To Walk in His Ways and Path

This describes how we are called to align ourselves relative to God’s direction. This is the key point to this long article. To understand what “walking in His ways” means, the Torah gives some early clues. Before becoming a nation in Egypt, and before the law at Sinai, individuals are already described as walking with God and in His ways. These early accounts provide what God recognizes as alignment with His way.

A Starting Point: Individuals Who Walked with God Before Sinai

Before any laws are given, the Torah ties walking with God in His ways with righteousness and justice. Enoch is identified in Genesis 5:22-24:

After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God 300 years; … Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, for God took him.

Noah is identified in Genesis 6:9:

This is the line of Noah—Noah was a righteous man; he was blameless in his age; Noah walked with God.

Abram is instructed in Genesis 17:1-2 to walk before God and be blameless:

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am El Shaddai. Walk in My ways and be blameless. I will establish My covenant between Me and you, and I will make you exceedingly numerous.”

Genesis 18:19 connects “the way of the Lord” with doing righteousness and justice when choosing Abram:

For I have embraced him so that he will charge his sons and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham all that He spoke concerning him.

These early descriptions suggest that walking with God involves moral alignment, even before a formal legal code appears at Sinai. Righteousness, justice and being blameless form part of the Torah’s earliest formulation as the way of the Lord.

With the Exodus, walking with God shifts from individual alignment to collective experience. The wilderness narrative becomes a sustained case study—demonstrating not abstract principles, but lived failure as an entire people attempts to walk God’s path in real time.

Following the Exodus, the Israelites are instructed to “walk in all His paths” (Deut. 10:12) and “after the Lord your God shall you go” (Deut. 13:5).

The poem in Deuteronomy 32:4 reiterates His ways include righteousness and justice: “The Rock, His acts are perfect, for all His ways are justice. A steadfast God without wrong, true and right is He.”

Up to this point, Torah has described posture. The wilderness narrative shows what happens when posture fails, even before law-breaking occurs. The wandering following the Exodus provides a granular description of the Israelites walking with God on His path, albeit mostly failing. While some of the failures involve direct violations of law such as the golden calf, many others show lack of gratitude, lack of trust, and especially lack of reverence. God’s reactions give us our best insight what God means to walk His path with Him.

Exodus and Wilderness: Trust, Reverence and Gratitude

This section matters because it shows how walking in God’s path while revering and trusting God must all come together or else all fail. Exodus presents God having a grand plan to redeem the Israelites by great signs, demonstrate His power to Egypt, bring the Israelites to Sinai and give them the law, and triumphantly march together to Canaan to fulfill His promise of the land of Israel to Abraham. After revealing Himself in the burning bush, God tells Moses in Exodus 3:7-11:

I indeed have seen the abuse of My people that is in Egypt, and its outcry because of its taskmasters. I have heard, for I know its pain. And I have come down to rescue it from the hand of Egypt and to bring it up from that land to a goodly and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite and the Amorite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite. And now, look, the outcry of the Israelites has come to Me and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. And now, go that I may send you to Pharaoh, and bring My people the Israelites out of Egypt.

After they flee Egypt, the Israelites find themselves pressed against the Red Sea. They express distrust and irreverence by complaining about their impending destruction in Exodus 14:10-12:

As Pharaoh drew near, the Israelites caught sight of the Egyptians advancing upon them. Greatly frightened, the Israelites cried out to the Lord. And they said to Moses, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, taking us out of Egypt? Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, saying, ‘Let us be, and we will serve the Egyptians, for it is better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness’?”

God does not chastise the Israelites for complaining, but does indicate in Exodus 15:15-18 that part of His path is to demonstrate His great power:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry out to Me? Tell the Israelites to go forward. And you lift up your rod and hold out your arm over the sea and split it, so that the Israelites may march into the sea on dry ground. And I will stiffen the hearts of the Egyptians so that they go in after them; and I will gain glory through Pharaoh and all his warriors, his chariots and his horsemen. Let the Egyptians know that I am Lord, when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”

In the wilderness between Egypt and Sinai, the Israelites grumbled because the water at Marah was bitter (Exod. 15:22-24). God responds with a test in Exodus 15:25-26:

There He made for them a fixed rule, and there He put them to the test. He said, “If you will heed the Lord your God diligently, doing what is upright in His sight, giving ear to His commandments and keeping all His laws, then I will not bring upon you any of the diseases that I brought upon the Egyptians, for I the Lord am your healer.”

The Israelites again demonstrate distrust and irreverence in Exodus 16:2-3 by complaining on the way to Sinai, this time for lack of food:

In the wilderness, the whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots, when we ate our fill of bread! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to starve this whole congregation to death.”

God responds by providing Manna and quail “that I may thus test them, to see whether they will follow My instructions or not.” (Exod. 16:4-15).

The next quarrel is at Horeb in Exodus 17:1-7, the first time God chastises their irreverence:

They encamped at Rephidim, and there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses. “Give us water to drink,” they said; and Moses replied to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you try the Lord?” But the people thirsted there for water; and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, “What shall I do with this people? Before long they will be stoning me!” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pass before the people; take with you some of the elders of Israel, and take along the rod with which you struck the Nile, and set out. I will be standing there before you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock and water will issue from it, and the people will drink.” And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel. The place was named Massaha and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and because they tried the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord present among us or not?”

In Numbers 11:1-2, following their departure from Sinai, God takes His first punitive action solely for the ingratitude shown by their complaining:

The people took to complaining bitterly before the Lord. The Lord heard and was incensed: a fire of the Lord broke out against them, ravaging the outskirts of the camp. The people cried out to Moses. Moses prayed to the Lord, and the fire died down.

Right away they start complaining about a lack of meat in Numbers 11:4-6:

The riffraff in their midst felt a gluttonous craving; and then the Israelites wept and said, “If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish that we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. Now our gullets are shriveled. There is nothing at all! Nothing but this manna to look to!”

God gets very angry at this point for their whining and criticism of His path out of Egypt:

The Lord was very angry, and Moses was distressed. *** And say to the people: Purify yourselves for tomorrow and you shall eat meat, for you have kept whining before the Lord and saying, ‘If only we had meat to eat! Indeed, we were better off in Egypt!’ The Lord will give you meat and you shall eat. You shall eat not one day, not two, not even five days or ten or twenty, but a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and becomes loathsome to you. For you have rejected the Lord who is among you, by whining before Him and saying, ‘Oh, why did we ever leave Egypt!’” (Num. 11:10, 18-20)

In Numbers 11:21-23, Moses also questions how this much meat could be provided for so many people, and God appears annoyed with Moses for his doubt:

[a]nd the Lord answered Moses, “Is there a limit to the Lord’s power? You shall soon see whether what I have said happens to you or not!”

God then provided an abundance of quail in anger, and punished those who complained:

The meat was still between their teeth, nor yet chewed, when the anger of the Lord blazed forth against the people and the Lord struck the people with a very severe plague. That place was named Kibroth-hattaavah, because the people who had the craving were buried there. (Num. 11:31-34).

About fifteen months after leaving Egypt, the Israelites arrive at the border of Canaan. They lack trust in God’s path into the promised land by refusing to enter out of fear after the spies’ return, and irreverence by bemoaning leaving Egypt. (Num 14:1-10). God appears exasperated by their lack of trust despite having seen all God had already done:

“How long will this people spurn Me, and how long will they have no faith in Me despite all the signs that I have performed in their midst?” (Num 14:11).

Moses pleads that God not destroy them and start a new nation through Moses. God agrees but metes out a harsh punishment for thwarting His path through their lack of trust:

And the Lord said, “I pardon, as you have asked. Nevertheless, as I live and as the Lord’s Presence fills the whole world, none of the men who have seen My Presence and the signs that I have performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who have tried Me these many times and have disobeyed Me, shall see the land that I promised on oath to their fathers; none of those who spurn Me shall see it. But My servant Caleb, because he was imbued with a different spirit and remained loyal to Me—him will I bring into the land that he entered, and his offspring shall hold it as a possession. Now the Amalekites and the Canaanites occupy the valleys. Start out, then, tomorrow and march into the wilderness by way of the Sea of Reeds.”

