This week, we begin reading the last book of the Torah: the book of Dvarim. Not a lot that’s new happens in the Book of Deuteronomy; rather it’s an extended moment of retelling the tale of the past several generations of the Israelites’ history as they—we—stand at a crossroads. Moshe, the leader who has been so instrumental in our formation as a people, is close to his end, and we are poised to enter the Promised Land. Before we take this momentous step, there is a pause as we transition from living the story to telling the story. Moshe, as always, takes the lead, sifting through the tumultuous events of the forty years of wandering and turning it into narrative. He enacts the universal human impulse to make meaning by telling what happened, shaping it into a story. As he does so, themes and threads emerge.

I was struck in particular by two contrasting ways he talks about the Israelites’ relationship with God. In chapter 1 verse 27 he scolds them saying:

וַתֵּרָגְנוּ בְאׇהֳלֵיכֶם וַתֹּאמְרוּ בְּשִׂנְאַת יי אֹתָנוּ הוֹצִיאָנוּ מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם 

לָתֵת אֹתָנוּ בְּיַד הָאֱמֹרִי לְהַשְׁמִידֵנוּ

You sulked in your tents and said, “Because of God’s hate for us, God brought us out of the Land of Egypt to give us over to be destroyed by the Amorites.”

This phrase sin’at Adonai (God’s hate) is shocking, almost lacerating. We see it only once in the whole Tanach; clearly it’s a strong indicator of the level of Moshe’s disdain. Yet taken literally, he’s probably not wrong in his description of the Israelites’ experience. After all, in moments of particular crisis, they do tend to think that God hates them, that the whole thing is a mistake, that somehow they would be better off back in Egypt, taking up the yoke of slavery once more. 

The journey out was not as easy as they wanted it to be; exhausted from forced labor, they no doubt wanted everything to fall into place the minute they crossed the Sea of Reeds. Surely we’ve suffered enough, and a waiting world will soften the path for us. The fact that achieving that first goal had not immediately perfected the world must have been a great disappointment. Maybe God really does hate us.

But in just the next chapter, Moses turns this on its head: 

זֶה  אַרְבָּעִים שָׁנָה יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ עִמָּךְ לֹא חָסַרְתָּ דָּבָר

These forty years, God has been with you, you have lacked for nothing.

So…on the one hand, God hates us, and on the other, that same God has steadily accompanied us, providing for everything we needed. This also has the ring of truth to it; think of the manna that daily descended from heaven, arriving each morning like clockwork in just the right amount, tasting of whatever we most needed to taste. Think of the water that Miriam always managed to locate when the Israelites were thirsty. Think of God’s constant guidance, in the form of a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.

How do we reconcile these contrasting but agonizingly plausible descriptions of our relationship with the Divine? The God that hates us and makes progress so hard and the God that stays alongside us and makes sure our needs are met.

Of course different times feel different ways, and our response to our surroundings is so often an echo of our inner state and the emotional churn that makes each day distinct from the others. When we feel that God hates us, it may have as much to do with us as with God. The funhouse mirror of our own emotions (truthfully not that much fun) can trick our minds. The Midrash Sifrei Dvarim says: אפשר שהקב”ה שונא את ישראל? Is it possible that the Holy Blessed One hates Israel? Is it not written in Malachi 1:2 “I have loved you, said Hashem”? Rather, they are the ones who hate the Holy Blessed One (as per the folk saying: “As you are disposed toward another, you think them disposed toward you.”)

The Midrash summons both a biblical text and a contemporary saying to illuminate our human capacity for thinking the worst of others by imagining they think the worst of us. This recalls the incident of the scouts in Parshat Shelach L’cha a couple weeks back, the matter that catastrophically derailed the Israelites’ progress toward the Promised Land and lengthened the journey to get there by 39 years. Like the Israelites thinking God hated them, the scouts convinced themselves that entering and conquering the land would be too hard for them, that the people who were already there were too huge and powerful for them to overcome…even with divine reassurance that this was indeed their destiny and purpose. 

In other words, while God is with us and providing for our needs, we still find a way to psych ourselves out and assume that things will go badly. (Sound familiar?) And when we play that mental trick on ourselves we do it so well that we cover our own tracks. Thus in Dvarim, this whole head trip somehow gets pinned on God. It’s because God hates us, not because we’re scared and tired and demoralized. 

Of course the verses we’re looking at, the two statements that are in so much tension, both come from Moses. Each one is in its own way his rebuke against the Israelites, either scolding them for thinking God hates them or scolding them for taking for granted the many acts of hessed with which God accompanies them during those four decades in the desert. As our season of rebuke reaches its peak this week leading up to Tishaa b’Av, even Moshe’s voice joins the chorus of admonition in this parsha that is always read the Shabbat before Tishaa b’Av. It is seasonally appropriate to take in this notion that questioning God and undermining ourselves actually spring from the same source: a lack of faith. And that when we act like there’s a conspiracy against us when in fact we’re luckier than most, it is an insult to God and to our tradition. This understandable human tendency—to lean into fear and insufficiency—narrows our pathway to the divine. So as we pause in Parshat Dvarim, tending our story and winnowing through its many lessons, let one of them be this: as we read in the last line of Adon Olam, יי לי ולא אירה. When God is with me, I have no fear.