ספר דברים

Still on the subject of G’d “only” asking us to revere Him, etc; ‎the Talmud in B’rachot 33 asks how Moses could possibly ‎describe fear of and reverence for G’d, as something qualifying for ‎the description as something “minimal,” i.e. ‎כי אם‎? Surely a ‎person who is in awe of Hashem has attained a lofty ‎spiritual platform. The Talmud answers that from Moses’ ‎personal vantage point, possessing reverence and awe for G’d was ‎indeed something very minor, not requiring any great effort. The ‎commentators, puzzled by this, ask that seeing Moses asked the ‎Israelites at large to acquire such reverence and awe, Moses’ ‎personal ease in having acquired it seems quite irrelevant?‎It appears that an appropriate answer to this would be ‎Exodus 1,21 where the Torah reports the reaction of the Jewish ‎midwives to Pharaoh’s command to kill Jewish boy babies before ‎they had actually been born. The Torah describes the midwives’ ‎refusal to carry out Pharaoh’s command as being based on the ‎fact that they were in fear and awe of the Jewish G’d not to ‎commit murder. As a reward, G’d “built houses for these ‎midwives.” Rashi explains that the “houses” referred to in ‎that verse meant that their offspring would be Levites, Priests, or ‎Royalty, i.e. the elite of the nation. In other words, Moses was ‎born as a result of the reverence and awe for G’d displayed by his ‎mother Yocheved when she put her life in danger by making sure ‎that Jewish boy babies survived.‎Moses was an extremely humble and modest man, according ‎to the Torah’s testimony, more so than any other human being; ‎from this it follows that he viewed the fact that he had survived ‎birth at all as a reward for his mother’s awe of G’d which had ‎prompted her to defy Pharaoh’s order to murder Jewish boy ‎babies. He naturally, considered possession of such awe for G’d as ‎something relatively easy to acquire, just as it had been a natural ‎attribute of his mother. This is what the Talmud had in mind ‎when it described this attribute as something relatively minor.‎