Devarim 11:13-17
If You Truly Listen
The second paragraph of the Shema: five verses that tie the rain over a whole country to the conduct of the people who live there.
For children, teens and adults
You may know this paragraph without knowing that you know it. It is the second paragraph of the Shema, said twice a day, and the secular Tanach syllabus takes the first paragraph, Devarim 6, and stops there. The first paragraph asks you to love. This one makes an arrangement: listen, and the rain comes in its season; drift, and the sky shuts. The Mishnah in Berachot says the order is deliberate, first a person accepts the sovereignty, and only then the obligations. Which means anyone who says the Shema has agreed, twice a day, to a sentence about weather and behaviour that looks testable and looks false. What follows takes that seriously rather than going around it.
וְהָיָה אִם־שָׁמֹעַ תִּשְׁמְעוּ אֶל־מִצְוֺתַי אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם הַיּוֹם לְאַהֲבָה אֶת־ה׳ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וּלְעָבְדוֹ בְּכָל־לְבַבְכֶם וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁכֶם׃
Devarim 11:13
Vehaya im shamoa tishme'u el mitzvotai asher anochi metzaveh etchem hayom, le'ahava et Hashem Elokeichem ul'ovdo bechol levavchem uvchol nafshechem.
And it shall be, if you truly listen to my commandments that I command you today, to love Hashem your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul…