Introduction: A Promise That Seems to Defy Experience
Deuteronomy 28 speaks plainly. If the Jewish people listen to G-d, their lives will be blessed. The chapter names health, food, work, children, security, and national strength. If they turn away, those blessings will collapse.
But experience seems to say otherwise. Good people suffer. Faithful families face illness, loss, and fear. People who ignore G-d can appear successful.
This may be the age-old question Moses asked G-d: Why do some righteous people suffer while some wicked people prosper? The Talmud records a disagreement. One sage says Moses received an answer. Another says G-d’s ways were not fully revealed.
As we explore these sources, we must remain humble. This may remain one of life’s deepest mysteries. We can only study the sources as they are. G-d’s teaching is meant to be learned, questioned, and lived.
Can we expect a good life for doing good? If not, how can we understand the clear promises of the Five Books of Moses?
DISCUSS Does doing good give us the right to expect a good life? What does “a good life” mean?
There is a second question. Two commandments state the promise of well-being and long days with unusual clarity: honoring parents and sending away a mother bird before taking her young. Why these two? We will return to this near the end.
1. Rabbi Jacob: Reward Is in the Next World
The Babylonian Talmud raises our question through a shocking case.
A father tells his son to climb to a roof and bring down young birds. The son obeys. He also sends away the mother bird before taking the young. In one act, he fulfills the two commandments that promise well-being and long days.
On the way down, he falls and dies.
Where is the promised good? Where are his long days?
Rabbi Jacob answers directly: there is no reward for the performance of a commandment that is received in this world. “It will be well with you” means in the next world, the world that is entirely good. “Your days will be long” means in the world that is entirely long—infinite and eternal.
SOURCE “There is no reward for a commandment in this world.” — Babylonian Talmud, Tractate on Betrothal 39b
This answer refuses to blame the victim. It does not say the son lacked faith or did something wrong. It says that true reward is eternal. It does not belong to this temporary and material world.
But the answer creates another question. Deuteronomy 28 speaks about rain, crops, health, peace, fear, famine, and exile. Those clearly belong to this world. If reward exists only in the next world, what are these earthly blessings?
2. Maimonides: Facilitation Is Not Reward
Maimonides answers this question in his Laws of Repentance.
He agrees with Rabbi Jacob. The true reward for a commandment is eternal life in the next world. That reward cannot be paid in money, health, comfort, or success. Material things cannot equal the value of an eternal act.
The blessings of this world serve a different purpose. They are not payment. They are facilitation.
Health, peace, food, and financial stability remove obstacles. They give a person time and strength to learn G-d’s wisdom, fulfill more commandments, help others, and grow. War, famine, sickness, and fear make that work much harder.
SOURCE G-d removes obstacles and grants the good that strengthens our ability to fulfill His teaching. — Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 9:1, paraphrased
The blessings are therefore tools. G-d is not paying a person for what was already done. He is making further growth possible.
This is a powerful answer. But it still seems to defy experience and history. Many righteous people were denied the health, peace, or security that would have allowed them to do even more good. Entire faithful communities suffered exile, violence, and destruction.
Maimonides explains what material blessing means. He does not yet explain why faithful people often seem not to receive it.
DISCUSS Have you ever made a serious commitment and then found that a new opportunity for growth opened? Was that a reward, facilitation, or both?
3. The Blessings Belong to a Nation
Many commentators answer that the blessings and curses are addressed to the Jewish people as a whole. The chapter speaks about crops, armies, the economy, national strength, and exile. These are collective conditions.
On this reading, the blessings apply when most of the nation is faithful to its covenant with G-d. When the majority is not, an individual cannot expect protection from the results of collective failure.
A good person can suffer in a corrupt society. A faithful family can be caught in a war. A child can inherit instability created by earlier generations. Personal goodness does not remove a person from the life of the nation.
This offers one framework for understanding why righteous individuals may share the suffering of the whole nation. It does not allow us to blame those who suffer. It also creates an obligation. We cannot seek only personal spiritual success or private prosperity. We must help build the Jewish people. We must care about the moral and spiritual direction of the whole community. We must teach, welcome, support, and bring others closer to G-d and His teaching.
The covenant is collective. Its blessing must also be built collectively.
DISCUSS How would religious life change if we measured success by the growth of the whole Jewish people, not only by our own growth?
4. Nachmanides: We Live Through the Commandments
Leviticus says that a person shall fulfill G-d’s laws and “live through them.” Nachmanides explains that this means a person lives through the commandments of G-d’s teaching. But the kind of life he receives depends on the reason he serves.
The same outward act can come from very different motives. Nachmanides describes four horizons.
First horizon: material return
A person may fulfill commandments to gain wealth, health, honor, or long life. Such a person may receive material success. He aimed at this world and may be rewarded in this world.
But the service ends there. Its reward is exhausted in this world. Such service earns no eternal reward.
Second horizon: fear and eternal safety
A person may serve because he fears judgment or punishment. He wants to avoid ultimate loss and gain life in the next world.
This person may receive exactly what he seeks. His reward is eternal. But there is no promise of reward in this world.
Third horizon: leaving earthly life behind
A person may turn away from material life almost completely. His thoughts are fixed only on G-d. Nachmanides points to Elijah. Such a person becomes almost angelic. He rises beyond ordinary physical life and leaves earthly existence behind.
This is an exalted path. But it is not the normal mission of a person living in a family and community.
