Punishments, Land, And People
Even during their long exile from the land of Israel, the Jewish people will retain their covenant with God, despite the punishments God exacts against the land.
By Rabbi Avraham Fischer provided by the Orthodox Union, the central coordinating agency for North American Orthodox Congregations for MyJewishLearning.com
Moses spoke with frightening detail regarding the destruction that will befall the people of Israel if they are disloyal to Hashem. Siege, famine, poverty, war, exile, desolation–all these are part of the covenant between the people and Hashem.
Then, Moses provides us with a glimpse of the future, after the destruction:
(21) And it will say–the later generation, your children who will arise after you, and the stranger who will come from a distant land–and they will see the plagues of that land and its afflictions with which Hashem afflicted it: (22) "Sulfur and salt, the entire land burnt, not to be sown, nor to sprout, nor for any vegetation to come up on it–like the overthrow of Sodom, Amorah, Admah and Tzevoyim which Hashem overthrew in His anger and His wrath." (23) And all the nations will say: "For what did Hashem do so to this land? What is the heat of this great anger?" (24) And they will say: "Because they forsook the covenant of Hashem, the G-d of their fathers, which He made with them when He took them out of the land of Egypt, (25) and they went and served other gods and prostrated themselves to them–gods that they had not known, and which had not benefited them. (26) And the wrath of Hashem burned against that land, bringing upon it all the curse that is written in this Book. (27) And Hashem uprooted them from their soil, with anger, with wrath and with great fury, and He cast them away to another land, as at this day." (28) The hidden matters are for Hashem, our G-d, but the revealed matters are for us and for our children forever, to fulfill all the words of this Torah (Deuteronomy 29).
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