By Joseph Shulam.
The Torah portion that we will be reading on Shabbat, August 16, 2025, is called Ekev.
From the Torah: Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25.
From the Prophets: Isaiah 49:14 – 51:3.
From the Gospel: Matthew 16:13-20.
EKEV is translated to English in the NKJV in the following way:
“Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers.” (Deuteronomy 7:12 NKJV).
The Hebrew word עקב translates “Because“. God saw a cause of why he was displeased. God was not happy with the children of Israel because they didn’t listen to God’s instructions and judgments and didn’t keep them when they were in the desert and after the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.
This little word EKEV appears in several Biblical texts. In all cases, the word indicates the causality of our actions. Every action brings a reaction. This straightforward principle of natural physics is simple and important at the same time. People forget this simple truth and act as if they are the kings of the universe and nothing is going to boomerang back at them. We must wake up and smell the roses, dear brothers. Nature is not only for animals and plants. Nature is universal, and our actions will always have reactions from the different spheres that we live in, family, friends, governments, and the legal systems that these forces serenade us.
God himself is a force that is all around us and knows not only our actions but also when we don’t act, don’t obey his commands. Everything is a part of the physical world, some things are a part of the unseen, and even at times without smell.
The primary lesson that I learned from reading this Torah portion is that there are biblically correct ways in which people were to rest. Here is the first verse of our Torah reading for this Shabbat:
“Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers.” (Deuteronomy 7:12 NKJV).
In this verse, the word BECAUSE (EKEV in Hebrew) brings us a very positive reaction. A reaction that says that if you walk and live according to the judgments (instructions) that God gave you, the LORD God will keep his promises (covenant) and show you the mercy that He (God) swore to our fathers, including the promises that God gave to Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob and to all the nations that turn away from the idols of their ancestors and accept the oneness and singularity of the ONE who created this world from A to Z. Our God is not made from wood or gold or silver. He is our father, every human being’s father. He wants only our good and blessings. But like my father, Mr. Baruch Shulam, God demands respect and obedience. If we are wise and know these simple principles of physics, our lives will be successful and we will cross the bridge to the other side of life, the afterlife, in peace and even with joy.
As you can see, obedience to God’s commands is the only wise action for your lives. I confess that religion has corrupted the commandments of God and has added to and ignored some of the most essential commands that God gave us to encourage us on how to deal and behave with our fellow man and woman. EKEV is a word that provides us with the motive of cause and effect, and in these words of God in this Shabbat’s reading, it gives us a clear and definitive picture of the reaction and benefits of obedience to God’s commands, and also the other side of the formula. It tells us what happens when we ignore and dismiss God, perhaps thinking God is so old that HE has become blind. His hearing is so dull that he will not notice when we go to synagogue, ( and dress appropriately with funny little hats that need to be pinned on our heads so that they don’t fall off.
“Then it shall come to pass, because you listen to these judgments, and keep and do them, that the LORD your God will keep with you the covenant and the mercy which He swore to your fathers. And He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your land, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flock, in the land of which He swore to your fathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples; there shall not be a male or female barren among you or among your livestock. And the LORD will take away from you all sickness, and will afflict you with none of the terrible diseases of Egypt which you have known, but will lay them on all those who hate you.” (Deuteronomy 7:12-15 NKJV)
I am almost 80 years old. I became a disciple of Yeshua, my Rabbi and Savior, when I was 16 years old. You can do the math alone. I have seen this text work according to God’s promises and instructions in my own life and the lives of my family, brothers, and sisters in our community.
Dear brothers, it is all up to you and how you understand your relationship with the Almighty God and Father of us humans in the world. I am now left alone, the only family that I have left in this world is my son and his family, and my daughter and her daughter. They are all thousands of miles away from me. One is in Tennessee, and my daughter is in California. My heart is in Jerusalem, and my place is with the Hebrew nation. But I have seen the hand of God move across the world from north to south and from east to west. My advice to my brothers and sisters around the world is simple: Believe God and stand on his promises! Do it with a clear intent without too many calculations. Do it with a pure heart and do not seek combinations and manipulations of God and faith. Remember that God is looking first and foremost into your heart, and He sees our hearts much better than any MRI or CT. He knows your intentions before you even move them from the back of your brain to the front of your brain.
I want to share a few words from our reading from Isaiah 49:14-51:3.
“But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, And my Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me. Your sons shall make haste; Your destroyers and those who laid you waste Shall go away from you. Lift up your eyes, look around and see; All these gather together and come to you. As I live,” says the LORD, “You shall surely clothe yourselves with them all as an ornament, And bind them on you as a bride does. “For your waste and desolate places, And the land of your destruction, Will even now be too small for the inhabitants; And those who swallowed you up will be far away. The children you will have, After you have lost the others, Will say again in your ears, “The place is too small for me; Give me a place where I may dwell.’ Then you will say in your heart, “Who has begotten these for me, Since I have lost my children and am desolate, A captive, and wandering to and fro? And who has brought these up? There I was, left alone; But these, where were they?”
Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, I will lift My hand in an oath to the nations, And set up My standard for the peoples; They shall bring your sons in their arms, And your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders; Kings shall be your foster fathers, And their queens your nursing mothers; They shall bow down to you with their faces to the earth, And lick up the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the LORD, For they shall not be ashamed who wait for Me.” Shall the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of the righteous be delivered?
