See, and choose

'Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse.' — Deuteronomy 11:26

Two mountains, one valley

Moses stands with the people in the plains of Moab, on the eve of entering the land. And the parashah does not begin with a command, but with a look. Re'eh — see. Before anything is asked of us, our eyes are opened: Moses sets the blessing and the curse before the people, and he points. There, on Gerizim, the blessing will sound; there, on Ebal, the curse. And the people stand in the valley between them.

It is an image to pause at. A whole people, silent in a valley, with a mountain on either side. From the beginning to the end of this parashah our will is addressed with that same emphasis: see, and choose. Why does Moses repeat on this threshold so much of what the people already know? Because what lies before them is not information, but a choice — and a choice wants to be seen before it is made.

But — and here lies the heart of it at once — it is not that we invent the blessing and the curse ourselves and may then freely choose which suits us best. The choice is real, our will is truly addressed; and at the same time it is about on whose terms we choose. Do we choose life as an answer within what God has already given? Or do we determine for ourselves what the standard is? That is the question the two mountains ask us.

In your own eyes, or before His face

A little further on that question sounds very concretely. You shall not do 'every man whatsoever is right in his own eyes' (Deut. 12:8). In the land not everyone will sacrifice at the place that seems good to him; there is one place that the LORD will choose to make His Name dwell there (Deut. 12:5,14). That sounds like a restriction, and it is one — but it is the restriction that actually sets us free. For as long as I determine the place and the standard, I ultimately serve myself. Only when He points out the place can I truly serve Him.

There stands, in one sentence, the whole contrast of the two mountains. The side of the curse is: my own eye becomes the source and the standard; I determine what is good, and God may fit Himself to it. The side of the blessing is: I navigate toward the place the LORD chooses; I live before His face. And let us not misunderstand that — 'living before His face' is no passivity, as if we had nothing left to choose. It is precisely the most awake way of living there is. Not my eye closing, but my eye looking up. Not grabbing at what I can hold for myself, but receiving what is given to me. The difference lies not in more or less effort — it lies in the direction of our heart.

The laws of the parashah, read along this line

Once we see that, the whole parashah opens up. For all the commandments that follow here are variations on that one thing: who is the source — my eye, or His face? The idols must be rooted out (Deut. 12), for an idol is nothing other than a god to one's own measure. The unclean is distinguished from the clean (Deut. 14) — not as arbitrariness, but because a people that belongs to the LORD is His also in the ordinary, in what it eats. The tithes are brought up and shared with the Levite, the stranger, the fatherless and the widow (Deut. 14:28–29): the abundant flows on to the one who has nothing.

And the parashah runs out into the three feasts: Passover, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles, on which all Israel goes up three times a year and appears 'before the LORD' (Deut. 16:16). Notice how the end rhymes with the beginning: what began as a choice between two mountains ends as a feast before His face. And at those feasts stands, time and again, one word: joy. 'Thou shalt rejoice.' The whole movement of the parashah is a movement toward the joy of the one who lives before God's face.

The shmitah and the open hand

In the middle of that movement stands the sabbatical year, the shmitah: the seventh year of release and letting go, the hand opened wide for the poor (Deut. 15). And the striking thing is that God motivates it not with a rule, but with a remembrance. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD your God redeemed you — therefore: open your hand.

Here happens exactly the reversal that carries the whole parashah. Whoever grabs, whoever holds on, whoever closes his hand around what is his — he still lives in Egypt, even though he has left the land. But whoever has tasted that he himself has been redeemed, he can open his hand. The open hand is not first an achievement; it is the bodily form of a heart that has received.

What such an open hand is, I have seen up close in my grandfather, who in the diaconate looked out for people in need — sometimes by their own doing, sometimes caught in it by misfortune. He made no distinction there. And he gave not only the money or the material; when he was with those people, he also spoke of the love and the grace of God, and of the importance of repentance, of returning to Him. So the open hand gives more than bread: it points back to God. And it gives without fiddling — not in such a way that it finally turns to our own advantage after all, but from a heart directed toward Him and not toward itself.

