The Firstfruit and the Honest Weight

You come into the land

There is a moment in this parashah where everything begins. You come into the land. The land you were promised. And the first thing you do is not build your house. Not fence off your field. Not count what is yours. The first thing you do is fill a basket with the first of the fruit of the land — and carry it to the priest.

“And it shall be, when thou art come in unto the land… that thou shalt take of the first of all the fruit of the earth…” — Deuteronomy 26:1-2

You set that basket down before the LORD. And then you say something. You confess where you come from. “A Syrian ready to perish was my father.” A wandering father. A man without land, without ground under his feet. And then Egypt. The oppression. The hard labour. The crying out.

So it does matter where you come from. Your history is not wiped away. You say it out loud, before God’s face: this is my past. This is what I went through. This is what people did to me.

But — and here it turns — that history does not determine your fruit. Look closely. The fruit is there. The basket is full. And that fruit does not hang on what happened long ago. It hangs on one thing: that you have entered the land, and that you bring it all back to God.

That is the beauty of this parashah. You may carry your whole past right up before God’s face. And then you say: this is what I went through — but now I stand here. Now I come with the fruit. And I confess that You are my God. I confess that You are my King.

Received, not grasped

And then you bow. You set the firstfruits on the ground, and you bow before the LORD your God. And in that moment, with your face to the ground, you realise something.

This I did not grasp. This I did not pull off myself. Not arranged on my own. Not forced up out of the ground with my own hands. This I received. Out of His hand.

That is the heart of everything we read today. There are only two ways to handle a gift. You can grasp it — clutch it as if it were yours, as if you had made it. Or you can receive it — with open hands, knowing it was given to you.

The firstfruit teaches us the second. For what do you do with a firstfruit? You give it away. The very first, the best, the top of the harvest — that you do not keep. That you bring. And with it you say, without words: I believe that after this firstfruit, more will come. I dare to give the best away, because I trust the Giver.

And then comes a command you almost do not expect.

“…and thou shalt rejoice in every good thing which the LORD thy God hath given unto thee…” — Deuteronomy 26:11

Rejoice. Be glad. It is not a suggestion. It is a command. Rejoice over what you have received. For look what happens further on to a people that is not glad. That is the root of the whole curse in this parashah:

“Because thou servedst not the LORD thy God with joyfulness, and with gladness of heart, for the abundance of all things…” — Deuteronomy 28:47

Read that again. Not because they had too little. For the abundance. They had everything. And they served without joy. They grasped what they were given, instead of receiving it. And that is where it begins to go wrong.

What you receive, you hand out

But that fruit is not for you alone. Look again at that verse about the joy. Something is added to it.

“…thou, and the Levite, and the stranger that is among you.” — Deuteronomy 26:11

The joy is not complete as long as you sit at the table alone. The Levite must be there — he has no land of his own. The stranger must be there — he stands outside. What you have received from God, you receive in order to hand out.

That is how it was always meant. Israel did not receive the commandments to lock itself in. Israel received the law to be a people that is a blessing to the other nations. To show something of God’s love — precisely by living the way He meant.

And understand me well: that law is not given so we may condemn one another. It does not say that. The law judges sin — it does, and we need not talk our way around it. But that is not why we received it. We receive the law to be a blessing. To gain wisdom. To be taught. So that God’s Spirit may speak on the ground of the written Word — Word and Spirit, bound together.

For that is what we love to do, in our Western thinking: pull everything apart. Word here, Spirit there. Head here, heart there. Analyse, split, file into boxes. But that is not how God made us. He made us one. Of course you have a heart, a soul, a body — but God does not speak to your heart alone, or to your body alone. He speaks to you. To a human being. To a beloved child. As a son, as a daughter.

And think of what Yeshua did. He took the bread. He gave thanks. He blessed it. And then — He broke it. God gives His blessing, and He breaks it. And so He makes us too into a piece of His body. Blessed, broken, handed out. We may be part of His body, to be handed out to someone else.

