Myśl Żydowska do Powtórzonego Prawa 28:69

When we delve into our historical existence we come to an important realization regarding our ‎‎‎Weltanschauung. The Torah relates that the Holy One concluded two Covenants with ‎Israel. ‎One Covenant was made in Egypt. “And I shall take you unto Me for a people, and I will be ‎to you a ‎God” (Exodus 6:7). The second Covenant was at Mount Sinai. “And he [Moses] took the ‎book of ‎the covenant … and he said: ‘Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord made with ‎you in ‎agreement with all these words’” (Exodus 24:7-8). (The third Covenant, in the Book ‎of ‎Deuteronomy (28:69), is identical in content and purpose to the Covenant of Sinai.)⁹ What is ‎the ‎essence of these two Covenants? It appears to me that this question was already answered at ‎the ‎beginning of our essay. Just as Judaism distinguished fate from destiny in the realm of ‎personal ‎individuality, so it also differentiated between these two concepts in the sphere of our ‎national-‎historical existence. The individual is tethered to his nation with bonds of fate and chains ‎of ‎destiny. In accordance with this postulate, one can say that the Covenant of Egypt was a ‎Covenant ‎of Fate, and the Covenant of Sinai was one of destiny.‎

When these ideas spread, and were considered as true, God, in His great mercy for us, intended to remove this error from our minds, and to protect our bodies from trouble; and therefore desired us to discontinue the practice of these useless actions. He gave us His Law through Moses, our teacher, who told us in the name of God, that the worship of stars and other corporeal beings would effect that rain would cease, the land be waste, and would not produce anything, and the fruit of the trees would wither; calamities would befall the people, their bodies would be deformed, and life would be shortened. These are the contents of “the words of the covenant which God made” (Deut. 28:6-9). It is frequently expressed in all parts of Scripture, that the worship of the stars would be followed by absence of rain, devastation of the land, bad times, diseases, and shortness of life. But abandonment of that worship, and the return to the service of God, would be the cause of the presence of rain, fertility of the ground, good times, health and length of life. Thus Scripture teaches, in order that man should abandon idolatry, the reverse of that which idolatrous priests preached to the people, for, as has been shown by us, the principal object of the Law is to remove this doctrine, and to destroy its traces.