Speech is Divine

You just spread out the whole curtain, the whole panorama.

First of all, it's interesting to note that actually when you think about it, the Torah as given by Hashem, I'm talking about the books of the Chumash now, as given by Hashem in terms of the message that he wanted to convey to his people and therefore to the world, it's really from B'reishitzib HaMidbar.

In other words, the first four books of the Torah, that's actually...

the extent of the message that he wanted to give us.

And the last book, Devarim, is literally the review of Moshe Rabbeinu, who wanted to put everything into perspective.

The truth is that the book of Devarim, Deuteronomy, also contains some new mitzvot, some new revelatory material.

But it's also, and even in the way that Moshe summed everything up and explained it and presented it, it's just so riveting, and there's so much pathos, and there's so much feeling, and his heart is in every word, and Shema Yisrael is in the Book of Devarim, and so many important things.

But it's interesting because, like you said, they're poised now.

On the board, they're about to go in.

The whole process of the Book of Devarim is basically five weeks of oratory.

The last four portions of the Book of Devarim were all given the same day, the day of Moshe's death.

And it's really Moshe's effort now to make this impression on his people of all of the things that they have to keep in mind.

In the book of Devarim, we're going to see when we begin, he's constantly worried about several things.

He's constantly worried about the people falling into the lure of prosperity.

And he's constantly worrying about them falling into idolatry and forgetting Hashem, forgetting what they experienced at Sinai.

But anyway, that's for when we get there.

But for now, as you said, they're poised on the border.

And interestingly, our portion, you know, the first portion of our first Tumatot, it opens in a way that you might think this is just like legalistic.

But actually, it's one of the Torah's deepest statements about what it means to be human.

Because this portion is about the power of speech.

the power of speech to create or the power of speech to destroy.

And obviously that's basically the most, um, perfect example of what it means to emulate the divine.

Amen.

Because as it summed up in Pirkei Avot and as is clear to us in Genesis, Hashem created the whole world through speech.

Yes, yes.