I was still a little boy when my mother cared for my grandmother, who had dementia, and I was allowed to come along. I felt welcome there, even though it sometimes grew hard when my grandmother no longer recognized me. But what has stayed with me most is my grandfather: before praying he first opened his hands at the table, and then folded them. He lived simply, reached ninety-three, and brought all his children and grandchildren prayerfully to the Lord. What he did, he did not because it looked good in his own eyes, but out of love, with open hands — not righteous in his own eyes, but doing what God asked of him. Those opened hands have become for me the explanation of this whole parashah.

And so we may also understand that other word: thou shalt rejoice before the LORD (Deut. 16:11). That is no command that presses on us as a burden — now be happy. It is a promise that becomes reality. Whoever tastes the freedom, whoever truly knows that he is free, he becomes joyful; and that joy is so great that you do not keep it to yourself. You become free-spirited: free in your mind, and bold enough to share that freedom. But then we must let go of what weighs us down. God does not say: keep before your eyes what was done to you, the slavery, the oppression of all those years. He says: I want to give you your freedom. The burden that tired you and cast you down, He takes away — and therefore the joy may even be a command: go so far that you experience it.

The stillness that tries the heart

There is something more in that rest and letting go of the sabbatical year. When we grow still and for a moment can do nothing, what truly lives in our heart comes up — it becomes almost a revelation of who we ourselves are. That is not always pleasant. We can fool ourselves excellently, and the stillness brings that self-deception to the surface.

Now we can push that away. We can silence the stillness and not listen to what comes up. But we may also do it otherwise: open our heart to what God wants to show us. For it is He who 'trieth the hearts and reins' (Ps. 7:9; Jer. 17:10). This is no psychological talk about our self-image — though therapists sometimes make use of it. We read this in Scripture itself. The rest this parashah gives us is not empty; it is a means God places in our hands to come to know ourselves better, in His light.

And see how the two resting-points of this parashah complement each other. The rest of the sabbatical year tries the hand: do I give, or hold back? The rest of the feast, by contrast, fills itself with shared joy before God's face. They are two forms of the same rest — and both lay bare what our heart is directed toward: toward ourselves, or toward Him.

Taught of God

How then do we receive what He wants to teach us? It begins with a gift, not with an achievement: God has given us power to become children of God (John 1:12). And the prophet had already said it, Yeshua quotes it: 'they shall be all taught of God' (Isa. 54:13; John 6:45) — and it is no coincidence that precisely Isaiah 54 is this week the haftarah that belongs with Re'eh. The teaching that matters does not rise up out of ourselves; it is given to us. And therefore the question is not first how clever we are, but what kind of ground our heart is.

Yeshua tells it in the parable of the sower. The same seed falls on the path, on the rocky ground, among the thorns — and in the good soil. Soon, when we have heard or read this reading, will we let it be snatched away by the distraction of every day, by what people say about us, by the events around us? Are we enthusiastic for a while, until the trials come and the thorns choke it again? Or are we that good soil, which opens itself and receives the seed, so that it bears fruit a hundredfold (Mark 4)?

See how sharply Scripture shows this, precisely where people stumble. In John 6 the hearers reject Yeshua with a judgment about His origin: 'is not this... whose father and mother we know?' (John 6:42). They measure Him by what fits in their eyes. And that is exactly the 'in his own eyes' of Deuteronomy 12, now applied to a person. So we too often look — at one another, at the young among us, and at ourselves. It is not about how we think of ourselves; it is about how God sees us. He sees us not on the ground of where we come from, but on the ground of who we may be with Him.

Signs prove nothing

Therefore this parashah also warns, and sharply. If a prophet arises who does a sign or a wonder that even comes true, but leads you away from the LORD — do not run after him (Deut. 13). For that sign is a trial: do you love Him? The coming-true of a sign is never the proof that something is true. And notice how this hooks into that 'in his own eyes'. An impressive sign especially can blind the eye: we are impressed, and so we believe. But the text teaches us to give neither our eye, nor the spectacle, the last word — but the question from whom it comes, and where it leads.

Wonders are also not God's exclusive possession. Whoever looks around honestly sees that in all sorts of religions signs and wonders are reported. The fact that something special happens says in itself nothing. The people in Yeshua's days craved a sign, and He gave them no other than the sign of Jonah (Matt. 12:39). But what sort of sign is that, really? There was perhaps no one present when Jonah was in the fish; there are no images of it, nothing kept or posted. That is not the point either.

