Eleven verses of blessings! Follow God’s words and you can rely on Him to shower you with blessings.

When you read these eleven verses in Hebrew, you notice that verse one begins with the letter aleph which is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and that the last letter of verse eleven in tav which is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet!

All the blessings are framed by the first and last letters of the Hebrew alphabet as if to say that you will be blessed with everything imaginable—aleph to tav, which is like saying A to Z in English.

The last word of the verses of blessings is komemiyut (upright). It is implicitly telling us that just like God took the Israelites out of Egypt upright, with pride, he will once again bring us to our homeland in the same fashion with komemiyut—with pride!

This Hebrew word komemiyut appears nowhere else in the entire Hebrew Bible! You can search the 929 chapters and more than 23,000 verses of the Hebrew Bible and you will not find it anywhere except in this verse.

What does this unique word mean?

Komemiyut is a value, not of arrogance or superiority, but a sense of pride in its best spiritual sense. It is walking upright with humility and gratitude to God.

From 1917 until the modern State of Israel was declared on May 14, 1948, the British controlled the land of Israel as authorized by the League of Nations. Despite Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the vicious persecution of Jews, the British severely limited Jewish emigration to the land of Israel. There was virtually nowhere for Jews to flee the Nazi’s including the most natural choice, the ancient Jewish homeland.

Out of desperation Jews tried to enter the land of Israel any way they could despite the British limitation. They organized “illegal” ships and tried to sneak in under the nose of the British. They did what they could. This was not komemiyut.

The term komemiyut may be understood as alluding to the extraordinary change that has transpired in the history of the Jewish people in modern times with respect to their relationship to Israel.

Before the modern State of Israel came into being in 1948, for close to 2000 years people moved to Israel as individuals who felt themselves as mere guests in the land, hosted by the various occupying powers (i.e Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans etc). The year 1948 saw the establishment of the State of Israel and a new attitude towards living in Israel an attitude of Jewish pride komemiyut, i.e. dignity, nobility and self-esteem.

God’s miraculous intervention in the establishment of the State should inspire our gratitude to God for this miracle. We can now live in the courtyards of the house of God. We are indeed blessed that we have this unique opportunity to experience komemiyut by actually living in Israel, in the State of Israel for the first time in nearly 2000 years.