That image we must hold on to. For that is exactly what happens in Deuteronomy 26 to 29. All those commandments teach us to look this way. To do our ordinary, daily things the way God means them. To be of service. To set something apart. To share with the Levite and with the stranger.

The honest weight

And when it comes to that ordinary, daily life — let me tell you something.

Twenty years ago I worked for a packaging company. We packed nuts and dried fruit. And I did it with passion. I loved that work. A natural product, something truly good, and it was a challenge to push the production up — setting the machines, keeping the statistics, knowing exactly what you were doing.

Because you don’t normally stop to think about it. That little pack of nuts on the supermarket shelf — someone spent care on it. You don’t see that. But now and then you’ll spot a small mark on such a pack. A letter e. The e-mark. And it stands for something: that the packaging line is checked on weight. That you are not buying something you know is short.

We never had an e-mark. My employer always told me: “You just make sure the minimum weight is in there.” When the machine ran, we checked: is the minimum in it? Yes? Then it could run. If a pack was now and then too light — maybe a raisin was caught under the scale — it simply went back. Torn open, weighed again, filled again.

And do you know why he wanted that? He said: “I have a good product. A quality product. I want the minimum that is printed on the pack to actually be in it. And it may be a touch more. I earn enough. I want my customer to get something good.” And I truly believe he was blessed in it. The customers kept coming back. People saw it was good. Others wanted us to pack for them too. And the company grew.

Until one day a man came. And this is really the point. A man came from the e-mark. And let me say this clearly beforehand: I have nothing against the e-mark. Nothing at all. Applied well, it is a fine system — you know that one pack weighs a touch more and another a touch less, and that this is honestly recorded and certified in law. There is nothing wrong with it.

But this man was a salesman. And he wanted to sell his certification. And what does a salesman do? He looks for your weak spot. He looks for where he can reach you, so that you feel you really need his product. And one of the things he said was this: you simply take the average. Big outliers you throw out, and the rest may go in the box. And so — he said — now and then there might be a bit less in a pack. No harm. As long as the average is right. Then over the long run you’d make a margin, because you’d give away less product.

And do you see what happens there? It is no longer about the system. The system was good. It is about what slides in underneath. About the question: does it hold up when no one is looking? Is there enough in the pack that no one weighs?

For there he touches exactly what this parashah raises. Read along with what happens on Mount Ebal. Twelve times a curse rings out — and listen to what they are always about:

“Cursed be he that removeth his neighbour’s landmark… Cursed be he that maketh the blind to wander out of the way…” — Deuteronomy 27:17-18

Again and again it is about things that stay hidden. A boundary stone shifted a metre in the night. A blind man steered the wrong way — who cannot see it himself. Hidden sins. Things by which you think to gain an advantage over another, or think to slip out from under your own responsibility, because no one notices. And God says: I notice.

That is why He asks of us an honest weight. And that is nothing new. In the Middle Ages there were already sheriffs who came to check the weights. And today still: go to fill up your car, and there is an inspection label on the pump — checked, correct, you get honest value for your money. In quality management — that was my trade — you appoint auditors: people who probe and search whether it is done honestly. We live in a state of law in which many biblical principles have been carried along. We expect it to be right. You do not take a scale to the supermarket. You assume it is good.

And God asks: be that honest weight yourself. Also in the hidden. Precisely in the hidden.

Two sides of the same coin

And here it becomes beautiful. For this parashah shows two sides of the same coin.

The one side: be honest in what you ask and in what you give. An honest weight, an honest measure, an honest price. The other side: give carefully. Tithe. And that is not a matter of tossing a tenth into the offering now and then — here, take it. No. It asks care. Just as much care as that honest weight.

See how precisely this parashah speaks of it. You set the tithes apart. You organise it. You almost budget it. And then you say something again before God’s face: I have brought it out, I have kept nothing back, I have given it to the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (Deuteronomy 26:12-13).

