Moshe, as he's recounting all that has happened over the years, reminds the Jews that he won't be going into the land with them & that they should be very careful not to anger Hashem.
Then he warns them that their children, who did not personally experience the exodus, will be in danger of slipping into the pagan culture of the Canaanites & being exiled from the land.
However, he reassures them that all will not be lost; even while the Jews are in exile they will eventually return to Hashem Who will return us to our land, as the posuk states, ובקשתם משם את ה' אלקיך ומצאת כי תדרשנו בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך , from there you will seek Hashem, your G-d and you will find Him, if you search for Him with all your heart & soul.
The posuk starts with ובקשתם, you will seek, in the plural implying that the masses have to seek Hashem for Him to be found; then it says ומצאת, you will find Him in the singular. Why the change?
The Gra' bases his answer on a gemara which relates the story of two people who had the same problem and went to pray for it to be resolved. One of them was answered & one of them wasn't answered. The gemara asks why was one answered and the other not? The gemara answers, the one who was answered prayed with kavana, concentration, while the other one didn't. Our posuk can be explained the same way. ובקשתם, in plural, many people searching, ומצאת, He's found in singular, meaning only certain individuals will find. Which ones? As the posuk concludes, כי תדרשנו בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך, when you search for Him with all your heart and soul; meaning that one who davens with all his heart & soul, one who has kavana when he prays, will be answered.
Rabbainu Bachya explains a little differently. He says, had the Torah also written ומצאתם in the plural, one could have thought that in exile it's only if the masses search & pray to Hashem that we will be answered but the prayer of a lone individual will not be answered. To counter that notion, the Torah says ומצאת, in the singular, to tell us that, as long as even the individual is sincere & prays with his heart, he too will be answered.
Perhaps Rabbainu Bachya is telling us something a little deeper, that one shouldn't be influenced by the masses. One shouldn't think that “what's the point of my prayers if no one else doing it?” One might look around at the masses that don't seem to take davening seriously & be disheartened. Therefore, the posuk says ומצאת, you, as an individual need to look into yourself & find Hashem.
A baker in the city of Cracow named R' Yekel was very poor. He had three daughters to marry off & had no money to do it. He davened to Hashem with all his heart & soul to help him out of this situation. One night, he had a dream that he was standing in Prague beside the Vlatava River, before a bridge that crossed to the royal palace. In his dream, he was told that an enormous treasure was buried beneath the bridge. When he woke up & remembered the dream, he just laughed it off but then, when the dream kept repeating itself every night, he decided to travel to Prague.
It was a long, tiring journey, but, when he arrived before the royal palace, the scene was exactly as it had appeared in his dream! Yekel went under the bridge to figure out how to dig without attracting attention. Suddenly, a guard appeared right in front of him demanding to know what he was doing. Too frightened & tired to come up with anything, he told the guard about his dream. The guard started laughing, stupid Jew! Why do you take dreams seriously? I too have had such dreams. For months I have dreamed of a treasure buried beneath the oven of a baker named Yekel, in Cracow. Do you think I'm going to travel to Cracow to search for Yekel's oven? Forget your foolish dream & leave! Yekel retuned home & lo & behold, beneath his oven lay a treasure. With the money, he married off his daughters & built a shul to express his gratitude to Hashem who had answered his prayer.
Yekel thought he had to go far to search for his treasure, when really it was right there in front of him the whole time.
All he had to do was look. Sometimes we, too, do the same thing. We look to what others are doing or think that we have to go somewhere far to find Hashem when in reality He's right here with us. All we have to do is look!
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