Kohi ve-otzem yadi

(11) Take care lest you forget your God יהוה and fail to keep the divine 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 your God יהוה —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 ancestors 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 your God יהוה who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case.

(17) And you think, ‘‘My strength and the power of my hand have acquired this wealth for me.’’ (18) Recall Adonoy, your God, for it is He Who gives you counsel to acquire wealth, in order to establish His covenant that He swore to your forefathers this day.

(1) AND THOU SHALT REMEMBER THE ETERNAL THY G-D, FOR IT IS HE WHO GIVETH THEE POWER TO GET WEALTH. It is known that Israelites are mighty men, valiant men for the war because they were likened to lions and to a ravenous wolf, and they vanquished the Canaanite kings in battle. Therefore he said, “If you should think, ‘my power and the might of my hand hath gotten me this wealth,’ you should remember G-d Who brought you forth from Egypt where you had no power or might of hand at all. You should further remember that He provided all your needs for you in the wilderness, where you had nought in the power of thy hand to survive. If so [concerning] this wealth which you have won by your strength as well, [you should bear in mind that] it is G-d Who gave you the power [that was necessary for you] to accumulate the wealth; and if you forget G-d He will consume thy flesh and thy body and you will perish, just as [the nations before you] perished, for all that forsake the Eternal shall be consumed. And then Moses reverted to bring yet another proof that you should not think ‘my power and the might of my hand etc.,’ and he said Hear, O Israel a true word from my mouth, that these nations are greater and mightier than thyself, and how will you vanquish them in battle? Besides, they have cities great and fortified up to the high heavens, and how will you capture them? Moreover, there is a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom thou knowest from the spies who saw them, and of whom thou hast heard from days of yore that no man can stand up against them. And when all this becomes clear to you, you should realize and believe from this day on that you will be unable to go over [the Jordan to do battle] before them at all until you know in your heart that the Eternal thy G-d is He Who goeth over before thee as a devouring fire, and He will destroy them, and He will bring them down. It is not the power and the might of hand He gave you, but the hand of G-d that did this to the mighty ones among them. This is an allusion to what is stated, and the Eternal cast down great stones from heaven upon them, and similarly it is said there, And there was no day like that before it or after it, that the Eternal hearkened unto the voice of a man; for the Eternal fought for Israel. The reference to the fortified cities he mentioned here is an allusion to the wall of Jericho that fell before the ark. This is what David said, For not by their own sword did they get the Land in possession, neither did their own arm save them; but Thy right hand, and Thine arm, and the light of Thy countenance, because Thou wast favorable unto them — the right hand of G-d and His [left] arm fought against their mighty ones, and the light of His countenance that was favorable unto them [the Israelites] gave them power over those who were slain in battle. Scripture refers to this in saying further, And I destroyed the Amorite before them, whose height was like the height of the cedars, and he was strong as the oaks; yet I destroyed his fruit from above, and his roots from beneath. He [the prophet Amos] singled out the Amorite because it was the mightiest [nation] among them, and it was G-d Who destroyed it.

(1) ואמרת בלבך כחי ועוצם ידי, “and you will say in your heart: “My strength and the power of My hand, etc.” Moses says that possibly your arrogance will become such that you ascribe your affluence to your horoscope. The word כחי would refer to influences from outer space, astrological in nature, the word עצם ידי would refer to sub-terrestrial influences, demons resident below earth. (1) וזכרת את יהוה, “You shall remember the Lord your G’d.” He alone is the source of your good fortune because He has given you the strength to perform deeds of valour. In other words: “He handed over to you the power to overcome negative horoscopic influences, influences which G’d had created to perform His will in the terrestrial regions. None of these constellations have any power or influence over you and your fate. This is what our sages meant when they said אין מזל לישראל, “Israel is not subject to horoscopic influences” (Shabbat 156). This is also meaning of the end of our verse: “in order to maintain His covenant which He swore to your forefathers as of this day.” G’d, in His first appearance to Avraham, had positioned him above the stars, making him look down at the stars to teach him that his descendants’ fate would not be governed by such stellar constellations. (Compare Genesis 15,5 and Bereshit Rabbah 44,14 on that verse). The expression הבט in that verse always implies “looking down on something.” (2) Although, technically, the wording there is in the singular, whatever G’d said to Avraham at the time was intended to cover the Jewish people as a whole not just the individual fate of Avraham. Our paragraph also commences with the singular but continues by using the plural אשר תשמרון לעשות. You might argue that Moses addressed every single Israelite making his message relevant for all future generations and this accounts for the address in the singular, and the meaning of the verse would be: ‘’if you will say in your heart that the wealth and affluence have been decreed from heaven for each Israelite individually rather than for the people collectively.” You would base this on the saying that: “there are no horoscopic forces which determine the fate of the Israelites collectively, though there are such forces at work determining the individual fate of the nation.” You might cite the statement that “economic success, the ability to have children, and the control over life and death do not depend on individual merit but on mazzal” (Moed Katan 28). This consideration might prompt you to ascribe your success to כחי “my personal mazzal.” In fact you would ascribe your success to a combination of the forces at work in outer space and those beneath the earth; Moses tells you here that you must not commit such an error but you must “individually remember (וזכרת את יהוה אלו-היך), the Lord your G’d,” i.e. He gave you individually the strength to accomplish what you thought was decreed for you by the stars. Whereas G’d may have used intermediaries to channel success your way, were it not for the power He personally equipped you with, all the stars in the world would not have the power to influence your well being by one iota. This is what Solomon had in mind when he said in Proverbs 22,2: “Rich man and poor man meet; the Lord made them both.” He meant that success and failure are occurrences; they encounter each other due to the motions of the planets in orbit, not because the people who appear to possess it have acquired it due to their superior intelligence or have failed to acquire it due to their inferior intelligence. Neither is the reason for acquisition of wealth due to more sustained effort by one party than the other. Having assimilated this lesson you might say that seeing that success is not due to effort why make any effort at all? It is all the doing of the horoscopic constellations!” To ensure that you do not reason in this fashion Solomon added: “the Lord makes them both.” Everything is the result of Divine decree, even if it sometimes appears as if it is accidental or due to independent power residing in stellar forces.