The Lord spoke further to Moses and Aaron, “How much longer shall that wicked community keep muttering against Me? Very well, I have heeded the incessant muttering of the Israelites against Me. Say to them: ‘As I live,’ says the Lord, ‘I will do to you just as you have urged Me. In this very wilderness shall your carcasses drop. Of all of you who were recorded in your various lists from the age of twenty years up, you who have muttered against Me, not one shall enter the land in which I swore to settle you—save Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. Your children who, you said, would be carried off—these will I allow to enter; they shall know the land that you have rejected. But your carcasses shall drop in this wilderness, while your children roam the wilderness for forty years, suffering for your faithlessness, until the last of your carcasses is down in the wilderness. You shall bear your punishment for forty years, corresponding to the number of days—forty days—that you scouted the land: a year for each day. Thus you shall know what it means to thwart Me. I the Lord have spoken: Thus will I do to all that wicked band that has banded together against Me: in this very wilderness they shall die to the last man.’” (Num 14:20-35).

There are then two rebellions against Moses’ authority and God’s path that greatly anger God:

Now Korah, son of Izhar son of Kohath son of Levi, betook himself, along with Dathan and Abiram sons of Eliab, and On son of Peleth— descendants of Reuben—to rise up against Moses, together with two hundred and fifty Israelites, chieftains of the community, chosen in the assembly, men of repute. They combined against Moses and Aaron and said to them, “You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and the Lord is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the Lord’s congregation?” *** Now that He has advanced you and all your fellow Levites with you, do you seek the priesthood too? Truly, it is against the Lord that you and all your company have banded together. For who is Aaron that you should rail against him?”

Moses sent for Dathan and Abiram, sons of Eliab; but they said, “We will not come! Is it not enough that you brought us from a land flowing with milk and honey to have us die in the wilderness, that you would also lord it over us? Even if you had brought us to a land flowing with milk and honey, and given us possession of fields and vineyards, should you gouge out those men’s eyes? We will not come!” (Num 16:1-3, 10-14)

God responds with judgment against the whole community, but is convinced to be more focused:

Korah gathered the whole community against them at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting.

Then the Presence of the Lord appeared to the whole community, and the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “Stand back from this community that I may annihilate them in an instant!” But they fell on their faces and said, “O God, Source of the breath of all flesh! When one man sins, will You be wrathful with the whole community?”

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the community and say: Withdraw from about the abodes of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram.”

And Moses said, “By this you shall know that it was the Lord who sent me to do all these things; that they are not of my own devising: if these men die as all men do, if their lot be the common fate of all mankind, it was not the Lord who sent me. But if the Lord brings about something unheard-of, so that the ground opens its mouth and swallows them up with all that belongs to them, and they go down alive into Sheol, you shall know that these men have spurned the Lord.” Scarcely had he finished speaking all these words when the ground under them burst asunder, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up with their households, all Korah’s people and all their possessions. They went down alive into Sheol, with all that belonged to them; the earth closed over them and they vanished from the midst of the congregation. All Israel around them fled at their shrieks, for they said, “The earth might swallow us!”

And a fire went forth from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men offering the incense. (Num 16:19-24, 28-35)

The Israelites again rebel by railing at Moses against God’s judgment in Numbers 17:6-7:

Next day the whole Israelite community railed against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You two have brought death upon the Lord’s people!” But as the community gathered against them, Moses and Aaron turned toward the Tent of Meeting; the cloud had covered it and the Presence of the Lord appeared.

God then entered further judgment by plague in Numbers 17:8-15:

When Moses and Aaron reached the Tent of Meeting, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Remove yourselves from this community, that I may annihilate them in an instant.” They fell on their faces. Then Moses said to Aaron, “Take the fire pan, and put on it fire from the altar. Add incense and take it quickly to the community and make expiation for them. For wrath has gone forth from the Lord: the plague has begun!” Aaron took it, as Moses had ordered, and ran to the midst of the congregation, where the plague had begun among the people. He put on the incense and made expiation for the people; he stood between the dead and the living until the plague was checked. Those who died of the plague came to fourteen thousand and seven hundred, aside from those who died on account of Korah. Aaron then returned to Moses at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, since the plague was checked.

