Torah Portion Re'eh - See, Today
Torah: Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17 | Haftarah: Isaiah 54:11-55:5 | Besorah: Luke 24:33-49
I own six pairs of reading glasses. There is a pair on my nightstand, a pair in my office, a pair in the living room, a pair in my purse, and two pairs living in whatever dimension readers go when you actually need them. And I still squint at Bible verses and ingredient labels like the small print is a personal insult. Anyone who has been in my live Bible studies will attest to this fact.
So when this week’s portion opens with a single word, “See”, I feel a little called out… not gonna lie.
Moses is standing in front of a nation that has spent forty years watching God split a sea, drop bread out of the sky, and keep their sandals from wearing out. His opening move is an eye exam. See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse. Not someday. Not once you cross the Jordan, get the boxes unpacked and activate your internet. Today.
The whole portion, Deuteronomy 11:26 through 16:17, reads like a household orientation for people about to move into a home they didn’t build. Where to worship. What to eat. When to cancel debts. How wide to open your hand when your neighbor is struggling. And all of it starts with one command addressed directly to your eyes.
Word Study: Re’eh
רְאֵה
Re’eh (pronounced reh-EH) is the command form of ra’ah, the everyday Hebrew verb for seeing. It is one of the most common verbs in the Hebrew Bible, and it covers the whole range of what eyes do. Glancing, noticing, inspecting, perceiving. It’s the same verb Genesis 1 uses when God saw that the light was good. Ordinary word… heavy job.
Here’s the detail that floored me when I first learned it. Re’eh is singular. Moses is speaking to one person. But the very next phrase, “before you today,” uses lifneichem, which is plural. The sentence starts by looking one person in the eye and finishes by addressing the whole camp. That’s not a typo. It’s right there in the Hebrew.
What to make of it is interpretation, and Jewish commentators have long noticed the shift and offered several explanations. One beautiful way to read it: the covenant is given to the people together, while each person must learn to see the choice personally. The whole camp heard Moses that day. The seeing had to happen one set of eyes at a time.
It struck me that the Shema in Deuteronomy 6 commands the ear, and re’eh commands the eye. By the time Moses finishes these speeches, the whole face has been enlisted.
Torah: Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17
“See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse— the blessing, if you listen to the mitzvot of Adonai your God that I am commanding you today, but the curse, if you do not listen to the mitzvot of Adonai your God, but turn from the way I am commanding you today, to go after other gods you have not known.
Deuteronomy 11:26-28 (TLV)
I grew up hearing verses like this preached as a threat, delivered in the same tone my mother used when she said my full name. But look at what Moses actually does here. He lays two roads on the table in broad daylight and treats Israel like adults who are capable of choosing. No fine print. No hidden fees. The terms of the covenant are read aloud before anyone signs.
God even gives the choice a zip code. The blessing gets assigned to Mount Gerizim and the curse to Mount Ebal, two mountains facing each other across a valley near Shechem. Early in Israel’s life in the land, the nation would stand on those slopes and hear both blessing and curse proclaimed.
Deuteronomy 27 assigns six tribes to Gerizim and six to Ebal, and Jewish tradition pictures the priests, the Levites, and the ark in the valley between them, with the people answering Amen to each declaration.1 The geography itself becomes a sermon. Blessing on one side, curse on the other, and every morning your feet point somewhere.
The tribes on Ebal were not saying, “We choose the curse.” They were helping the entire nation hear and affirm the warning side of the covenant. When the Levites announced each curse, all the people were to answer, “Amen” (Deuteronomy 27:14–26). That meant, “We acknowledge this is true and just.”
So every tribe stood under both realities. All Israel could receive blessing through faithfulness, and all Israel could experience judgment through rebellion.
Then the portion gets practical, because Deuteronomy always gets practical. Where will this choosing people worship?
Rather you are to seek only the place Adonai your God chooses from all your tribes to put His Name to dwell—there you will come. There you are to bring your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes, the offering of your hand, your vow and freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herd and of your flock. There you and your households will eat before Adonai your God and rejoice in every undertaking of your hand, as Adonai your God has blessed you. Deuteronomy 12:5-7 (TLV)
The nations they were displacing worshiped at many local sanctuaries, on the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree. Israel gets one place, chosen by God, where His Name will dwell. Verse 8 names the alternative with unnerving precision: “everyone doing what is right in his own eyes.” There are those eyes again.
