Hi,
"The early ones, all of the seed of Adam and Noach's
descendants, other than special individuals like Shem, Ever and Avraham, served
the stars and denied Divine supervision of individual human beings. Those who
believed in an eternal world followed them, and thought that Divine influence
was entirely automatic, and nothing of its nature would change due to Divine
wish...
"Therefore, when Gd wished to purify Israel He arranged before them the
deeds they would perform, to educate them [to know] that this world was created from total
nothingness, and all of this came from Gd, in accordance with His Will and not
automatically, and that He could alter nature at will, and that there were
deeds Gd desired and deeds which angered Him…
"If Gd had promised spiritual
rewards in His covenant of guarding the mitzvot and His Torah, the Children of
Israel would not have believed this, for they did not yet believe in Divine
supervision! Therefore, He needed to promise them that which they could grasp
with their senses, indicating definitively that He was supervising."
(Don Isaac Abarbanel, commentary to Vayikra 26:1)
Have a great day,
Mordechai
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