When did God become "magnified"? Midrash Tanchuma Buber, Bereshit 10:2 answers: at the moment the heavens and earth came into being. And for whose sake did God create them? For Israel's sake, as Jeremiah 2:3 declares: "Israel is holy for the Lord, the beginning of His harvest."
The strange spelling
R. Abba bar Kahana, a late third-century sage in the land of Israel, noticed an oddity in Jeremiah 2:3. The written text (the ketiv) spells "His harvest" as tevu'atoh with a final heh. But the read text (the kere) pronounces it tevu'ato with a final vav. The two letters sound similar but write differently, and the rabbis always asked why.
R. Abba's answer is breathtaking. The difference encodes a theology of interest and principal.
The financial metaphor
In rabbinic Hebrew, tevu'ah (harvest) doubles as a financial term meaning "yield" or "interest." The principal sum — keren — is the seed capital. The yield is what the capital produces over time.
R. Abba read Jeremiah's two spellings as two different words. The pronounced tevu'ato means "His interest." The written tevu'atoh is something fuller — the principal itself.
His conclusion: "We only eat from the interest — not from the principal, since it is preserved for us for the world to come."
What this metaphor actually says
Israel, in this reading, is living off the yield of a vast spiritual investment. Every blessing, every harvest, every answered prayer in this world is interest — profit generated by a capital sum so enormous it cannot be touched yet. The principal is being held in reserve for the <a href='/categories/kabbalah.html'>world to come</a>.
This is why suffering does not disprove the covenant. If you were eating only the interest, your daily experience would include stretches of scarcity. But the principal — the full reward, the true inheritance — is intact. It waits.
Israel as the beginning of the harvest
Jeremiah called Israel the reshit (beginning) of God's harvest. In the first-fruits ceremony of Deuteronomy 26, the earliest produce of the season was brought to the Temple and given to the priests. It could not be eaten by the farmer. It was holy.
Israel, the midrash suggests, is that first-fruits offering on a cosmic scale. The nation's very existence is holy yield — not for Israel's consumption but for God's. And the rest of the harvest, the principal, is the full eschatological reward that will be distributed in time.
The takeaway: what we receive in this world is the interest. The principal is kept safe for the world to come. A lean year is not a broken covenant — it is just a slow quarter on a contract with eternity.