One way to look at the long section of warnings that we read this week is that there are far more “curses” than blessings. Simple math would bear out this reading; there are 11 verses connected to “If you follow My laws,” and 30 that follow “but if you do not obey Me.” But lest you think that God’s expected fury is nearly triple God’s promised grace, the rabbis swoop in with a more optimistic reading. The blessings are automatic if we do the right thing. But the curses, they suggest, don’t come when we do the wrong thing. We have to go so far as to “despise and abhor” the commandments. Our attitude needs to accompany our behavior in order to trigger Divine fury. That’s a high bar of evil that we are unlikely to reach, thankfully. So in the scope of things, the blessings, though they take up fewer words, actually outnumber the threats. It’s all a matter of perspective!
