Shabbos Parashas Ki Savo - 5780

Shabbos Parashas Ki Savo - 5780

Rabbi Hal Miller

Moshe and the Kohanim, the Levites, spoke to all Israel saying, be attentive and

hear, Israel. This day you have become a people to Hashem your God. [Devarim 27:9]

Our parsha gives us many verses with the same, or nearly the same phrase referring

to "this day". Many of these ocurrences seem rather oddly placed, as though there

is supposed to be some tie between these separate instances. What is it?

In Devarim 26:3, Moshe tells the people to come to the Kohen "who will be in those

days" (yihiyeh bayamim haheim) and to say, "I have told today" (higad'ti hayom).

This does not appear too difficult to understand, that Moshe is explaining what they

must do in the future. But then in 26:16, Moshe tells the people, "This day, God

commands you to perform" (hayom hazeh) in the present tense, meaning that God

is commanding this performance right now, today. But didn't He command all these

mitzvos nearly 40 years earlier at Sinai? It's Moshe speaking now, not God. This is

all the more obvious when we look at 27:1, "Moshe and the elders commanded the

people saying, keep the entire commandment that I command you this day" (hayom).

Verse 28:1 makes it even more clear: "if you listen to the voice of God to perform all

His commandments that I command you this day" (hayom) "then God will..."

The first question we might ask is why the Torah declares that God commanded

anything on this day when Moshe was giving his final address to the people. There

is no indication that God did any speaking at that time. One might make the case

that God was speaking through Moshe's mouth, but that seems a stretch, and

unnecessary, since He did not need to do that at Sinai.

The second question might be why the same word appears in the bikkurim command,

[26:3] that each person would say this to the Kohen about the day they bring their

offering. It doesn't seem to be connected with the events of this last day of Moshe's

life as most of the other occurrences appear to be.

And third, most of the Torah's commandments were given earlier, whether by Moshe

or directly by God. Why are they being referred to here as given on that day?

All of these questions can be answered by our verse, 27:9. "This day you have become

a people to Hashem your God." Rashi says, "Every day the mitzvos shall be in your

eyes as if you had entered the covenant with Him that day." In each of these instances

the word "this day" is applied to the commandments, meaning the Torah as a whole,

that the people must remember and perform them in order to fulfill their position as God's

nation. They committed, one and all, at Sinai with "na'aseh v'nishma", we will do and

we will hear. The use of "this day" shows that in each situation, we are to remember

that we struck a covenant with God, that He is keeping His end of the bargain, and we

must keep ours.