Re'eh

"See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse" — the blessing for obedience, the curse for turning aside, to be pronounced on Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal when the land is entered. The land's worship is to be dismantled — altars, pillars, asherim, images, on the high mountains and under every leafy tree — and Israel is not to worship in that scattered way, but at the place the LORD will choose to put His name. There the offerings, tithes, and firstborn are brought, and eaten in rejoicing before the LORD with son and daughter, servant, and the landless Levite. Meat may be slaughtered and eaten in any town at will — only the blood is not eaten; it is poured on the ground like water.

The portion guards against every doorway into foreign worship: do not ask "how did these nations serve their gods?"; the prophet or dream-diviner whose sign comes true but who says "let us follow other gods" is not heeded; the enticer — even brother, son, daughter, or beloved wife — is not pitied; the town drawn away entirely is investigated with care and, if the report is true, destroyed. "You are children of the LORD your God": no gashing or baldness for the dead. The permitted and forbidden creatures are restated — the split hoof and cud, fins and scales, the listed birds — with the kid not boiled in its mother's milk.

Rhythms of the year and of release close the portion. The tithe is eaten before the LORD at the chosen place — converted to money for the long journey if need be — and every third year laid up in the towns for the Levite, stranger, orphan, and widow. Every seventh year debts between Israelites are released; and the warning is direct: beware the base thought "the seventh year is near" that shuts the hand against a poor brother — "open your hand to him." The Hebrew servant freed in the seventh year is furnished liberally from flock and floor and vat. Firstborn males of herd and flock are eaten before the LORD. And three times a year — Pesach with its unleavened "bread of affliction," Shavuot with its freewill offering and shared joy, and Sukkot's seven days of rejoicing — every male appears before the LORD at the place He chooses, "and none shall appear before the LORD empty-handed."