Fourth horizon: living through love
The highest path is to serve G-d through love. This person does not use G-d to obtain the world. He also does not abandon the world to find G-d.
He learns G-d’s wisdom and applies His values to life. He earns honestly. He builds a family. He supports the community. He protects the vulnerable. He uses pleasure with gratitude. He turns ordinary life into service.
Nachmanides makes a stronger claim. A person who serves G-d out of love, while remaining fully engaged in ordinary life, can expect real good in this world—good in his actual circumstances, according to the usual course of life. His eternal reward also remains complete.
This demands deep honesty. Our motives are often mixed. We may speak about serving G-d while also seeking control, approval, safety, or reward. Confused motives can lead to confused choices and confused circumstances.
If my life does not look objectively good, I may not use this teaching to explain every event. I may never use it to judge another person. I do not know another person’s heart or G-d’s plan. But I must allow it to question me: Am I truly seeking G-d’s will out of love, or am I using G-d to obtain the life I already want?
Greater honesty and purer motives can lead toward a better life, both internally and externally.
DISCUSS When life does not seem objectively good, how can Nachmanides’ teaching push me toward greater honesty without turning suffering into a judgment of myself or others?
5. From Fear to Love
Nachmanides draws a clear distinction. Service motivated by fear seeks its reward in the next world. It does not bring a promise of reward in this world. Service motivated by love does. A person who learns G-d’s wisdom, applies His values, and serves Him while building an ordinary human life can receive good in this world without losing his eternal reward.
Within this framework, we can suggest that the son in the Talmud acted from fear or from respect for his father, rather than from love of G-d. Rabbi Jacob thus teaches, in this context, that the reward belongs only to the next world. We can and must aspire beyond fear to service motivated by love.
6. Why Parents and the Mother Bird?
We can now return to our earlier question. Why is the promise of well-being and long days attached to honoring parents and sending away a mother bird?
On this reading, the mother bird is inviolable while she is mothering. She may not be taken together with the young she is nurturing. Her act of nurture must not become the means by which she is captured. We must recognize and respect the nurturing source before taking what it has produced.
Honoring parents teaches the same idea in human life. We must recognize those through whom our life arrived and by whom it was first sustained. This does not deny that some families are painful or unsafe. Such cases require wisdom and guidance. But the basic truth remains: none of us created ourselves.
Both commandments teach us to honor the source and nurture of life.
A person who understands this knows that he was nurtured for a reason. His life has a purpose and a mission. He does not need to reinvent his reason for living every morning. He does not need to prove his value or assign a new, invented meaning to his existence every day.
He belongs to a family, a people, a tradition, and ultimately to G-d. His life fits into a story that began before him and will continue after him.
At this profound level, the reward is not objective wealth or success. It is the inner fulfillment of a life of meaning and purpose. It is a life well lived in deed.
These commandments promise “long days” because they connect a person to something longer than himself. He receives life from the past, lives it with purpose in the present, and passes it toward the future. These are the long days of the good life: days filled with belonging, direction, and fulfillment.
DISCUSS How does knowing that you were nurtured for a purpose change the way you use your life?
7. Summary: Three Approaches
We can now summarize the three approaches.
- Rabbi Jacob and Maimonides: True reward is not material. It belongs to the next world, the world that is entirely good and entirely long—that is, infinite and eternal. The blessings of this world are not payment. They are help from G-d that allows further growth. Many commentators add that this help is promised through the national covenant when most of the Jewish people are faithful.
- Nachmanides: An individual who serves from pure love can expect objective good in this world. Mixed motives can produce confused circumstances. We may never judge another person, but we must examine ourselves with honesty and seek purer service.
- The two highlighted commandments: A life of meaning and purpose is itself a reward. Honoring parents and the mother bird teaches us to know and respect our source. Living within our tradition and mission creates the “long days” of a good life filled with belonging and fulfillment.
Conclusion: What the Blessings and Curses Actually Say
The blessings are concrete. They include success in the city and field, fruitful families, enough food, productive work, and safety from enemies.
SOURCE “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the field.” — Deuteronomy 28:3
The curses are also concrete. They include sickness, drought, defeat, hunger, loss, and exile. These objective promises and warnings remain part of the chapter. We should not turn them into mere metaphors.
But in light of what we have learned, the deepest contrast may not be comfort and pleasure versus suffering and pain. The chapter repeatedly turns from outer circumstances to the inner life. It speaks of panic, confusion, a trembling heart, failing eyes, and a despairing spirit. A person fears the morning at night and fears the night in the morning.
SOURCE “In the morning you shall say, ‘If only it were evening!’” — Deuteronomy 28:67
The curses describe inner anxiety. Life feels unstable, disconnected, and without a center. The blessings describe inner security and a full heart. A person knows where life came from, why it was given, and what it is for.
This is the fulfillment revealed by the two commandments singled out for well-being and long days. Honoring parents and respecting the mother bird while she nurtures teach us to honor the sources of life. They connect us to family, tradition, mission, and G-d. That connection creates a special and essential inner joy.
The reward is not only objective comfort or success. It is also the inner fulfillment of a meaningful life under G-d. This does not erase the material meaning of the blessings and curses. It reveals their deepest human meaning: anxiety versus security, confusion versus purpose, and dread versus a full heart.
DISCUSS Which kind of blessing do you need most now—greater outer stability, or greater inner clarity about where your life comes from and what it is for? How might serving G-d from love help build both?
