Free will is the foundation of human relationship with G-d. Noone is born knowing how to fulfill mitzvot and Tefillin, Matzos and Shofars don’t fall from heaven. We must make a conscious decision to invest the time and effort to do Mitzvos properly. So while mitzvah observance may seem to be a one sided investment on our part, a usually overlooked detail in the story of this week’s parsha reveals how G-d is very much involved in the mitzvos we do all the time. As the Jewish nation prepared to conquer and inherit the Land of Israel, many of the surrounding nations, blinded by their irrational anti-semitism, tried to stop the Jews from advancing. The Emorites battled them and lost, the Moabites hired Bilaam the prophet to curse them and failed, but the Midianites orchestrated an elaborate scheme to seduce the Jews to sin and successfully caused the death of 22,000 men. G-d instructed the Jews to retaliate and after a brief and miraculous battle Midian was conquered. The amount of people and livestock that were captured as spoils of war was astounding and G-d instructed Moshe to divide the plunder equally between the soldiers that went out to battle and the rest of the nation. A special tax was to be taken from the spoils and dedicated to G-d. From the soldiers Moshe was to take one five hundredth of the people, cattle, donkeys and sheep and give them to Elazar the High Priest. From the rest of the people Moshe was to take one fiftieth of the people, cattle, donkeys and sheep and give them to the Levites. Since the Priests and Levites served G-d in the Holy Temple, giving them the tax elevated and sanctified the rest of the spoils as well. Instead of concluding this chapter of the story by simply recording that Moshe followed G-d’s instructions, the Torah, which serves as a guide for eternity, records in minute detail the exact amount of people, cattle, donkeys and sheep the Jews plundered from the Midianites and how much the respective taxes were. Why must we know all these details today? Reading through the detailed counting of the spoils, something astounding emerges: the hundreds of thousands of individual units of plunder were counted up in even numbers of groups of five hundred and groups of fifty! There were absolutely no extras! Although this phenomenon is definitely not nature defying like Avraham miraculously coming out of a fiery furnace unscathed - it is so unusual that it could be classified as close to impossible. G-d set up the Midianite economy in such a way that when the Jews would ultimately defeat them they would have this specific number of people, cattle, donkeys and sheep so that the tax would represent every unit of plunder. Even one extra cow or sheep would render the entire mitzvah insufficient. The Torah enumerates all this in over one hundred seemingly extra words in order to teach us today to never be daunted when facing challenges in observing Mitzvos. G-d has it all set up for us, and we just need to make the right choices. Adapted from Likkutei Sichos vol. 13 pages 110-113.