Left to ourselves, we do not stop worshiping. We just start curating. The chosen place was a guardrail against a designer religion assembled from personal preference, and I will let you decide how relevant that feels in 2026.
Notice what happens at that chosen place, though. Eating. Rejoicing. Households together. Slaves and daughters and Levites included by name. Whatever else the central sanctuary was, it was loud, and it smelled like dinner.
For you are a holy people to Adonai your God—from all the peoples on the face of the earth, Adonai has chosen you to be His treasured people.
Deuteronomy 14:2 (TLV)
Chapter 14’s food laws sit inside that sentence. Holiness in Deuteronomy is not a mood you work up during worship. It reaches into the pantry. A treasured people eats like it belongs to Someone.
And then chapter 15, which I would argue is where this portion stops being ancient and starts reading your mail. Every seventh year, claims against fellow Israelites were released. Creditors were not to press a brother or sister for repayment. And in the shadow of that seventh year, God gives this command:
“If there is a poor man among you—any of your brothers within any of your gates in your land that Adonai your God is giving you—you are not to harden your heart or shut your hand against your poor brother. Rather, you must surely open your hand to him and you must surely lend him enough for his need—whatever he is lacking.
Deuteronomy 15:7-8 (TLV)
Verse 4 says there should be no poor among you. Verse 11 says the poor will never cease from the land. Skeptics love to wave those two verses around like they caught Moses contradicting himself seven sentences apart. Read them together and something else emerges.
Verse 4 describes what full obedience would produce. Verse 11 describes what actually happens among people like us. And the command to open your hand lives in the gap between those two verses, which is exactly where we live too.
Verse 9 even warns about doing the math. The seventh year is close, the debt is about to be released, and “your eye is evil against your poor brother.” Scripture keeps insisting that generosity is an eye condition before it is a wallet condition. What you see when you look at a struggling brother or sister determines what your hand does next.
Then comes one of my favorite strange little scenes in all of Torah. A Hebrew servant completes six years of service and is offered freedom, with a full send-off from flock and threshing floor and winepress. But suppose he does not want to leave?
“Now if he tells you, ‘I will not go away from you’—because he loves you and your household since he is well off with you— then you are to take an awl and put it through his ear to the door, and he will be your servant forever. And to your female slave you are to do the same. Deuteronomy 15:16-17 (TLV)
An ear, an awl, and a door. Belonging out of love rather than debt gets marked at a threshold, in public, permanently. He heard kindness in that house for six years and decided the doorway was worth being fastened to. Tuck that door in your pocket because we will need it again before this study is over.
The portion closes with the three pilgrimage feasts, Matzot, Shavuot, and Sukkot, when Israel gathered to rejoice at the chosen place and every male was commanded to appear before the LORD. And Moses ends the section with a line about hands:
Three times a year all your males are to appear before Adonai your God in the place He chooses—at the Feast of Matzot, the Feast of Shavuot, and the Feast of Sukkot. No one should appear before Adonai empty-handed— the gift of each man’s hand according to the blessing Adonai your God has given you.
Deuteronomy 16:16-17 (TLV)
Open your hand to your brother. Do not come to God with an empty one. In this portion, your hands tattle on your heart whether you authorize them to or not.
Haftarah: Isaiah 54:11-55:5
This haftarah is the third in a series of seven read on the Sabbaths after Tisha B’Av, the day that mourns the destruction of the Temple. Jewish tradition calls these weeks the Sabbaths of consolation.2 For seven weeks, Isaiah’s comfort passages wash over a grieving people. This week, the comfort gets specific.
Afflicted one, storm-tossed, unconsoled, behold, I set your stones in antimony, lay your foundations with sapphires, make your pinnacles of rubies, your gates of crystal, and all your walls of precious stones. All your children will be taught by Adonai. Your children will have great shalom.
