Hearing Deeply: Hashem the Healer Who Prevents Illness

1“And He said: If you will diligently listen to the voice of Hashem your God, and do what is right in His eyes, and give ear to His commandments and keep all His chukim, all the sickness that I placed upon Egypt I will not place upon you, for I am Hashem your Healer.”¹² Notice the doubled wording shamoa tishma, “listen, you will listen.” We must also ask: since the verse opened with “if you will diligently listen,” why does it go back and say “and give ear to His commandments”? Why, too, does it add “and keep all His chukim,” which already seems included in “and give ear to His commandments”? And why does it add “and do what is right in His eyes”? If a person listens to the voice of Hashem, he will surely do what is right in His eyes.

2On the rest of the verse, “all the sickness that I placed upon Egypt I will not place upon you, for I am Hashem your Healer,” the commentators Rabbeinu Bachya and R' Chaim Paltiel point out a difficulty.³ If Hashem will not bring the sickness at all, no healing is needed. Why, then, does the verse go on to say “for I am Hashem your Healer”?

3aPerhaps we can explain this through what the holy sefarim say on Rashi's comment to the verse “Yisro heard”: “What news did he hear that made him come? The splitting of the Red Sea and the war with Amalek.”⁴ They explained that all the nations heard about the splitting of the Red Sea, as the verse says, “Nations heard and trembled.”⁵ But only Yisro took what he heard deep into his heart [in Yiddish, er hot derhert: he truly heard], and so only he came. Our verse can be explained along the same lines. “If you will diligently listen” speaks of listening to the voice of Hashem, which is the Torah. It is not enough to hear the Torah; one must understand in depth what lies within it. That is the doubled wording shamoa tishma, in the sense of “one who understands one thing from another.” A person who reaches this level will be granted, as a matter of course, “and do what is right in His eyes.” These words hint at acting beyond the letter of the law, which Chazal learned from the verse “And you shall do what is right and good.”⁶ This is the perfection of the Torah and the perfection of a person.

3bThe verse continues, “and give ear to His commandments,” which refers to doing the mitzvos. Hashem asks us not to keep them only in their plain sense, in deed alone, but to “give ear” to what lies within the mitzvah, to understand and grasp its intent. This follows the commentators' explanation of “Give ear, O heavens”: it is like “Incline your ear.”⁷ A person who keeps the mitzvos in this way keeps the chukim as well, the mitzvos that have no stated reason. Since he feels the sweetness of the Torah and the mitzvos, he keeps with joy even the mitzvos that the nations of the world and the yetzer hara challenge, asking, “What reason is there in them?” This is “and keep (veshamarta) all His chukim,” in the sense of “and his father kept (shamar) the matter”:⁸ he waits eagerly to fulfill even the chukim.

4aOf such a person the verse says, “all the sickness that I placed upon Egypt I will not place upon you.” The nations of the world have to be punished so that they will repent. But one who keeps Hashem's commandments can be given good, and through the good, too, he will draw close to our Father in Heaven. This is in the spirit of a teaching that my holy father and teacher, zt"l, often repeated in the name of the Baal Shem Tov, zt"l, on the verse “God of vengeance, Hashem.”⁹ Hashem's way of taking “vengeance” is to draw Bnei Yisrael close and bestow on them an abundance of blessing; through this they recognize the glory of the King of kings and repent. But this cannot be done with the nations. When they receive abundance they say, “My strength and the might of my hand made me this wealth.”¹⁰ That is why the Holy One, blessed be He, had to strike Egypt, to bring about “and Egypt shall know that I am Hashem.”¹¹

4bThis is the meaning of “all the sickness that I placed upon Egypt I will not place upon you, for I am Hashem your Healer.” Hashem placed the sicknesses upon Egypt so that the Egyptians would know that the world has a Master. To Bnei Yisrael, by contrast, He said, “for I am Hashem your Healer”: they will not fall ill at all; He will do good to them, and through this they will believe in Him. This also answers the commentators' question about the words “for I am Hashem your Healer.” We know that there are two kinds of physicians. One comes after a person has fallen ill, to cure the illness. The other teaches a person how to live and walk in the right way, so that he will not fall ill. The Rambam writes in this vein: if people conduct themselves properly and do not indulge their desires, in the way he explains at length, they will never fall ill.¹² This is “for I am Hashem your Healer”: Hashem is that kind of physician. He teaches the right way, as the verse describes, and then no physician is needed to cure.

5The Baal HaTurim's remark can be explained in the same way. In his commentary on the Torah he notes that machalah, “sickness” (מחלה), has the same letters as halechem, “the bread” (הלחם). Bread hints at an abundance of blessing and good. This shows what we said: in His goodness, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not send sickness and pain upon a Jew, Heaven forbid, but sends him an abundance of blessing and good instead. He does so in order that the Jew, reflecting on Hashem's kindness and favors to him, will return to the right path and draw close to Him.

6May Hashem help us and bestow on us every good thing, and may this stir us to return to Him. Through this may we be privileged to see the coming of the righteous Redeemer, speedily in our days. Amen.