torah: rabbi david etengoff

Parsha Behar: ‘And You Shall Fear Your G-d’

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Sefer Vayikra is the sole book in the Tanach in which the phrase “v’yarata m’elokecha” (“and you shall fear your G-d”) is found. It appears three times in Parashat Behar and twice in Kedoshim:

1. You shall not curse a deaf person. You shall not place a stumbling block before a blind person, and you shall fear your G-d. I am the L-rd. (19:14) 

2. You shall rise before a venerable person and you shall respect the elderly, and you shall fear your G-d. I am the L-rd. (19:32) 

3. And you shall not wrong, one man his fellow Jew, and you shall fear your G-d, for I am the L-rd, your G-d. (25:17) 

4. You shall not take from him interest or increase, and you shall fear your G-d, and let your brother live with you. (25:36) 

5. You shall not work him with rigor, and you shall fear your G-d. (25:33)

Our five verses refer, respectively to the prohibition of purposely misleading someone to your own financial advantage (lifnei ivare), the obligation to rise before and treat the elderly with respect (mipnei saivah takum), the injunction against vexing your fellow Jew through painful words (ona’at devarim), the ban against charging interest to a fellow Jew (rivet), and the sanction against mistreating a Jewish slave by forcing the slave to perform worthless and unpleasant work (avodah b’farech).

At first glance, these mitzvot seem to be conceptually distant and disconnected from one another. Yet, Rashi, basing himself upon the Sifra, the halachic Midrash to Sefer Vayikra, teaches us that the use of v’yarata m’elokecha inextricably links these pasukim to one another: “And you shall fear your G-d. [Why is this mentioned here?]

Because this matter [of misadvising someone] is not discernible by people, whether this person had good or evil intentions, and he can avoid [being recriminated by his victim afterwards] by saying, ‘I meant well.’ Therefore, concerning this, it says, ‘and you shall fear your G-d,’ Who knows your thoughts! Likewise, concerning anything known to the one who does it, but to which no one else is privy, Scripture says, ‘and you shall fear your G-d’.”

Let us briefly review the salient points in Rashi’s gloss:

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