the reason of the obligation [given in this verse]. Moses said this reason [based on] faith in the reason for the commandment. According to what our sages said and wrote elsewhere, the Exodus from Egypt illuminates faith in creation of the world. He [Moses] wrote saying "Remember...and God took you out...with a strong hand and an outstretched arm..." since there you will see that He is the Master of All and from there it will be evident to you the reason stated in the first instance of the Ten Commandments, "that in six days...".

את הדברים האלה דבר השם, "These are the words which G'd spoke, etc." Moses omitted to say "all these words," seeing that some of the words which appeared here were not G'd's words but his own, such as when he said: "as G'd commanded you, etc."

ושמענו ועשינו, "when we hear (them) we will carry (them) out." The reason the word ושמענו is introduced by the conjunctive letter ו is that the people had asked Moses to be their intermediary when receiving G'd's commandments. They explained that initially, in Exodus 19, 9 they had asked to hear the words from the teacher i.e. G'd Himself, instead of merely from the pupil, i.e. Moses. However, in light of their deathly fear they reversed themselves concerning who they were willing to hear the words from. They now made Moses their intermediary. The letter ו in the word ושמענו is the allusion to their previous attitude in the matter. They added the word ועשינו "and we will do" to indicate that the manner of their מצוה performance would be as if they had heard the instructions from G'd Himself instead of merely from Moses, His intermediary.

היטיבו כל אשר דברו, "they are correct in everything they have said." G'd approved that they accepted Moses as their prophet in the matter and that they agreed to carry out the prophet's instructions. Concerning this undertaking by the Israelites G'd added that He wished the Israelites would maintain their present spiritual high indefinitely. Our sages in Avodah Zarah 5 quote Moses as criticising the people as being ungrateful; they should have seized that moment to ask G'd to convert this wish into something permament and to ensure that they would maintain their lofty spiritual niveau for all times. If the Israelites had done this at that time, subsequent debacles such as that of the spies and the uprising of Korach could all have been avoided.

ליראה אותי ולשמר את כל מצותי, "to revere Me and to observe all My commandments." What is the reason that revering G'd does not include keeping His commandments so that the Torah had to mention it separately? Perhaps the reason is that fear of G'd resulted in a negative phenomenon when it became the cause that led to the making of the golden calf. When the people were afraid that Moses would not return, they were afraid that they no longer had an intermediary to whom G'd could speak to on their behalf. They feared that as a result G'd would speak to them directly as He had done during the first two of the Ten Commandments. At that time they had feared for their lives and begged for an intermediary. To forestall such a situation they hastened to make the golden calf as a substitute for the missing intermediary Moses. Tanchuma on Parshat Ki Tissa has told us that the calf actually spoke, thus lending credence to the belief that it was an intermediary. This is why G'd was specific, saying to revere Me as well as to observe My commandments. Henceforth reverence for G'd must lead only to observance of the commandments.

למען ייטב להם, "in order that He will be good to them, etc." This means that the words: "who would give" were not said in order to describe the usefulness of such an attitude by the Israelites for G'd, but in order for the Israelites to reap the benefits of G'd's love which is the result of listening to His prophet.

ואתה פה עמד עמדי, "As for you, stand here with Me, etc." The reason for this is that seeing that up until now the Israelites had not made Moses their intermediary to accept the commandments on their behalf, G'd told Moses to stand next to Him so that He could speak to him and tell him all the commandments which he was to teach the people. Perhaps the meaning of the verse is that as far as G'd is concerned as soon as He had informed Moses of the commandments He considered the Israelites as having received these commandments. Legally, this works as follows: Supposing a woman authorises someone to accept a marriage proposal on her behalf she is considered legally marrried as soon as her delegate has received the necessary gift and documentation. The delegate's "hand" is considered as equivalent to her own. In similar fashion, once Moses, Israel's delegate, had received the commandments, Israel was committed to observe them. This is what G'd meant when He said: "and I will say them to you." He added: "you will teach them and they will carry them out."

בכל הדרך…למען תחיון, "all along the way …in order that you may live, etc." The meaning of תחיון וטוב לכם והארכתם means "long life on earth." The additional promise of וטוב לכם refers to the good which they will experience in the hereafter. The meaning of the word והארכתם ימים בארץ is that the Israelites will not ever be exiled from their land.

According to the view of Rabbi Yaakov in Kidushin 39 that there is no reward in this life for the commandments we observe, it appears that even this Rabbi concedes that if someone is a totally righteous person who has observed all the commandments which it is possible for him to observe, he will experience some reward even in this life. The kind of person who was the subject of Rabbi Yaakov's statement is the one whose credits outweigh his debits. The Talmud on the folio quoted supports Rabbi Yaakov's view and adopts it as normative.

From the above you may conclude that only people who are guilty of sins,- though these are outweighed by their good deeds-qualify for the statement in the Talmud that such people will experience afflictions in this life. The reason for this is so that such people will not have to experience afflictions in the hereafter for unatoned sins. When a person is not guilty of such sins he obviously will enjoy the benefits this life has to offer. The Torah alludes to this when writing that "if you walk along the whole way" which G'd has commanded. Such a person will enjoy both the hereafter and the good life in this world. The Torah underlines this by not just writing: "you will enjoy long life," but by writing: "you will enjoy long life on the land you are going to inherit." Had the Torah not added these extra words I would have interpreted the reference to long life as referring to the kind of life which is long by definition, i.e. the hereafter.