Isaiah 54:11-13 (TLV)
God addresses Zion the way you would speak to someone who has been through it. Afflicted. Storm-tossed. Unconsoled. And then, instead of explaining her suffering, He picks up a trowel. Foundations of sapphire. Pinnacles of rubies. Gates of crystal. When God rebuilds what has been battered, He doesn’t use leftover materials, and He doesn’t build back to code. He builds with jewels.
Notice the word behold. Israel spent the Torah portion being told to see. Here God returns the favor and shows. Look, I set your stones. The God who commanded open eyes has no intention of hiding what He’s doing.
Then chapter 55 opens, and God does something that, if He was human, would get Him laughed out of any marketplace in the ancient world. He starts selling for free.
“Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the water, and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost! Why do you spend money for what is not bread? Your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen diligently to Me, and eat what is good, and delight yourself in abundance. Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, so that your soul may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, the trustworthy loyalty to David. Isaiah 55:1-3 (TLV)
The Torah portion was full of hands. Open your hand to the poor. Do not appear before God empty-handed. Now watch the LORD practice what He commanded. He throws open His own storehouse and abolishes the price tags. Wine and milk without money. He asks nothing at the door except thirst.
And His question in verse 2 is the blessing-and-curse choice in market clothes. Why do you spend money for what is not bread? Two tables are set. One costs everything and never satisfies. One is free and feeds you. See, I am setting before you today. Isaiah just moved the two mountains into the shuk.
The passage ends with a promise that the covenant made with David will reach past Israel’s borders. Nations you do not know will come running, verse 5 says, because God has glorified His people. Israel’s covenant calling was never isolated from God’s purpose for the nations. Isaiah sees the nations drawn by what God does for Zion, and Luke is about to take us on a tour to where that road leads.
Besorah: Luke 24:33-49
A quick note before we step in: pairing a Gospel reading with the weekly Torah portion is a Messianic practice, not part of the traditional synagogue readings. These pairings were chosen for this reading cycle because of how the passages speak to each other, and this week they practically finish each other’s sentences.
It is the evening of the resurrection. Two disciples have just sprinted the seven miles back from Emmaus, hearts still burning, to tell the eleven what happened when Yeshua broke the matzah and their eyes were opened. They burst in with their news and are met with news: “The Lord is risen indeed! He has appeared to Simon!” And while everyone is talking over each other the way we do when the story is too good, Yeshua Himself is suddenly standing in the room. “Shalom Aleichem!”
They are terrified. They think they’re seeing a ghost. And listen to what the risen Messiah says to a room full of people who cannot trust their own eyes:
Then He said to them, “Why are you so shaken? And why do doubts arise in your heart? Look at My hands and My feet—it is I Myself! Touch Me and see! For a spirit doesn’t have flesh and bones, as you see I have.”
Luke 24:38-39 (TLV)
Look. Touch and see. On the evening of His resurrection, Yeshua’s first order of business is an invitation to the eyes. He doesn’t scold them into belief or demand they take His word for it. He shows them His hands and His feet, and then, in one of the most amazingly ordinary moments in Scripture, He asks whether anybody has food. They hand Him a piece of broiled fish and He eats it in front of them. Ghosts do not snack. The witnesses needed to see that.
And then He does for the whole room what He did for two of them on the road:
Then He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you—everything written concerning Me in the Torah of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled. Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and He said to them, “So it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for the removal of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.
Luke 24:44-47 (TLV)
He opened their minds. These are people who had heard Him teach for years, and the Scriptures still sat sealed until He opened them. Deuteronomy commanded Israel to see. Luke shows us that when it comes to the deepest things, seeing is also a gift. Commanded and given at the same time. That’s not a contradiction the Bible is embarrassed about. It is how covenant life works. You bring your eyes. He brings the light.
And where does the proclamation to the nations begin? Jerusalem. The portion kept pointing to a place God would choose to make His Name dwell. Luke’s story of good news going out to every nation starts in that very city, and I do not think the echo is hard to hear. Isaiah said nations who never knew Israel would come running. Yeshua tells His witnesses it begins from Jerusalem and runs to all nations. Verse 48 seals it: “You are witnesses of these things.” A witness, by definition, is somebody who saw.