But thus says the LORD: “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken away, And the prey of the terrible be delivered; For I will contend with him who contends with you, And I will save your children. I will feed those who oppress you with their own flesh, And they shall be drunk with their own blood as with sweet wine. All flesh shall know That I, the LORD, am your Savior, And your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.” Thus says the LORD: “Where is the certificate of your mother’s divorce, Whom I have put away? Or which of My creditors is it to whom I have sold you? For your iniquities you have sold yourselves, And for your transgressions your mother has been put away. Why, when I came, was there no man? Why, when I called, was there none to answer? Is My hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? Indeed with My rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness; Their fish stink because there is no water, And die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, And I make sackcloth their covering.” “The Lord GOD has given Me The tongue of the learned, That I should know how to speak A word in season to him who is weary. He awakens Me morning by morning, He awakens My ear To hear as the learned.” (Isaiah 49:14-50:4 NKJV)
This text from the prophet Isaiah was written hundreds of years before Yeshua, our Messiah, was born in Bethlehem. The words of Isaiah, directed by the Holy Spirit of God, start with the following words: “But Zion said, ‘The LORD has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me.”, a sad text that reflects the feeling of a sinning community, a city chosen by God that has sinned so much that it has lost it’s hope. The sins of Jerusalem are described not only in Isaiah but also in Lamentations:.
“How lonely sits the city That was full of people! How like a widow is she, Who was great among the nations! The princess among the provinces Has become a slave!
She weeps bitterly in the night, Her tears are on her cheeks; Among all her lovers She has none to comfort her. All her friends have dealt treacherously with her; They have become her enemies.” (Lamentations 1:1-2 NKJV)
Please, dear brothers, remember these words of Zion, Jerusalem. Hear her words of repentance, and even more importantly, see the consequences of her sins against men and God. I have marked her confession and words of repentance from the above text in Green.
On the other side, see God’s response to Jerusalem and His promises. Please take into account that these words of God have an eternal aspect that most of Christianity has forgotten. Sadly, many in the Christian world continue to hate Jerusalem and the Jewish people.
“But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, And my Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, yet I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me. Your sons shall make haste; Your destroyers and those who laid you waste Shall go away from you. Lift up your eyes, look around and see; All these gather together and come to you. As I live,” says the LORD, “You shall surely clothe yourselves with them all as an ornament, And bind them on you as a bride does. “For your waste and desolate places, And the land of your destruction, Will even now be too small for the inhabitants; And those who swallowed you up will be far away.
Christians, read these words and promises, and those who hate or ignore or refuse to stand with Israel and the Jewish people must repent and not wait too long to do so. God is not slack to keep his promises. Every word that God has spoken, and the prophets have written, is true and is being fulfilled even now as I am writing this Jerusalem prayer list. One of the smallest and oldest nations in the world that is still living, existing, and blessing the world is visibly fulfilling the words spoken by Isaiah the prophet in the 8th century B.C.
Remember the place where you want to spend eternity is not in Cincinnati, Ohio, or Atlanta, Georgia – the city of every disciple of Yeshua the Messiah wants to be for eternity is Jerusalem, the city of the great king, Yeshua, son of David, son of Abraham.
In summary, the two points that I chose to share with you on this Shabbat are not complicated. Because of our relationship based on faith and obedience to the almighty God of Israel’s instructions and commandments, we will be blessed and our relationship with God and with men will be blessed and a blessing to many. The consequence of being rebellious and disobedient is that life will be difficult and sad. There will be no one for us to blame except ourselves.
God, the father of us all – the one that we will call ABBA spoke these words to Isaiah in the 8th Century B.C. We, the Jewish nation, are living proof that God’s promises are being fulfilled. Against all odds and over 1000% Israel is sitting on the land that God gave her in promise so many times in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Because of these facts, you ought to love Israel and the Jewish nation worldwide and stand with Israel. God has not forgotten his first love, as Jeremiah the prophet said it so clearly in chapter 2:2ff.
“Moreover, the word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Go and cry in the hearing of Jerusalem, saying, ‘Thus says the LORD: ‘I remember you, The kindness of your youth, The love of your betrothal, When you went after Me in the wilderness, In a land not sown. Israel was holiness to the LORD, the firstfruits of His increase. All that devour him will offend; Disaster will come upon them,” says the LORD. (Jeremiah 2:1-3 NKJV)
My family and my wife’s family just a few days ago buried my dear Marcia. Marcia’s funeral service had several hundred people who came from around the whole USA, from Maryland in the east to Los-Angeles in the west, and from Taiwan in Asia to Brazil in South America, and from Israel in the Middle East. There were more than 2000 people from around the world that watched the service dedicated to a small-sized woman in a blue metal coffin, all dressed up and silent as a rock. They praised Marcia, my wife, and many cried, and I had to bite my lips and close my eyes not to cry. Most of the people who eulogized Marcia Shulam said the same things. Marcia was a faithful, gentle, and loving partner in life and ministry. Marcia paid attention to the rich and the poor alike. She, like Lydia in the Bible, made clothing for the children of the congregation and was a teacher without a classroom. She instructed the young and old, girls and boys, in the kitchen to make brownies and other things. As the mother of our children, she was superb. Her influence was felt in the congregation and around the world when we traveled together. We had Japanese women in our kitchen to cook Israeli and Jewish food, and in Japan, the sisters had my wife, Marcia, in their kitchen teaching them to cook Japanese food.
I can honestly say that so many of the blessings that Netivyah Bible Instruction Ministry has around the globe are due to Marcia.