meta: {"file": "/data/tomer/Sefaria-Export/txt/Tanakh/Commentary/Daat Zkenim/Torah/Daat Zkenim on Genesis/English/Daat Zekenim translated by Rb. Eliyahu Munk.txt"}
text: Daat Zkenim on Genesis
  דעת זקנים על בראשית
  Daat Zekenim translated by Rb. Eliyahu Munk
  
  
  Daat Zkenim on Genesis
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
   בראשית, the reason why the Torah did not commence with the letter א but with the letter ב, is that the universe, i.e. earth, resembles that letter, i.e. it is enclosed from three sides as in the letter ב only the left side being open, i.e. the north side. [I presume that what the author means is that when we read the Torah, and the reader in the synagogue is facing east, as is customary in the synagogues in the northern hemisphere, the open side of that letter is on his left, i.e. north. Ed.] According to tradition, the letter א complained to G–d that it had not been allowed for the Torah to commence with it. What did G–d do? He recompensed that letter by commencing the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai with the letter א, where we read: (Exodus 20,2) אנכי ה' אלוקיך וגו', “I am the lord your G–d, etc.” The word בראשית consists of 6 letters, symbolising the six days of creation; The first verse of the Torah has seven words, symbolising the numbers of days in a week. It contains 28 letters, symbolising the 28 days of the month.  [Perhaps the fact that the first letter is in a much bigger font compensates for the slight inaccuracy of the author stating the month has 28 days and not 29. Ed.] We also find the letter א six times in that verse, symbolising the six thousand years this earth [after the creation of man, Ed.] is supposed to exist in the format as we know it. The meaning of the word aleph in Hebrew is “one thousand.” The second verse in the Torah, commencing with the word: והארץ, immediately after the word ארץ, “earth” at the end of the preceding verse, symbolises that the period known as the period of Moshiach, is to last 2000 years. (Talmud, Sanhedrin folio 97) [the last two millennia preceding the arrival of the messianic age. Ed.] In Exodus 13,9 the Torah writes: למען תהיה תורת ה' בפיך, “in order that the Torah of Hashem be in your mouth;” in that verse the letter א occurs twice to serve as a hint that two thousand of the 6000 years that the earth will function as we know it, will already be years in which G–d’s Torah will be studied by many people. [Seeing that the Jewish people began its existence with the birth of the first Jew who was a Jew at birth, Yitzchok, which occurred 400 years before the Exodus, and it is the Jewish people’s task to study and spread the Torah, and Yitzchok’s birth coincided almost exactly with the beginning of the third millennium, this may be why the author of this commentary chose that verse and the two letters א in it, as another example of the letter א being utilised as a symbol of Torah study. 
  בראשית, Rashi understands the letter ב at the beginning of this word to mean: “on account of, due to, because of the merit of;” the word ראשית, he understands as a reference to the Torah, which elsewhere has been called ראשית. We also find that the Sabbath, the holy covenant, and the circumcision have been referred to by that name. The same is true of the word: אש, “fire,” which near the end of the Torah (Deuteronomy 33,2) has been referred to as the אשדת, “fire converted into religious law.” Rashi further quotes an interpretation by Rabbi Yitzchok, also found in an ancient version of Tanchuma, according to which, if the Torah were only a record of G–d’s laws, it need not have commenced before the 12th chapter of Exodus, where we encounter for the first time a law addressed to the entire people of Israel, i.e. the sanctification of the new moon, and the fact that we count the months of the year according to the moon’s orbit. On the face of it that statement is difficult as such laws as circumcision for Jewish males, as well as the prohibition to eat the gid hanashe, the thigh vein of mammals, has been recorded alread prior to this. We must assume that the Tanchuma referred to legislation given to the people when they had become a nation, something that began with chapter 12 in Exodus. Rabbi Yitzchok basing himself on Tanchuma, argues that everything in the Torah recorded prior to chapter 12 in Exodus has as its purpose to defend the Jewish people against any claim that they had robbed the Canaanites of their land when they crossed the river Jordan.
  
  Verse 2
  
  
  
  Verse 3
  
   יהי אור,ויהי אור, “let there be light, and there was light.” We are entitled to ask why the Torah wrote “there was light,” instead of writing that in response to G–d’s directive, ויהי כן, “and so it came to be,” instead of repeating the word: אור, “light.” The answer is that when referring to subsequent directives of G–d the Torah wished to be brief, and simply recorded that G–ds directive was carried out, here it could be spelled out in detail, as the word אור, being only one syllable, does not lengthen the report.
  