The Israelites continue to complain in Numbers 20:2-5, near the end of 40 years of wandering:

The community was without water, and they joined against Moses and Aaron. The people quarreled with Moses, saying, “If only we had perished when our brothers perished at the instance of the Lord! Why have you brought the Lord’s congregation into this wilderness for us and our beasts to die there? Why did you make us leave Egypt to bring us to this wretched place, a place with no grain or figs or vines or pomegranates? There is not even water to drink!”

This time, after God instructs Moses to order the rock to give its water in Number 20:8-12, God punishes Moses for not trusting God after Moses instead struck the rock:

…and the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “You and your brother Aaron take the rod and assemble the community, and before their very eyes order the rock to yield its water. Thus you shall produce water for them from the rock and provide drink for the congregation and their beasts.”

Moses took the rod from before the Lord, as He had commanded him. Moses and Aaron assembled the congregation in front of the rock; and he said to them, “Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?” And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.

But the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

The Israelites’ final major complaint is in Numbers 21:6-7, concerning a lack of bread and water:

But the people grew restive on the journey, and the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why did you make us leave Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread and no water, and we have come to loathe this miserable food.”

God immediately punishes them in Numbers 21:6-7, again for their irreverence:

The Lord sent seraphe serpents against the people. They bit the people and many of the Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you.

Ultimately, walking in God’s path requires embracing it is His path not ours; showing gratitude for participating in His path even if we suffer as part of it; avoiding irreverent questioning of His commitment or capability is addressing our unmet needs; and being brave when God walks with us.

The wilderness failures expose what happens when trust, gratitude, and reverence collapse. But walking in God’s ways is not defined only by responses to hardship. The Torah also specifies how alignment with God expresses itself positively—particularly in the administration of justice and care for the vulnerable.

Justice and Righteousness for the Orphan, Widow and Sojourner

In addition to revering, walking with, loving and serving God, we are called on to do justice and be righteous, but these appear to be part of keeping His way and walking in His path.

In Deuteronomy 16:18-20, the Israelites are called upon to do justice in cases between them:

Judges and overseers you shall set for yourself within all your gates that the Lord your God is about to give to you according to your tribes, and they shall judge the people with just judgment. You shall not skew judgment. You shall recognize no face and no bribe shall you take, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and perverts the words of the innocent. Justice, justice shall you pursue, so that you may live and take hold of the land that the Lord your God is about to give you.

Other portions narrow one focus of justice and righteousness specifically toward the orphan, widow, and sojourner. Immediately following Deuteronomy 10:12-16, which requires us “to walk only in His paths,” God’s ways of justice and righteousness are further explained in 10:17-20:

For the Lord your God, He is the God of gods and the Master of masters, the great and mighty and fearsome God who shows no favor and takes no bribe, doing justice for orphan and widow and loving the sojourner to give him bread and cloak. And you shall love the sojourner, for sojourners you were in the land of Egypt.

We are called on to be righteous and to do justice in connection with one who sojourns with us, the orphan, and the widow in Exodus 22:20-24:

You shall not cheat a sojourner and you shall not oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt. No widow nor orphan shall you abuse. If you indeed abuse them, when they cry out to Me, I will surely hear their outcry. And My wrath shall flare up and I will kill you by the sword, and your wives shall be widows and your children orphans.

The curses the Israelites are called on to recognize include injustice against the vulnerable:

“Cursed be he who skews the case of a sojourner, orphan, or widow.” And all the people shall say “Amen.” (Deut. 27:19)

Several portions discuss charity to and inclusion of the needy as part of God’s ways. In Leviticus 19:2 God instructs Moses to tell the people: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” followed in 19:9-11 to leave the edges of the field after the harvest, “For the poor and for the sojourner you shall leave them.” These same charity instructions for the vulnerable are presented in Deuteronomy 14:28-29 as the basis for God blessing us, again in Deuteronomy 24:18-25 for remembrance of God freeing us from slavery as strangers in Egypt, and again in 26:12-17 specifically to “walk in His ways…”

Deuteronomy 16:11-14 instructs Israel to include these people while rejoicing the festivals of Shavuot and Sukkot.

