A HEEL — and, used as a preposition, BECAUSE: what comes along on the heel of something else. It is the same noun that names Jacob, who is born gripping his brother’s aqev (Genesis 25:26, already on these pages). ⭐ Deuteronomy 7:12 opens with it — ‘on the heel of your listening to these ordinances’ — and this translation prints the image rather than the bare conjunction, because the sentence is not describing a wage paid for obedience but a thing that follows behind it. The verse gives its name to a whole week of the annual Torah reading cycle, Eiqev. ⚠ None of the thirteen keeps the picture; several English witnesses also convert the Hebrew’s plain statement of what WILL follow into a conditional ‘if’. → first discussed at Deut 7:12