Al HaNissim, Torah and Haftarah Readings for Yom Ha'atzmaut

(12) And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, the Eternal your God will maintain faithfully for you the covenant that God made on oath with your ancestors: (13) God will favor you and bless you and multiply you; God will bless the issue of your womb and the produce of your soil, your new grain and wine and oil, the calving of your herd and the lambing of your flock, in the land that God swore to your fathers to assign to you. (14) You shall be blessed above all other peoples: there shall be no sterile male or female among you or among your livestock. (15) The Eternal will ward off from you all sickness; God will not bring upon you any of the dreadful diseases of Egypt, about which you know, but will inflict them upon all your enemies. (16) You shall destroy all the peoples that the Eternal your God delivers to you, showing them no pity. And you shall not worship their gods, for that would be a snare to you.

(17) Should you say to yourselves, “These nations are more numerous than we; how can we dispossess them?” (18) You need have no fear of them. You have but to bear in mind what the Eternal your God did to Pharaoh and all the Egyptians: (19) the wondrous acts that you saw with your own eyes, the signs and the portents, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm by which the Eternal your God liberated you. Thus will the Eternal your God do to all the peoples you now fear. (20) The Eternal your God will also send a plague against them, until those who are left in hiding perish before you. (21) Do not stand in dread of them, for the Eternal your God is in your midst, a great and awesome God.

​​​​​​​(22) The Eternal your God will dislodge those peoples before you little by little; you will not be able to put an end to them at once, else the wild beasts would multiply to your hurt. (23) The Eternal your God will deliver them up to you, throwing them into utter panic until they are wiped out. (24) God will deliver their kings into your hand, and you shall obliterate their name from under the heavens; no man shall stand up to you, until you have wiped them out. (25) You shall consign the images of their gods to the fire; you shall not covet the silver and gold on them and keep it for yourselves, lest you be ensnared thereby; for that is abhorrent to the Eternal your God. (26) You must not bring an abhorrent thing into your house, or you will be proscribed like it; you must reject it as abominable and abhorrent, for it is proscribed.

(1) You shall faithfully observe all the Instruction that I enjoin upon you today, that you may thrive and increase and be able to possess the land that the Eternal promised on oath to your ancestors. (2) Remember the long way that the Eternal your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, that God might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep God commandments or not. (3) God subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the Eternal decrees. (4) The clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did your feet swell these forty years. (5) Bear in mind that the Eternal your God disciplines you just as a parent disciplines their child. (6) Therefore keep the commandments of the Eternal your God: walk in God's ways and revere God.

(7) For the Eternal your God is bringing you into a good land, a land with streams and springs and fountains issuing from plain and hill; (8) a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs, and pomegranates, a land of olive trees and honey; (9) a land where you may eat food without stint, where you will lack nothing; a land whose rocks are iron and from whose hills you can mine copper. (10) When you have eaten your fill, give thanks to the Eternal your God for the good land which God has given you. (11) Take care lest you forget the Eternal your God and fail to keep God's commandments, rules, and laws, which I enjoin upon you today. (12) When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, (13) and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, (14) beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Eternal your God—who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage; (15) who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock; (16) who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your fathers had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end— (17) and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.” (18) Remember that it is the Eternal your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant that He made on oath with your ancestors, as is still the case.

(32) This same day at Nob

God shall stand and wave his hand.

O mount of Fair Zion! O hill of Jerusalem!

(33) Lo! The Sovereign Eternal of Hosts

Will hew off the tree-crowns with an ax:

The tall ones shall be felled,

The lofty ones cut down:

(34) The thickets of the forest shall be hacked away with iron,

And the Lebanon trees shall fall in their majesty.

(1) But a shoot shall grow out of the stump of Jesse,

A twig shall sprout from his stock.

(2) The spirit of the Eternal shall alight upon him:

A spirit of wisdom and insight,

A spirit of counsel and valor,

A spirit of devotion and reverence for the Eternal.

(3) He shall sense the truth by his reverence for the Eternal:

He shall not judge by what his eyes behold,

Nor decide by what his ears perceive.

(4) Thus he shall judge the poor with equity

And decide with justice for the lowly of the land.

He shall strike down a land with the rod of his mouth

And slay the wicked with the breath of his lips.

(5) Justice shall be the girdle of his loins,

And faithfulness the girdle of his waist.

(6) The wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

The leopard lie down with the kid;

The calf, the beast of prey, and the fatling together,

With a little boy to herd them.

(7) The cow and the bear shall graze,

Their young shall lie down together;

And the lion, like the ox, shall eat straw.

(8) A babe shall play

Over a viper’s hole,

And an infant pass his hand

Over an adder’s den.

(9) In all of My sacred mount Nothing evil or vile shall be done;

For the land shall be filled with devotion to the Eternal

As water covers the sea.

(10) In that day,

The stock of Jesse that has remained standing

Shall become a standard to peoples—

Nations shall seek his counsel

And his abode shall be honored.

(11) In that day, my Lord will apply God's hand again to redeeming the other part of God's people from Assyria—as also from Egypt, Pathros, Nubia, Elam, Shinar, Hamath, and the coastlands. (12) God will hold up a signal to the nations

And assemble the banished of Israel,

And gather the dispersed of Judah

From the four corners of the earth.

(13) Then Ephraim’s envy shall cease

And Judah’s harassment shall end;

Ephraim shall not envy Judah,

And Judah shall not harass Ephraim.

(14) They shall pounce on the back of Philistia to the west,

And together plunder the peoples of the east;

Edom and Moab shall be subject to them

And the children of Ammon shall obey them.

(15) The Eternal will dry up the tongue of the Egyptian sea.—

God will raise God's hand over the Euphrates with the might of God's wind and break it into seven wadis, so that it can be trodden dry-shod. (16) Thus there shall be a highway for the other part of God's people out of Assyria, such as there was for Israel when it left the land of Egypt.

(1) In that day, you shall say:

“I give thanks to You, Eternal One!

Although You were wroth with me,

Your wrath has turned back and You comfort me,

(2) Behold the God who gives me triumph!

I am confident, unafraid;

For Yah the Eternal is my strength and might,

And God has been my deliverance.”

​​​​​​​(3) Joyfully shall you draw water From the fountains of triumph,

(4) And you shall say on that day: “Praise the Eternal, proclaim God's name.

Make God's deeds known among the peoples;

Declare that God's name is exalted.

(5) Hymn the Eternal, For God has done gloriously;

Let this be made known In all the world!

(6) Oh, shout for joy, You who dwell in Zion!

For great in your midst Is the Holy One of Israel.”