Walking Together With God Parshat Ekev begins with what seems
like a familiar dictum: And it will be because you heed these
judgments, and safeguard and do them, that the Eternal, your
Almighty God shall safeguard and uphold with you the covenant
and the mercy which he swore to your fathers. (Deuteronomy 7:12)
Man is commanded to follow the commandments and to obey the Word
of God. This is far from unusual; such statements are to be
found many times in the Torah, and in the book of Deuteronomy in
particular. In fact, in the verse immediately preceding this
one, the concluding verse of Parshat V'etchanan, man is enjoined
to follow the Torah: You shall therefore safeguard the
commandment(s) and the statutes and the judgments which I
command you this day, to do them. (Deuteronomy 7:11) While the
division of the Torah into weekly portions is somewhat
artificial, in the written text of the Torah, Parshat Ekev
always begins a new paragraph, as indicated in our printed texts
by the Hebrew letter "peh," shorthand for