רְאֵה אָנכִי נתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה - Behold, I am giving before you today a blessing and a curse. (11:26)
Q1. Why does the posuk start singular (רְאֵה) and turn plural (לִפְנֵיכֶם)?
Q2. Why does posuk say אָנכִי - ‘I’. Who else would be speaking?
Q3. Why does it say נתֵן - ‘giving’, should say נתתֵיֵ - ‘I have given’?
Q4. Why does it say לִפְנֵיכֶם - ‘before you’, and not לכֶםִ - ‘to you’?
Q5. What is the word הַיּוֹם, today, doing in the posuk?
The Gra explains that this posuk refers to a person trying to do teshuva and repent for past actions, all the while being tormented by his yetzer hara. The yetzer hara is that niggling doubt at the back of your head when doing something. It tells you ‘How can you fix that? You’ve done it for so long, its natural, you’re used to it! How are you possibly going to choose the correct path and to teshuva?’ Hashem assures us that נתן, He is ‘giving’ us the choice so that whenever we decide to repent, Hashem is right there offering you the opportunity. Effectively, it’s never too late.
Another tactic our yetzer hara uses to scare us off doing teshuva is to remind you of all your past misdeeds and flaunts them, taunting ‘Look what you’ve done! Look how much you’ve done! What hope do you have?’ So Hashem tells us that once you do teshuva it will change – הַיּוֹם - ‘today’. A Baal Teshuva is like a newborn child, everything in the past is gone, and all that he is being accounted for is the present, the ‘today’.
After being accustomed to the yetzer hara, a man will say ‘But how can I change and not sin any more? It is beyond my ability to battle and beat the yetzer hara, hence I am forced to listen to it blindly’ Hashem tells us, אָנכִי - ‘I’ am giving you the opportunity to conquer your yetzer hara. In essence Hashem is saying ‘I am with you; you need not be afraid of anyone or anything else.’ And this parallels what Chazal say:Yitzro Shel Adam Misgaber Alav Bechol Yom Veilmalai Hakadosh Baruch Hu Ozer Lo, Aino Yuchal Lo – “The evil inclination of a man strengthens himself upon a man each day and desires to destroy him, and if G-d wouldn’t help him he would not be able to defeat him”
A further dilemma one may have is with regard to choice: ‘Perhaps the yetzer tov isn’t so good, so why follow the unknown?’ The posuk tells us, אָנכִי נתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם, Hashem wont help us make the choice, it is up to us to exercise our בחירה – (free will). The way to distinguish between the yetzer hara from yetzer tov is to act as a businessman with a large stock of commodities to sell. Will he take the first offer that comes his way? or will he survey the market, get quotes, and deliberate what price to sell at and which clients to sell to? An impulsive action will be detrimental in his case and ours too. If we wait a few days and on review, we still think something is a good idea, then it’s a positive sign that this is the yetzer tov’s instruction.
The final and most frequent dilemma a person seeking to do teshuva faces is ‘How can I break the trend on my own? I look around and everyone around me does as they please, is it possible for me to swim against the current?’ The posuk tells us ‘רְאֵה‘, in the singular. You judge yourself on an individual level with the framework I (Hashem) have given you alone, and don’t make a cheshbon for everyone else.
