“Nevertheless, to this day Adonai has not given you a heart to understand, eyes to see or ears to hear! -Deuteronomy 29:3
In verse 3 of Deuteronomy 29, we encounter a very powerful and mysterious statement.
Moses informs the people that yes indeed, they have surely seen with their own eyes the many wonders in Egypt and at Mount Sinai.
But then he turns around and tells them…
…”but the Lord has not given you a mind to understand, nor ears to hear”.
What?
There’s an interesting play on words here that we’ll miss if we don’t read it in the original Hebrew.
In English, the idea we get is that God is saying…
…“you have SEEN but you don’t SEE”…
…or…
…“you have EARS but you don’t HEAR”.
But what it’s really saying is…
…“You have ears but you don’t SHEMA“.
Forgive me for continually beating a dead horse here but the word SHEMA does NOT mean to just “hear”.
SHEMA means to listen AND TO OBEY.
It does not mean to just passively listen to something.
Let me put it this way.
If you listen to something but don’t act on that thing you just heard, in the true Hebraic sense of the word, you have not SHEMA’d.
Or if any of you have attended any place of worship for any good amount of time, I’ve sure you’ve noticed there are many folks who come, LISTEN to the sermon and then that’s the end of it.
They go right back into the world with not one thing changed in their life.
This is what Moses is getting at here.
He’s telling the people that while HASHEM’s words may be audibly registering, they have not been doing what the Lord has commanded them to do.
In a nutshell, Deuteronomy 29:3 is speaking of spiritual blindness.
However, don’t misunderstand the context.
Moses is not criticizing or chastising the people here.
He’s just telling them that up until this point in time, the Lord has not given them the spiritual capacity to properly SHEMA (listen and obey) His divine instructions.
But now he has!
Therefore, the children of Israel are finally ready to not just accept the terms of the covenant but also obey them in faith and truth and not just via mechanical actions.
I told you this special 4-chapter section (Deuteronomy chapters 26-30) is just chock full of mysteries, prophecies and things that have yet to be revealed.
I’m talking about stuff that has confounded even the greatest of the Hebrew sages and Deuteronomy 29:3 is a perfect case in point.
So what’s the takeaway lesson here today?
I would say in the plainest and simplest sense, the lesson is unless HASHEM gives each of us (individually) the gift of spiritual awareness, it is impossible to properly obey the Lord’s instructions.
Or another way to put it, the Lord will withhold the gift of spiritual awareness from you until He decides you’re ready to have it.
In this way, I would say we’re all at different levels of our spiritual journey in terms of our personal relationship with HASHEM.
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