אֶת ה' אֱלֹקֶיךָ תִּירָא אֹתוֹ תַעֲבֹד וּבוֹ תִדְבָּק

You shall fear Hashem your God… and to Him you shall cleave (10:20)

Defining the Mitzvah

What is the meaning of the concept of "cleaving to Hashem"?

The Ramban explains that this refers to those righteous individuals for whom an awareness of, and desire for, Hashem is constantly present in their thoughts and actions. The Meshech Chochmah, however, takes issue with this approach, on the basis of the assertion that any mitzvah that is addressed to the Jewish people in a general way must be able to be fulfilled by every member of the people on their particular level, not just by a select few.

Therefore, the Meshech Chochmah explains that this mitzvah contains a basic Jewish obligation that is elaborated upon at length in Neviim and Kesuvim, namely, bitachon – trust in Hashem.

The basis of this trust is twofold:

1. A citizen of a country will generally trust in the king to uphold his moral duty to protect his subjects.
2. A son will naturally trust his father who loves him to look after him and provide for him.

Certainly, then, Hashem, who is both our King and our Father, should be the recipient of our trust to care and look after us. Indeed, in His infinite knowledge, He knows better than we do ourselves what we need, and has infinite capacity to take care of those needs.

This is the mitzvah of cleaving to Hashem; it involves the person recognizing that he is connected to Hashem’s Divine care and providence, and trusting in Him accordingly. Moreover, this mitzvah can be performed by anyone among the Jewish people, regardless of their spiritual stature, as the Midrash states, that even a wicked person who trusts in Hashem will be enveloped by His kindness and protection.[1] To be sure, the highest level of this mitzvah involves a person’s every thought and deed as being devoted and dedicated to Hashem, as the Ramban stated, but the mitzvah itself on a basic level is in the province of the entire Jewish people.

This understanding of the mitzvah is corroborated by Yehoshua’s final words to the Jewish people, where he exhorts them to continue to cleave to Hashem as they have done until now.[2] The context of this exhortation is the wars that he describes in the preceding verses, which the people had fought with implicit trust that Hashem will assist them in the conquest of the land.[3] That trust is called “cleaving to Hashem,” and Yehoshua exhorts the people to continue to act in accordance with this principle.

Bitachon and Shabbos

With the above in mind, the Meshech Chochmah proceeds to explain an additional matter. As is known, keeping Shabbos is a commemoration of Hashem resting from creation on the seventh day. As such, it should be applicable to all nations, yet we know that only the Jewish people were given the Shabbos!

Upon reflection, however, we will appreciate that embracing a day where all productive labor is forbidden can only be done if one trusts in Hashem completely that his livelihood will not suffer as result. Therefore, only the Jewish people, from whom such a level of bitachon is expected, were entrusted with keeping the Shabbos day. This gives us new insight into the idea of Shabbos, as presented in the second set of luchos, being accompanied by a command to remember that we were slaves in Egypt and that Hashem took us out.[4] The idea is that reflection on those events should engender within us an awareness of Hashem’s Divine protection over us, which will then allow us to keep the Shabbos day as it should be kept, with no worry over our livelihood and material wellbeing.

Moreover, the first time Shabbos is mentioned to the Jewish people in the verse is in the context of the double portion of manna that fell on Friday, with no manna falling on Shabbos.[5] The entire experience of having their food fall from heaven engendered and embedded within the people a fundamental sense of trust in Hashem as the source of their sustenance; hence, this was a most appropriate juncture to introduce the day of Shabbos which is predicated on that theme.

Indeed, the very first historical act of national trust in Hashem on the part of the Jewish people is intimately bound up with Shabbos. Four days prior to the slaughtering of the korban pesach, the people were told to take a sheep, in full view of the Egyptians who worshipped it as a deity, and tie it to their bedposts in anticipation of slaughtering it as a korban. That day, the tenth of Nissan, fell on that year on the Shabbos, and trust the people demonstrated in Hashem by taking those animals showed them to be uniquely deserving to receive the Shabbos day – for which reason we celebrate the Shabbos before Pesach every year as Shabbos Hagadol!

[1] Yalkut Shimoni Tehillim sec. 719.

[2] Yehoshua 23:8.

[3] See ibid. verses 1-7.

[4] See ibid. 5:15.

[5] See Shemos 16:22-26.