Thematic Threads
The commanded eye. The portion opens with an order to see, warns against doing what is right in your own eyes, and diagnoses stinginess as an evil eye toward a poor brother. Luke picks up the thread with eyes kept from recognizing Yeshua, eyes opened at the breaking of matzah, and a risen Messiah saying touch Me and see. Across both Testaments, seeing is treated as a moral act. What you look at, and how, shapes what you become.
The place and the Name. Deuteronomy 12 keeps pointing to a place God will choose to make His Name dwell, where His people eat and rejoice together. Luke 24 ends in Jerusalem, with repentance proclaimed in Yeshua’s name to all nations beginning from that city, and the disciples continually in the Temple praising God. Luke does not quote Deuteronomy 12 here, but the pattern lands in the same city.
Open hands. Open your hand to your brother. Come to the feast with your hands full. Then Isaiah shows God flinging open His storehouse, selling wine and milk without money. And when Yeshua wants a terrified room to know it is really Him, He shows them His hands. I will just leave that there.
The choice, renewed. Blessing and curse at Gerizim and Ebal. Bread that satisfies against wages that never do. And finally repentance proclaimed in Yeshua’s name to every nation. The covenant choice at Gerizim and Ebal remained Israel’s own calling. Through Israel’s Messiah, its witness now goes outward from Jerusalem, inviting the nations into repentance, forgiveness, and allegiance to Israel’s God.
My Final Thoughts
I spent a lot of years reading Deuteronomy 11:26 as a warning shot. Blessing and curse felt like a trap waiting to spring, and honestly, some of the preaching I sat under didn’t help.
Today, I read it as dignity. God doesn’t sneak up on His people. He lays both roads on the table, explains the terms, assigns them mountains you can point to on a map, and says choose. He treats Israel like she’s grown, capable of an honest decision.
And the choosing was never designed to be a once-in-a-lifetime altar moment. The verses just before this portion write it into the architecture. God’s words go on the doorposts in Deuteronomy 11:20, so you pass them every time you leave and every time you come home. Then inside the portion, the servant who loves his master gets marked at the door. The choice lives at the threshold, which means you meet it daily, usually while carrying way too many bags ofgroceries.
See, I am setting before you today. He said today on the plains of Moab. It is still today.
Hebrew Letter Lesson: Dalet
ד
We’re walking through the aleph-bet one letter per week, and this week we come to the fourth letter, dalet, with a numerical value of four.
Its name. The letter’s name is traditionally connected with delet, the Hebrew word for door. Hebrew also has the little word dal, spelled dalet-lamed, meaning a poor or lowly person. So this one letter stands at the head of two words this portion cares deeply about: the door and the needy one.
Its shape. Look at the letter above. Two strokes: a horizontal beam across the top and a vertical stroke coming down. A lintel and a doorpost. The letter is drawn like a doorway you could walk through.
In this portion. The doorway image begins just before Re’eh, when God’s words are placed on the doorposts of the house in Deuteronomy 11:20, and it continues inside the portion when the servant’s ear is set against the door in 15:17. The poor brother stands within your gates in chapter 15, waiting to find out whether your hand opens. In the very portion where Israel is told to choose, the letter of the week is a doorway. Every door is a small decision. You walk through, or you do not.
A Little Nugget
Last week we met the gimmel, which the rabbis pictured as a giver running toward the poor. This week we meet the one being run toward. In the Talmud (Shabbat 104a), the sages taught children the alphabet as a string of small sermons: gimmel and dalet together stand for gomel dalim, showing kindness to the poor.3 And they noticed that the dalet’s face is turned away from the gimmel. The one who receives should not have to meet the giver’s eyes. Give in a way that spares your neighbor’s dignity.
This is a rabbinic teaching about the letters, not the plain sense of the Torah text. But it grows straight out of the soil of Deuteronomy 15, where God commands the open hand and warns against the grudging eye. The sages were teaching their children to read the alphabet the way Moses taught Israel to see.
Application
Your doorway can become a daily liturgy. God put His words at the threshold on purpose, so that entering and leaving the house would keep the choice in front of your eyes.
Give like the dalet: face turned, no audience, no announcement. Generosity that protects the receiver’s dignity is the kind this portion commands.