  
  Verse 4
  
  
  
  Verse 5
  
  
  
  Verse 6
  
  
  
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  Verse 9
  
  
  
  Verse 10
  
  
  
  Verse 11
  
  
  
  Verse 12
  
  ותוצא הארץ דשא למינהו, “the earth brought forth a variety of herbs and grass, each according to their respective features;” according to the Talmud, tractate Chulin, folio 60, these herbs reasoned as follows: “if it had been the will of the Creator for all the plants to grow forth indiscriminately mixed with one another, why did He include the word: למינו, “in accordance with its individual features although trees due to their size are automatically set apart from one another, how much more must He be concerned that different types of herbs not be mixed up with one another. Upon hearing what the herbs had said, Mattatron, G–d’s general manager in supervising the smooth running of the universe, coined the phrase: יהי כבוד ה' לעולם, ישמח ה' במעשיו, “may the glory of the Lord endure forever, May He derive pleasure from His creatures.” (Psalms 104,31) This interpretation is somewhat difficult to reconcile with the tradition that Chanoch, (a descendant of Sheth, mentioned in Genesis 5,19, for the first time was identical with Mattaron. We must therefore assume that though the body of Chanoch had not yet existed on the third day of creation when the herbs were produced, his soul was already “waiting in the wings” to be assigned a suitable body to inhabit. It was therefore this soul that coined the phrase quoted. This is not as strange as it may sound, as we encounter something similar concerning the ספר תולדות האדם  (Genesis 5,1) “this is the book containing a record of human history, etc.;” a line which was interpreted by our sages in Seder olam chapter 30, that the Almighty showed the first human being, Adam, (before his sin) all the human generations and the outstanding individuals of each generation. (Talmud, tractate Avdah Zarah, folio 5) Clearly, this is not to be understood at face value, seeing that Adam at that time was the only human being whose soul had already been assigned a body to inhabit.
  
  Verse 13
  
  
  
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  Verse 16
  
   “the two large luminaries.” They were both large, when compared to the appearance of the stars, though one of the two was considerable larger than its counterpart. According to our sages in the Talmud, they had originally been created equal in size, but as a result of the moon complaining about its having to share equally in illuminating the earth, G–d decreed for it to be diminished in size. (Talmud, tractate Chulin folio 60) The sun was allowed to retain its original size as it had listened in silence to the moon’s complaint which had implied that it felt superior to the sun. It is this incident which prompted the sages in Yalkut Shimon Judges, 5,59 to apply to such humble creatures the verse in Judges 5,31: ואוהביו כשמש כצאת בגבורתו, “but may His friends be as the sun rising in might.” According to that interpretation the sun had been made bigger as a reward for its humility whereas the moon had retained its original size. Alternately, while not having been enlarged physically, the sun had grown in stature due to its humility. According to a segment in our Shabbat morning prayers, i.e. keyl adon, the moon had been reduced in size, i.e. ראה והקטין צורת הלבנה, “He saw and reduced the dimensions of the moon.” [The version of this line in our prayer books has the word: והתקין “He adjusted,” instead of והקטין, He diminished. Ed.] According to another interpretation, the “correction” in the two descriptions of the luminaries in the Torah in the same verse even, was due to G–d having foreseen that the gentiles were apt to treat the sun as a major deity, He therefore tampered with the size and function of the moon in order to teach mankind that neither luminary was a deity.
  
  Verse 17
  
  
  
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  Verse 19
  
  
  
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  Verse 22
  
   ויברך אותם אלהים, G–d blessed them.” We find the same expression in respect to the Sabbath, in Genesis 2,3. Our sages learn from this that any new phenomenon deserves to be blessed, even when one purchases or receives new garments, etc., and they composed a benediction for the respective phenomena.
  
  Verse 23
  
  
  
  Verse 24
  
  
  
  Verse 25
  
  
  
  Verse 26
  
  
  
  Verse 27
  
  
  
