(12) And now, O Israel, what does YHVH your God demand of you? Only this: to revere YHVH your God, to walk only in God's paths, to love God, and to serve YHVH your God with all your heart and soul, (13) keeping YHVH's commandments and laws, which I enjoin upon you today, for your good. (14) Mark, the heavens to their uttermost reaches belong to YHVH your God, the earth and all that is on it! (15) Yet it was to your ancestors that YHVH was drawn in love for them, so that God chose you, their lineal descendants, from among all peoples—as is now the case. (16) Cut away, therefore, the thickening about your hearts and stiffen your necks no more. (17) For YHVH your God is God supreme, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe, (18) but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and befriends the stranger, providing him with food and clothing.— (19) You too must befriend the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.
(1) ערלת לבבכם [YOU SHALL CIRCUMCISE] THE FORESKIN OF YOUR HEART — This means: ye shall remove the closure and cover that is on your hearts, [which prevent My words gaining entrance to them] (cf. Rashi on Exodus 6:12 and Leviticus 19:23).
(12) But Moses appealed to YHVH saying, “The Israelites would not listen to me; how then should Pharaoh heed me, a man of impeded speech!”
(10) To whom shall I speak, Give warning that they may hear? Their ears are blocked And they cannot listen. See, the word of YHVH has become for them An object of scorn; they will have none of it.
The greatest hindrance to knowledge is our adjustment to conventional, to mental cliches. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions is, therefore, a prerequisite for an authentic awareness of that which is. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone.
Scholars have long struggled to understand just what the heart (lev) symbolizes in biblical thinking. Some interpreters insist that in the Torah, the heart is "considered, not the seat of feelings, but of intelligence," in which case what the Torah asks for in our verse is for Israel to open its mind. Others assert that is is "the organ of volition" in which case what is called for is a conversion of the will. More convincing, in my view, is a more expansive interpretation, according to which "the heart in Hebrew thought is the preeminent metaphor for the inner being of a person, the seat of intelligence; the seat of emotions, and the seat of volition, i.e., the will." Moses thus demands that the people totally transform their inner lives, so that they will now respond to God's command with loyalty, readiness, and faithfulness. As Bible scholar Richard Nelson explains, "circumcising the heart is a metaphor for a radical, interior, renewal that makes love and obedience fully possible." Rabbi Shai Held; Will and Grace Or: Who Will Circumcise the Heart