כל הָוְצִּ מַה אֲש ֶר אָנֹכִּי ךְ וַצְמ םֹו יַה ן ורְמְ שִּ ת לַעֲש וֹת לְמַעַן ן ויְחִּ ת םֶתיִּבְר ו םֶתאָב ו םֶ תְ שִּריִּו אֶת הָאָרֶ ץ אֲש ֶר נִּש ְבַּע ה' לַאֲבֹתֵיכֶם. (דברים ח, א)
You shall observe to do all the commandment I command you this day, that you may live, multiply, and go in and possess the land which Hashem swore to your fathers.
The Ohr Hachaim asks, which Mitzvah is Moishe Rabbeinu talking about? Besides, had he not already spoken about the need to perform all the Mitzvos in the last chapter? What reason was there to repeat the same thing again at this point?
Moshe Rabbeinu had an intimate understanding of human nature and psyche, and he knew how to reach the deepest recesses of people’s hearts and how their minds worked.
Part of human nature is paradoxical. Sometimes, a person who has kept Mitzvos, may become lax in his performance of other Mitzvos, especially if he kept some Mitzvos with total devotion and alacrity. He may then pat himself on the back and think that he does not need to be all that careful about the rest of the Torah. Once he has done this, he is apt to look upon himself as a pretty good Jew, and he tends to be less punctilious with the performance of other commandments.
This can also happen when a person is fortunate enough to perform a great Mitzvah, when he is apt to look down at the ‘light’ Mitzvos. They may tell themselves, “I am a Ben Torah; I learn all day, how bad can it be if I come late to davening? How terrible is it if my life isn’t as it should be?”
This Middah causes a person suffering and leads others to disrespect him and his Torah and Mitzvos. The Torah admonishes and exhorts us to follow all of the Mitzvos, not sufficing with the ones that he has performed already. He tells them that all Mitzvos are one, and with the lack of one of them, it is as though all of them are lacking.
The Torah then gives us a reason for this. לְמַׂעַׂן תִּחְיוּן וּרְ בִּיתֶם וּבָאתֶם – that you may live, multiply, and go in. The Zohar writes that a person has 248 limbs and 365 sinews. These correspond to the 248 positive Mitzvos and 365 aveiros. Each Mitzvah corresponds to another limb, and each aveira corresponds to another sinew.
Imagine, if you will, a person who feels pain in one of his limbs. As he is crying out in pain, his friend tells him, “Why are you upset about one of your limbs? You have 247 of them that do not hurt you at all?”
This is, of course, ridiculous. A person’s body is one homogenous entity, and pain in one limb means pain in the entire body.
The Nimshal to this is the Torah and the person. When someone neglects a Halacha or Mitzvah, he will cause a defect and pain to one of his limbs, corresponding to the Mitzvah he neglected. It would be unhelpful and useless to tell someone that the fulfillment of the other Mitzvos is sufficient to cover up the neglect of one of them, just as it would be true regarding a physical ailment.
A person cannot use one Mitzvah to cover up his neglect of the other Mitzvos, because each one is important in its own right.
The Torah exhorts us to keep all of the Mitzvos, and the reason for that is that we should live and multiply. When a person neglects one of the Mitzvos, the life of one of his limbs is in jeopardy. All of the Mitzvos are one entity, just like the body of a human is one entity, in which each limb influences and lives off the other, making the human being into a single homogenous entity.
This is how a person can multiply, too, as nothing will prevent his success, and his life will be prosperous.
The following promise of the possuk is you will come. The Torah is telling us that we will arrive in Eretz Yisroel if we remember this idea. If we know that we need to keep all of the Mitzvos without neglecting a single one of them, we will acquire Eretz Yisroel.
How do we know this? From Moshe Rabbeinu himself. Moshe Rabbeinu kept all of the Mitzvos; he was the leader of the generation and the servant of Hashem. However, he neglected one Mitzvah, one of his obligations was not taken care of as it should have been, and he did not merit to enter Eretz Yisroel. This should be a lesson to anyone contemplating ignoring a Mitzvah of His.
This is why the exhortation included the words תשמרון לעשות – you should guard to perform. The word תשמרון can also mean to wait. A person should be waiting, anticipating, and hoping for the opportunity to do a Mitzvah.
Changing One's Destiny Through Mitzvos
Another explanation offered by the Ohr Hachaim is based on the Gemara, which tells us that children, life, and sustenance are dependent on luck, not merits.
Moshe Rabbeinu is telling Klal Yisroel that if they keep all of the Mitzvos without exception, precisely as they should, they will manage to change their luck regarding these three matters.
לְמַׂעַׂן תִּחְיוּן – in order that you will live is ‘life’ וּרְ בִּיתֶם – you will multiply corresponds to ‘children’, and וּבָאתֶם וִּירִּ שְתֶם אֶת הָאָרֶץ- corresponds to sustenance. When they arrived in Eretz Yisroel and received their portion in the land, they would have a source of sustenance.
The source of this is our forefather Avraham. His luck was totally against him; he was not destined to have children. Yet, eventually, Hashem gave him children and a great nation emerged from him. The land was promised to our forefathers, who overcame their natural luck and destiny to serve Hashem and changed their lives through that.