Do you see it? The same care. Just as my employer wanted not a gram too little in the customer’s pack — so carefully may we be in what we give back to God and to whoever needs it. Not on impulse. Not when it happens to suit. But with attention. With care. For it is holy.

And that is exactly where the practice of our faith and the practice of every day come together. Many of us know full well that sharing belongs to it. But do we stop to think? Do we do it carefully? Or does it slip away between all the other things?

Where it all leads

Do you know what is deepest about this parashah? At the end stands a line that sharpens everything:

“…yet the LORD hath not given you an heart to perceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear, unto this day.” — Deuteronomy 29:4

Even the heart to understand all this — is a gift. Even the eyes to see that you must receive instead of grasp — those you are given. You cannot take them. You can only receive them.

And that is exactly where the haftarah begins to sing:

“Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee.” — Isaiah 60:1

Arise. Shine. Not: make light. Be lit — let the light that falls on you be reflected back. You are the moon, not the sun. You receive, and you pass it on.

And if you read on into the Gospel, you see it happen. Yeshua begins His work in Galilee, and it says:

“The people which sat in darkness saw great light…” — Matthew 4:16

The eyes that according to Deuteronomy 29 were still shut — they open. The heart that did not yet understand — it comes to understand. Not because we grasped it. But because the Light came to us.

The King comes Himself

And look now how precisely Matthew tells this Gospel passage. It fits the haftarah and our parashah without a seam. For here too Someone crosses a border. Yeshua enters new territory — and Matthew says at once that it happens to fulfil a prophecy. So he draws the line: it is one Word, one story, from Moses to the prophets to the Messiah. The unity of Scripture, visible here in one movement.

And where Deuteronomy 29 said the eyes did not yet see, the ears did not yet hear, the heart did not yet understand — there Yeshua rises as the One who opens the eyes. He makes the blind see. He makes the deaf hear. People come to faith, and through that faith they receive healing. Do you see? They do not grasp. They receive. Just like the man with his basket.

And His first word is: repent. Return to God. Yeshua is the One who makes the teshuvah — the return — possible and visible; He is Himself the way back. Return, He says, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And do you see the image? In our parashah the fruits of the land are gathered upon entering the Kingdom — there where the King is, in the land He promised. And Yeshua goes to gather those fruits too. He calls fishers of men. People who gather. He brings in His harvest.

And then something beautiful happens, something you could almost miss. Do you remember the confession with which it all began? “A Syrian ready to perish was my father” — and then we were in Egypt under the yoke. Sickness, pain, oppression: that was Egypt. And now read what stands in the Gospel:

“And his fame went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments… and he healed them.” — Matthew 4:24

Syria. The same word as in that old confession. And from there they bring the sick and the suffering to Him — the same pain, the same distress that sounded in that word about Egypt. But now there is Someone who sets it right. The man in Deuteronomy had to go to the priest with his basket. Yeshua need not — He is Himself the Priest. And He heals them.

This is what we look for as we look toward the feasts that are coming. Not that we climb up to God. But that the King comes down Himself. The King who comes into the field. Who comes to dwell among people — in the midst of the sickness, the pain and the ordinary work of every day. He comes into the field, and He gathers His fruit.

So the circle closes. You come into the land with a basket full of fruit, and you bow, and you say: this I have received. And the King comes into that same field, and He gathers us as His fruit. And out of that — out of that receiving, out of that being gathered — comes everything else. The joy. The honesty in the hidden. The careful sharing. The whole of daily life, down to the smallest pack of nuts.

For this is what God asks of us and promises us in one breath:

“…and to make thee high above all nations which he hath made, in praise, and in name, and in honour; and that thou mayest be an holy people unto the LORD thy God…” — Deuteronomy 26:19

A holy people. Set apart. Not to lock ourselves in — but to be a blessing. To be blessed, broken, and handed out to a world that does not yet know the light.

So be careful with what God entrusts to you. Careful with the weight. Careful with the tithes. Careful with the small thing no one sees. For all that you have, you have received. And what you have received — you may hand out.