This week’s parsha, Ekev, begins with Moshe’s words of warning to the Jewish People: V’haya ekev tishmaun, “And it will be, ekev, (“since” or “because”) you will heed these ordinances and keep them, that the Lord, your God, will keep for you the covenant and the kindness that He swore to your forefathers.”
The word Ekev is an unusual word which is used only a handful of times in the Torah and it has three meanings. The first is “since” or “because”. Its use in this way is always about following in the way of God which will result in inheriting or keeping the Land of Israel. This is how it is used in our parsha, and in Bamidbar when the Torah says that the ten spies who gave a bad report, and the Jewish People along with them, will die in the desert as a result of the bad report about the Land of Israel, but, Calev (and Joshuah) will enter the land, ekev ruach aheret emo, “since he had a different spirit” than the spies, and spoke well about the Land of Israel. Another place it is used in this way is to refer to Avrohom listening to the will of God at the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, when God says, ekev asher shamata bikoli, “”because” you have listened to my voice.”
The second meaning of ekev, is the “heel” of a foot. For instance when in Birashit the snake is told there will be enmity between it and the human being, and the human will step on the snake but it will bite the human’s ekev, or when Yaakov is named Yaakov because he is born grasping the ekev, “the heel”, of his brother Esav.
The word’s third meaning is, “to fool”, as in the story of the struggle over the birthright, when Esav finds out that Yaakov pretended to be him and took the blessing of the birthright, Esav says to his father, “It is good you named him Yaakov, for, vayaakveni zeh paamayim, “he has fooled me twice.”
The Ibn Ezra comments that the use of the word ekev as in “to fool” is related to its use in the word “ankle”. Both mean, “to bend”, “to twist”, to be curved and not straight. But if ekev means “curved”, how does this word’s use as “since,” in its connection to listening to God and obeying the commandments, such as in our parsha, fit in? Listening to God at the Akedah, or with regard to Kalev’s seeing the Land in a good light when the other spies saw it in a bad one, seems like the straight and correct path, not the curved path gone awry.
Perhaps the lesson is that listening to God’s command, especially in these instances, is actually not the obvious path, it is precisely the curved path, the unusual and non-intuitive path, the path less traveled. Human nature is not to be humble before God, but to be self absorbed, to do what we want. We ourselves are always at the center of every experience we have, it can not be otherwise. But, the Torah is telling us, through discipline and learning, we can take the less intuitive path, -the path of humility. To listen to God as Kalev did and go against the majority in giving a good report about the Land, this is ekev, the curve, the unusual path. To be faithful to God while in the Land, and resist the temptations of wealth and bounty the Jewish people will be faced with in the Land, this is the ekev path, the path of humility before God. To be humble, to understand that though we may think we are the master of our universe, ultimately the seemingly powerful human being is quite frail, is actually, though obvious, the less common path.
“Humility…is more a calm recognition that you must trust in that which does not make sense, that which is unreasonable, illogical, silly, rediculouis, crazy by the measure of most of our culture…If we read the book of pain and loss (i.e. life) with humility, we realize that none of us is ultimately more valuable or rich or famous or beautiful than another; and then, perhaps, we begin to understand something deep and true about humility.”
-Brian Doyle, “One Long River of Song”
This is Moses’ message in our parsha, -it will be difficult when you enter the Land and harvest and have much bounty, to take the curved path, the ekev path, the path of blessing which is, for human beings, often the less intuitive one, -the path of humility.