What is the point, then? 'Open thine hand wide,' says the Torah, 'and beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart' (Deut. 15). It all belongs together: our way of life, how we deal with one another, how we handle information and the things we do. Yeshua names not the spectacular sign as the test, but the cup of cold water to the one who thirsts (Matt. 10:42). He does not ask how many euros you gave, or how large your bank balance is — each has a different ability in that. He asks whether you have loved. That is no new system or modern ideology; that is the heart of God Himself.

Staying correctable

So we come back to the place the LORD chooses. The parashah shows that it is about serving God as He wills, not as is right in our own eyes. Whoever truly lives before God with an open heart does not find it hard to accept that God Himself determines how He wants to be served. And precisely there it pinches in our time: we see people profiling themselves in all sorts of ways, for attention, to stand in the centre, to serve God on their own terms. Honestly, we all suffer from this — I too — that we often think we know better than the other.

Therefore this is a good spiritual thermometer: do you notice that you are no longer correctable, that you no longer bear contradiction? Then that is the moment to go on your knees and ask God whether He will show you what is not in order. For God also teaches us through what another says to us. We may listen sincerely to one another and help each other stay close to the Word.

It is the Word — and the Logos, the Word made flesh — that lifts us above our own systems and our blind spots, because it is given by God Himself. He makes the blind see, the deaf hear, and the dead live. That we cannot do; and whoever claims that he can do it himself, him you had better stay away from. It is God's to do, not a man's.

Nothing before His face

So we come to the deepest image of this parashah. Behind all these commandments stands the first: 'thou shalt have no other gods before My face' (Ex. 20:3) — nothing between Him and us. Think of a husband and wife who can look each other, as equals, straight in the eye: then nothing stands between them. If you can no longer look each other straight in the eye, you know that something is not right. So God asks it of us too: not that we have something that is good in our own eyes, but that we can look Him straight in the eye.

And that same equality He asks also among us. He teaches us to judge the other not on who he is — on origin, on name, on what we think we know — but on the matter itself. As He too never approaches us on the ground of what we have done, but on the ground of who we may be with Him, as He means us.

And here lies the limit of all our clearing-out. We may be zealous to put away what stands between God and us — and that is important too. But what truly stands between, we cannot take away ourselves. For that we need faith: faith that Yeshua takes away what stands between God and us, and grants forgiveness through His sacrifice. That sacrifice He devised, not we; we did not create it, we may receive it. And so — receiving — we come into a right relationship with the Father.

Yeshua, the perfect answer

See then how He Himself is the perfect answer to the question of the two mountains. When Yeshua reads the Isaiah scroll in the synagogue — 'to preach deliverance to the captives' — He says: 'This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears' (Luke 4:18–21). The freedom of the shmitah, the release of all debt, becomes reality in Him. And He says of Himself that He came down 'not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me' (John 6:38).

There stands the man who lives utterly not in his own eyes, but wholly before the face of His Father. That is the Gerizim side, perfectly embodied. And Peter says that we may walk in His footsteps — not to prove ourselves, but, like Him, to set others in freedom. Choosing the blessing is ultimately: following Him who is the blessing itself.

The small things, and the grace

Where does all this run out? Not into a new list we must tick off. If this parashah were to end in yet more achievement, it would contradict its own message. It runs out into grace — and into the small, simple things by which we stay close to God.

I think again of my grandfather, who in all simplicity laid everything back into the hands of the Lord: beginning the day, opening and closing the meal, reading a piece from God's Word. It costs little time, and yet we sometimes make a whole thing of it. But precisely those small habits — the reading of the parashah, week in, week out — keep us close to the living Word. And it is not about knowing everything intellectually exactly, about knowing the Scripture better than another. It is about God using His Word as a living word, with which He speaks to our heart. Through it we are again and again brought to a halt; through it He speaks. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that God has spoken (Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4).

Re'eh. See, and choose. And the choosing turns out above all to be a receiving: every day anew, with open hands, before His face, abiding in Yeshua. Let us stretch out toward that, brothers and sisters — not in our own eyes, but because He has spoken it.