page_title: Eikev
section_title: Third reading — Deuteronomy 9:4–29
hierarchical_section_title: Eikev / Readings / Third reading — Deuteronomy 9:4–29
caption_attribution_description: Português: Prova de Concurso para Prêmio de Viagem ao Exterior.
context_page_description: Eikev, Ekev, Ekeb, Aikev, or Eqeb is the 46th weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the third in the Book of Deuteronomy. It comprises Deuteronomy 7:12–11:25. The parashah tells of the blessings of obedience to God, the dangers of forgetting God, and directions for taking the Land of Israel. Moses recalls the making and re-making of the Tablets of Stone, the incident of the Golden Calf, Aaron's death, the Levites' duties, and exhortations to serve God.
  The parashah is made up of 6,865 Hebrew letters, 1,747 Hebrew words, 111 verses, and 232 lines in a Torah Scroll. Jews generally read it in August or on rare occasion in late July.
context_section_description: In the third reading (עליה, aliyah), Moses warned the Israelites not to believe that God had enabled them to possess the land because of their own virtue; God was dispossessing the land's current inhabitants for two reasons: because of those nations' wickedness, and to fulfill the oath that God had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses exhorted the Israelites to remember how they had provoked God to anger in the wilderness. At Horeb they so provoked God that God was angry enough to have destroyed them. Moses ascended the mountain, stayed for 40 days and nights, and consumed no bread or water. At the end of the 40 days, God gave Moses two stone tablets that God had inscribed with the covenant that God had addressed to the Israelites. God told Moses to hurry down, for the people whom Moses brought out of Egypt had acted wickedly and had made a molten image. God told Moses that God was inclined to destroy them and make of Moses a nation far more numerous than they. Moses started down the mountain with the two tablets in his hands, when he saw how the Israelites had made themselves a molten calf. Moses smashed the two tablets before their eyes, and threw himself down before God, fasting another 40 days and nights. God gave heed to Moses. God was angry enough with Aaron to have destroyed him, so Moses also interceded for Aaron. Moses burned the calf, ground it into dust, and threw its dust into the brook that came down from the mountain.
  In the continuation of the reading, Moses reminded the Israelites how they provoked God at Taberah, at Massah, and at Kibroth-hattaavah. And when God sent them from Kadesh-barnea to take possession of the land, they flouted God's command and did not put their trust in God. When Moses lay prostrate before God those 40 days, because God was determined to destroy the Israelites, Moses prayed to God not to annihilate God's own people, whom God freed from Egypt, but to give thought to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and ignore the Israelites' sinfulness, else the Egyptians would say that God was powerless to bring them into the land that God had promised them. The third reading (עליה, aliyah) and the fourth open portion (פתוחה, petuchah) end here with the end of chapter 9.
caption: Moses Receiving the Tablets of the Law (1868 painting by João Zeferino da Costa)
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