Comentários de Citação sobre Deuteronômio 9:5

At that time during the abovementioned [9: 25] forty days.

This is the reason that the Torah wrote the otherwise unnecessary words אשר אני נותן, "which I am about to give." The spies were quite correct when they reported that the country could not be conquered by the Israelites. We still need to explain why the Torah wrote ויתרו instead of the expected לתור, and why the word ארץ כנען had to be mentioned. I have seen that Yalkut Shimoni was aware of this difficulty and explains that the Torah wanted to allude to who the person was through whose merit the Israelites were going to receive this gift. Isaac had been born to Abraham and Sarah when his parents had a combined age of 190 years which is the numerical value of the word כנען. This is, of course, a homiletical comment. I believe that more to the point is the verse in Deut. 9,5 that Israel did not inherit the land of Canaan due to their own merit but due to the wickedness of the people dwelling there and to G'd's desire to keep His promise to the patriarchs. The other reason was that it was ארץ כנען, the land named after Canaan who had been cursed by his grandfather Noach for his behaviour and whose descendants had followed in his footsteps so that now their measure of guilt had overflowed and called for divine retribution.

However, the Torah had to consider the fact that previously Moses had told the Israelites that the fact that they would enter the Holy Land was not due to their own merits (compare 9,5), but to the wickedness of the Canaanites residing in that land at that time. Another reason given by the Torah at that time for the Israelites entering and taking possession of the land was the promise G'd had made to their forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. In view of all this, the Torah here had to state that fulfilment of a commandment would be a factor in the Israelites entering the Holy Land due to their own מצוה-input. The positioning of the word לך at the end of the verse is an arbitrary decision by Moses, the author of our verse. The meter of the whole verse is as follows: "in order that your entry into the land which the Lord your G'd gives to you in accordance with what He said to your forefathers will be one which you are entitled to by your own merit, so that you do not have to rely on the covenant G'd made with your ancestors."