  Verse 28
  
  ויברך אותם אלוקים, “G–d blessed them.” We find the same expression used by the Torah pertaining to the Sabbath. (Genesis 2,3) This teaches us that when one acquires something new, especially garments, one is to pronounce a blessing acknowledging that one’s ability to have done so was thanks to the Creator.
  פרו ורבו, “be fruitful and multiply!” this blessing did not include mules, as we know from the Torah’s cryptic report that a certain man by the name of Anah had made horses and donkeys mate as a result of which a new species called mules came into being. (Genesis 36,24) (after having cross bred horses and she donkeys) “this is Anah who found the mules in the desert which had been the result of horses and asses being crossbred.” This is the reason why mules do not reproduce their species. According to our sages, he did so, seeing that he himself was a bastard as related in the beginning of the same verse. He had slept with his mother. Even according to the opinion of Rabbi Yossi, in the Talmud tractate Pessachim folio 54, who claims that immediately after the first Sabbath Adam crossbred two mammals, as a resulted of which the species mules came into existence there is no inconsistency here as the blessing to be fruitful and to multiply had been given to man prior to the first Sabbath.
   וכבשה, “and subdue her;” the missing letter ו which would signify the plural mode in that word, is to teach us that it is normal for the male to dominate the female in marital relations, she is to reside inside her home and not venture out without a suitable escort, as we know from Leah, Dinah’s mother whose daughter was raped by Sh’chem because she had been allowed to roam unescorted. Dinah’s mother Leah, was also quoted elsewhere as having left her tent unescorted, (Genesis 30,16) [although she had apparently good reason on that occasion; Ed.] Psalms 45,14 teaches that a truly Royal princess finds her glory inside her home, not when on public display. [If Bat Sheva had not displayed her charms when bathing on the roof of her house where David saw this, many problems in Jewish history might have been prevented. Ed.] (Samuel II 11,3-4) According to tradition, any woman who strictly observes this rule of chastity is worthy of becoming the wife of a High priest. The sages derive this from the word: ושבצת, (Exodus 28,39) which is interpreted as the High Priest adorning himself with his tunic, the “tunic” being his chaste wife. [The High Priest’s tunic covered him from neck to toe. Ed.] Such a wife is apt to give birth to sons, who in turn will qualify as future High priests.(Midrash Tanchuma Tetzaveh, 6) Of her it is said (Psalms 128,3: ‘your wife shall be like a fruitful vine ­within your house; your sons like olive saplings around your table.”
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  ויכלו, “they had been completed;” whence does the practice to recite this paragraph during kiddush while standing originate? It is because this paragraph is a testimony, and testimony must always be given while the witness is standing. (Compare Maimonides laws about testimony, chapter 9, halachah 7 stating that minors are not acceptable as witnesses as it is required that two men, i.e. adults, stand when testifying,” i.e. ועמדו שני האנשים, “the two adult witnesses shall be standing, etc.”) (Deut 19,17). We are taught further in the Talmud tractate Shabbat folio 119, that when a Jew returns home from the synagogue on Friday night, and he recites this paragraph, two angels will place their hands upon his head and bless him, saying: “may all your sins be removed from you, and may you enjoy complete atonement.” If you were to ask where we can find this line in scripture? We refer you to Leviticus 5,8, where testimony is discussed, and the Torah condemns someone who knows of something that he is required to testify to, but refuses to give such testimony. It says there that by failing to give his testimony, he will have to bear his sin. It follows that testifying truthfully results in one’s sins being removed. Giving testimony that the Lord has created the universe in six days concluding on Friday night, by reciting this paragraph while standing, is such testimony.
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  
  
  Verse 2
  
  
  
  Verse 3
  
  
  
  Verse 4
  
  
  
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  Verse 6
  
  
  
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  Verse 11
  
  המן העץ אשר צויתיך לבלתי אכול ממנו, אכלת? “Did you eat from the tree which I had commanded you not to eat from?” [this is the plain meaning of that line. Ed.] [Our author claims that there is a Midrash (Esther Rabbah 92) according to which the peculiar positioning of the word: ה-מ-ן, where we would have expected the word האכלת, “did you eat?” at the outset, conveys an additional meaning, i.e. a hint that the tree Haman would be hanged from is already alluded to here, as the words: המן העץ could be understood as meaning “Ha-m an, the tree” would be hanged from that tree,” i.e. Adam’s sin also had a positive result, that tree had now become a source of potential disaster for the Antisemites. Our author adds the words: “G–d said to Eve that He had meant to hang her,” something that I have found no source for. Wherever I have found a reference to it, the statement in this book is quoted as the source. Ed.]
  
  Verse 12
  
  
  
  Verse 13
  
  
  
