Pensée juive sur Le Deutéronome 7:15

When the intelligent man will look and contemplate how the Creator tests people with the troubles of this world we mentioned, and that he was saved from them, and spared from their tumults, even though he deserves them - his praise will increase for the favors of G-d on him, and he will hurry to repent and seek forgiveness for his past sins and iniquities which the Creator has concealed for such a long time, and he will run to cling to the service of the Creator, out of fear of them (the punishments he deserves) and so will avert them, as written "If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the L-ord your G-d... I will put none of these diseases upon you, which I have brought upon the Egyptians" (Shemos 15:26), and "the L-ord will remove from you all illness, and all of the evil diseases of Egypt which you knew, He will not set upon you, but He will lay them upon all your enemies" (Devarim 7:15), and one of our early pious ones would say to his disciples: "see, the serpent does not kill, rather it is sin that kills" (Berachos 33a), and David, peace be unto him, said: "You shall tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the serpent shall you trample under foot. Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him" (Tehilim 91:13).

I would say that our present state of affairs corresponds closely to the above situation, and that is why I opened with this parshah — to draw the following parallel: Our ancestors did not witness the chastisements of the L-rd to the degree that we have witnessed them. In their days the land was inhabited and at peace, and life followed its natural course. The negev and the shefelah were inhabited, and, together with this, "their little finger was thicker than our thighs." And if there were a few among them who were enticed by the vanities of the world this would not be cause for surprise. But we have been witness to the chastisements of our G-d for thirteen years now, a complete reversal of the natural order of things. For the evil [the Black Plague] descended in that year [1348] upon most of the inhabitants of the earth, bringing upon them unusual afflictions which it is impossible to attribute to the workings of nature. Every enlightened individual must acknowledge them as "the finger of G-d." For the sicknesses common to man may be attributed to his nature, unlike strange, exotic illnesses, which must be regarded as the punishment of G-d to man in His constant surveillance of him. And this is intimated in this parshah, as it is written (Deuteronomy 7:15): "And the L-rd will remove from you every illness, and all of the sore afflictions of Egypt that you knew He shall not place upon you, but He will place them upon all of your foes." "Every illnesses" refers to ailments common to man. In respect to these it is written "And the L-rd will remove from you every illness," their being almost endemic to man in the proneness of his nature to them, whereas in respect to the afflictions of Egypt "remove" is not stated, those afflictions not arising from man's nature so as to necessitate their being removed; He assures them rather that they will not be placed upon them. The affirmation is to be inferred from the negation — for after having been assured that even the conventional illnesses would be removed, they really required no assurance that those sore afflictions to which men are not naturally prone would not be visited upon them. But assurance and intimation are herein combined, the implication being that if they do not heed the words of the L-rd these afflictions will be visited upon them. The language of Scripture, then, agrees with what is dictated by intellect — that sore, exotic afflictions are not the adventitious byproducts of man's nature, but rather "the finger of G-d." And it is such afflictions that we witnessed with our own eyes, reaching out and engulfing all in that year, until in the space of just one year the world underwent a more radical change than it had ever undergone previously in the course of two hundred years. And in many places it happened as it happened with Dathan and Aviram, many men — they and all that was theirs — being completely wiped out, until their inheritance reverted to their foes. I am not saying that this happened because of their sins, but that it happened. And we, too, in these days and in this time are being constantly alarmed by reports that in lands not at all distant from ours there are happening things of the kind which happened in our land and which we witnessed with our own eyes. This being so, how can our evil inclination and our deceitful imagination make any claim upon us? How can they arouse us to rebellion and drive us from domicile in the inheritance of the L-rd? Is it not our own eyes that have seen the chastisements of the L-rd our G-d and His strong hand exhorting us not to fall prey to false, temporal vanities? Is it not easy for us to return to the Holy One Blessed be He with a whole heart, as dictated by our intellect, unimpeded by any hindrance or deterrent, untrammeled by the Satan or by any evil intercessor?