EXTRA side-ring · not on main TT sequence
Parashas Bechukosai · Passuk context
And if you reject My statutes, and if your soul abhors My judgments, so as not to do all My commandments, thereby breaking My covenant.
Sifra / classical reading of the ladder of rejection (Rashi and Toras Kohanim on the sequence of contempt) — statutes → judgments → non-performance → covenant breach.
English: “If you reject My statutes” — hatred of the chukim whose reasons are not obvious; “and if your soul abhors My judgments” — disgust at the mishpatim that the intellect understands; “so as not to perform” — withdrawal from action; “thereby breaking My covenant” — rupture of the covenant itself.
Ladder of spiritual decline — four stages from contempt to covenant breach.
The tochacha does not begin with open rebellion. It maps a sequence: intellectual contempt for the inscrutable, then for the rational, then cessation of practice, and only then formal breach of covenant.