God’s ways are thus specifically concerned with justice and righteousness toward the sojourner, orphan and widow while also being concerned with righteousness and justice for all.

The commands which require we be charitable implicitly require that we trust that providing for the less fortunate will not make us less fortunate. In other words, we must trust that if we are righteous through charity, God will continue to provide us what we need That assumption raises a notable tension that is present throughout the Torah: while trust is essential to faithfully walking in God’s ways, Trust is never commanded outright. Instead, Torah presents trust as something that arises from our experience with God.

Trust: Expected but never Commanded

The above citations reveal that God expects our trust because He earned it. God expresses anger and exasperation when the Israelites elevate their base human survival instincts of hunger, thirst and fear to question His path, His commitment, or His capability. They express fear that His path will lead to their ruin, and distrust in the structure of His path despite what they have seen.

Yet none of the laws in Torah command that we trust God. We are, however, commanded to afflict our nefesh once per year to atone for our sins. Animals are also described as having nefesh, which is bound to the blood. If nefesh means our human survival instinct, and to afflict takes on the meaning of oppressing, lowering, or subduing as otherwise used throughout Torah, then perhaps the only thing standing between obedience and disobedience, trust and fear, gratitude and complaint or haughtiness is raising our human instincts and desires above God’s path. When God says go, take the land I promised to your fathers, I will be with you, but the Israelites say no, we are afraid of the giants and fortifications in the land, they elevate their nefesh above God’s path. Fear is not punished, elevating that fear against God’s path is the true transgression.

Trust is based on past experience, and grows from observing past consistent conduct. So when God says do not follow your own eyes, and to bind this law upon your hand and as remembrance between your eyes, we are being told to not do whatever we think is right but to instead trust God based on the experiences described in Torah. We are called upon to recall the Exodus and observe the Passover every year. While trust is not commanded, it is recognized and rewarded.

In Genesis 15:1-6, after God helped Abram defeat the nations which had taken his kinsmen captive, Abram discusses having no offspring as an heir. God responds that He will ensure Abram has a child, and says:

And because he put his trust in the Lord, He reckoned it to his righteousness.

In Exodus 14:31, the Israelites trusted God and Moses after the parting of the Red Sea:

And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord; they had faith in the Lord and His servant Moses.

In Numbers 14:21-24, God credits Caleb for trusting God, in contrast with Israel’s refusal to trust even after experiencing God’s presence and awesome acts in Egypt:

Nevertheless, as I live and as the Lord’s Presence fills the whole world, none of the men who have seen My Presence and the signs that I have performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who have tried Me these many times and have disobeyed Me, shall see the land that I promised on oath to their fathers; none of those who spurn Me shall see it. But My servant Caleb, because he was imbued with a different spirit and remained loyal to Me—him will I bring into the land that he entered, and his offspring shall hold it as a possession.

In Deuteronomy 1:26-36, Moses recaps God being angry and describing as evil the Israelites’ lack of trust and irreverence after what they experienced:

Yet you refused to go up, and flouted the command of the Lord your God. You sulked in your tents and said, “It is because the Lord hates us that He brought us out of the land of Egypt, to hand us over to the Amorites to wipe us out. What kind of place are we going to? Our kinsmen have taken the heart out of us, saying, ‘We saw there a people stronger and taller than we, large cities with walls sky-high, and even Anakites.”

I said to you, “Have no dread or fear of them. None other than the Lord your God, who goes before you, will fight for you, just as He did for you in Egypt before your very eyes, and in the wilderness, where you saw how the Lord your God carried you, as a man carries his son, all the way that you traveled until you came to this place. Yet for all that, you have no faith in the Lord your God, who goes before you on your journeys—to scout the place where you are to encamp—in fire by night and in cloud by day, in order to guide you on the route you are to follow.”

When the Lord heard your loud complaint, He was angry. He vowed: Not one of these men, this evil generation, shall see the good land that I swore to give to your fathers—none except Caleb son of Jephunneh; he shall see it, and to him and his descendants will I give the land on which he set foot, because he remained loyal to the Lord.

Trust God and He will reckon it to our righteousness.