Hashem will remove every sickness from you. All the bad maladies of Egypt that you knew, He will not put them upon you, but put them upon all your foes.[1]
If the context of this line had been an undeserving Klal Yisrael, to which Hashem nonetheless promises His saving grace, we would find no problem. The pasuk would convey that He promises to heal us even when we do not deserve it. But that is not the context. The previous pesukim speak of a Klal Yisrael that has dutifully observed all of Hashem’s chukim, and been told of the myriad blessings that will be bestowed upon them. Why would we ever think that such a community should have sickness thrust upon it, only that it should be later removed by HKBH?
The question only occurs to us because we tend to think of pain and suffering as punishment for our sins. It is easy to forget that the Torah teaches about a different logic of pain: yesurin shel ahavah. Hashem will sometimes visit unhappy circumstances upon us in order to keep us in a constant state of teshuvah! This serious self-reflection can prevent a person from otherwise drifting off from his life’s mission.
These yesurin come in one of two different forms. They can be directed specifically at us, riveting our attention on Him, and keeping us in a constant state of sober focus upon Him and His expectations of us. Alternatively, they can be brought upon others. When we see those tragedies, we thank Him for sparing us, and acknowledge His providence in keeping harm at arm’s length. Either way, we gain a heightened sense of His immanence.
In the lines before our pasuk, the Torah spoke of all the wonderful things that will happen to us when we are faithful to His mitzvos. Those berachos can easily lead – as happens so often – to complacency and feelings of self-importance. From positions of advantage, we often forget Him keep ourselves distant from Him. We don’t feel the same yir’ah, or the immediacy of the consequences should we disobey. Out of His love for us, He must send yesurin shel ahavah to remind us to keep our eye on the bass. Lest those berachos turn into curses, we need to be roused to greater concentration upon Him.
Those yesurin come as illness and pain. Our pasuk does not say that the people will be pain-free. It says that Hashem will remove disease that has been put in place. But it continues on to describe how this will happen. The disease will be there – but not placed upon us. Rather, it will affect the enemies of Israel. We will be awakened by what we see happening to them. We will understand that it is Hashem’s mishpat, visited upon evildoers. And we will get the memo. We will be clever enough – and possessed of enough yir’as Shomayim – to extrapolate to ourselves from what we see happening to others. We will realize that the berachos could potentially allow us to drift away from Him, and we will not allow it to happen.
- Devarim 7:15 ↑