Parashat Vaethanan: All of Us Who Live

This week’s Torah portion is full of goodies — the 10 Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:6-18) and the Sh’ma (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). By way of introduction, Moses reminds the Israelites that God made a covenant “with us” (עמנו) at Horeb/Sinai (Deuteronomy 5:2). Seems simple enough. But then he follows up by saying that “God did not make a covenant with our fathers” (לא את אבותינו כרת ה’ ברית) rather did so “with us” (אתנו) “here today,” (פה היום) “all of us who live” (כלנו חיים) (Deuteronomy 5:3). Why the extra language? Don’t we know that God made a covenant with the people from verse 2? Isn’t verse 3 redundant? Perhaps, but perhaps the extra language gives us more insight as to the true audience for the important passages to follow. Maybe there were more people at the mountain than we originally thought…

Photo taken from — By Unknown author [CC BY-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

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