When a need shows up within your gates this week, treat it as a door rather than an interruption. You walk through, or you do not.
Weekly Practice
This week, let the dalet do its work. Every time you cross the threshold of your own home, coming or going, say one sentence, out loud or under your breath: “See, today is set before me.” Seven days of doorways will preach Deuteronomy 11:26 to you better than I ever can.
Then, before the week is out, complete the pair: one act of open-handed giving toward a real need, done the dalet’s way, with your face turned. No post, no mention, no receipt. Just an open hand and a shut mouth.
Bible Study Questions
1. Read Deuteronomy 11:26-28. Moses says see rather than hear. What do you think the command to see asks of Israel that hearing alone would not?
2. Read Deuteronomy 12:5-8. What danger is the chosen place designed to guard against, according to verse 8, and where do you notice that same danger in modern worship culture?
3. Read Deuteronomy 15:4 and 15:11 side by side. How do these two verses fit together, and what does the space between them ask of God’s people?
4. Read Deuteronomy 15:16-17. Why do you think the servant’s choice to stay is marked at the door, of all places? What does the scene say about love and belonging?
5. Read Isaiah 54:11-13. What do God’s building materials reveal about how He sees the afflicted one He is addressing?
6. Read Luke 24:44-47. Which parts of Scripture does Yeshua say speak of Him, and what has to happen before the disciples can understand?
Reflection Questions
7. Where in your life right now is a choice sitting in plain sight that you have been treating as background noise?
8. Deuteronomy 15:9 warns that the eye goes bad before the hand closes. What makes generosity costly for you in this season, honestly?
9. In Luke 24:41 the disciples are in disbelief because of joy and wonder. When have joy and doubt shared a room in your own faith?
10. If God rebuilds His storm-tossed people with sapphires and rubies, what does that suggest about how He views the broken places you keep apologizing for?
Action Challenges
11. Do the threshold practice every day this week: one sentence at your own front door, coming and going. “See, today is set before me.”
12. Complete one hidden act of open-handed giving before Shabbat, directed at a specific need, with no one watching and no credit taken.
13. Read Luke 24 aloud in a single sitting and underline every word connected to seeing, eyes, or recognizing. Count them when you finish and sit with what Luke is doing.
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Before You Go
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About the Author
Diane Ferreira is a Jewish believer in Yeshua, a published author, speaker, seminary student, wife, and proud mom. She is the founder of She’s So Scripture and She Opens Her Bible. She is the author of several books, including The Proverbs 31-ish Woman, which debuted as Amazon’s #1 New Release in Religious Humor, as well as Holy, Hormonal and Holding On.
She is currently pursuing her graduate degree in Jewish Studies in seminary, with her favorite topics being the early church and Biblical Hebrew. Diane writes and teaches from a unique perspective, bridging her Jewish heritage with vibrant faith in the Messiah to bring clarity, depth, and devotion to everyday believers.
When she’s not writing, studying, or teaching, you’ll find her curled up with a good book, crocheting something cozy, traveling, or playing her favorite video games.
Notes
Deuteronomy 27:12-13 assigns six tribes to Mount Gerizim for the blessing and six to Mount Ebal for the curse. The staging of the ceremony, with the priests, the Levites, and the ark between the mountains and the people answering Amen, is described in Jewish tradition in Mishnah Sotah 7:5. See https://www.sefaria.org/Mishnah_Sotah.7.5. Joshua 8:30-35 records the ceremony’s fulfillment in the land.
The seven “haftarot of consolation” are a Jewish liturgical tradition: seven comfort passages from Isaiah read on the seven Sabbaths between Tisha B’Av and Rosh Hashanah. The haftarah for Re’eh is the third in the series.
Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 104a, where the sages recount schoolchildren expounding the alphabet: gimmel and dalet read together as gomel dalim, “show kindness to the poor,” with observations on the letters’ shapes, including the dalet’s averted face. See https://www.sefaria.org/Shabbat.104a. This is rabbinic tradition about the letterforms, not biblical text.
Tree of Life (TLV) – Scripture taken from the Holy Scriptures, Tree of Life Version*. Copyright © 2014,2016 by the Tree of Life Bible Society. Used by permission of the Tree of Life Bible Society.