Bechukotai

📜 The Story

Parshat Bechukotai is the final portion in the book of Vayikra. It opens with the famous words, if you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and perform them, and God promises the people of Israel that if they follow the way of the Torah and keep the mitzvot, they will receive wonderful blessings.

The Torah describes the blessings in detail. Rain will fall at its proper time, the land will give abundant produce and the trees will bear fruit so plentifully that the threshing will last until the grape harvest and the grape harvest until the sowing. The people will eat their bread to the full and dwell safely in their land, without fear of wild animals or war, and there will be peace throughout the land. God also promises to walk among the people, meaning to let His presence dwell in their midst.

Alongside the blessings, the parsha warns what could happen if the people leave the path of the Torah. There are difficult warnings in the parsha, but the Torah also promises that even if the people sin and drift away, once they return and confess, God will remember His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and will not abandon His people completely.

Toward the end of the parsha, the Torah moves to a very different topic, the laws of valuations known as arachin. Someone who vows to give the Temple the value of a person pays a fixed amount based on the person's age and gender, as set by the Torah. The parsha also adds laws about dedicating animals, houses and fields to the Temple, and about the tithe of animals, in which every tenth animal that passes under the shepherd's staff is dedicated to God.

Parshat Bechukotai closes the book of Vayikra with the words, these are the commandments that God commanded Moshe for the children of Israel at Mount Sinai. It is customary to say, at the end of each of the Five Books of the Torah, chazak chazak venitchazek, strengthen us, so that we encourage one another in Torah study.