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  Verse 16
  
   אל האשה אמר, “to the woman He had said, etc.” Rabbi Shlomoh son of Rabbi Moshe interpreted the various clauses in this verse as meaning that woman’s life as a result of having seduced her husband into sin would from now on be a never ending experience of pain and travail. As far as her delegating her physical chores to maidservants etc., was concerned, G–d added that the pains associated with pregnancy were something that she could not delegate. She reasoned that at least the act of giving birth would then be a relief from such pain; G–d disabused her of that also. She then reasoned that her hope lay in abstaining from marital intercourse and thus not become pregnant again. G–d told her that she would undergo a psychological change by feeling desirous for marital intercourse with her husband. To the suggestion that she would control her urges for sexual release, G–d retorted that her husband would force her to engage in marital relations with her.
  והוא ימשל בך, “he shall rule over you.” We find a statement in B’reyshit Rabbah 20,7 by Rabbi Yossi Ha-g’leelee, (the Galilean) according to which this statement is supposed to be restrictive, -i.e. the husband not having complete control of his wife; he bases himself on an interesting comparison between the upper and lower millstones in Deuteronomy 24,6. He views the prohibition of a lender taking both of these millstones as security for an overdue loan, and the previous verse ordering a husband to please his wife for a whole year after they get married, and the Torah describing taking both millstones as equivalent to robbing the lender of his life, נפש, as proof that the husband–wife relationship must at all times remain one in which the wife continues to love her husband to the point of seeking physical union with him. He adds that we know that a woman is compared to the lower of the two millstones by citing a verse from Job 31,10: תטחן ואחר אשתי, “may my wife grind for another.” According to the Talmud tractate Sotah, Judges 16,21, where Samson’s suffering at the hands of the Philistines is described with the words: ויהי טוחן בבית האסירים, “he had to act as a grindstone in the jail,” which Rabbi Yossi understands as a chore that a husband must not impose on his wife, even so he is described as “ruling over her.” The Jerusalem Talmud interprets Deut. 24,6 as referring to anything that is a basic necessity for a person’s economic survival as being prohibited to be taken as a pledge, a millstone serving as an example of such necessities. The Jerusalem Targum also considers letting a woman to whom one is betrothed to be married wait for more than a year before the wedding is performed as a violation of the commandment discussed in this verse.
  
  Verse 17
  
  ארורה האדמה בעבורך, “the earth will henceforth be cursed on your account.” [Seeing that the expression בעבור is usually understood as introducing a positive result, our author wanted to justify its use here. Ed.] He understands the earth being cursed as the result of Adam not having been able to resist his powerful craving to taste the forbidden fruit. He cites the use of the expression עבור as being used in a similar sense when the Israelites for the first time, instead of eating bread that descended from heaven. i.e. manna, eating bread that had originated from earth, something that they had on occasion longed for even in the desert. (Numbers chapter 11 and 21) Compare Joshua 8,11-12 where the Israelites eating normally grown food is described as עבור הארץ, according to our author as something they craved as having grown from the earth. The fact that G–d tells Adam that the earth will bring forth thorns and thistles instead of “bread,” shows that the punishment fits the crime, as thorns and thistles are certainly not what Adam craves in response to his working the soil.
  
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  בזעת אפך, by the sweat of your brow;” Rabbi Yehudah hachassid draws our attention to the fact that this curse is one that affects only farmers who physically till the earth, but not people of a different vocation, especially the socially higher ranking people. The curse decreed for women concerning the pains endured during pregnancy and giving birth however, afflicts high ranking women no less than the lowliest servant maid. He attributes the distinction to the fact that the woman not only sinned but also seduced man to sin.
  
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  להט, “flaming;” ,the expression “flaming sword,” is a metaphor describing hell which is presumed as a domain in which freezing cold and burning heat constantly alternately, inflicting indescribable discomfort on its wicked inhabitants.
  
  
  
  
  
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  וישע ה' אל הבל ואל מנחתו, “the Lord turned favorably to Hevel and to his offering;” this verse is the best answer to the heretics who deny the existence of an afterlife, as seeing that Hevel was murdered shortly after G–d is on record as having gratefully accepted his offering, what use would that have been to him seeing that the same G–d did not even protect him against being murdered by his own brother. We must therefore view this verse as telling us that by dint of his offering Hevel acquired a share in afterlife. [The concept of afterlife was new, as his father having introduced mortality of human beings through his sin had not yet done anything to at least acquire an afterlife. Ed.]
  
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  Verse 8
  
   ויאמר קין אל הבל אחיו, “Kayin said to his brother Hevel;” seeing that the Torah does not elaborate on the content of Kayin’s words, we must assume that he told his brother about what G–d had said to him. (verse 6-7) He made it plain to his brother that he was very upset that G–d had not seen fit to accept his offering as He had done with Hevel’s offering. Hevel reacted to G–d having criticised Kayin with joy. When Kayin saw that his brother had been glad that he had been criticised by G–d, he arose with the intent of killing him. (second half of this verse). His motive was plain jealousy. Our author cites an additional or different interpretation of the incomplete sentence: “Kayin said to his brother Hevel,” which he had heard in the name of Rabbi Joseph Kara (turn of 11th century, not to be confused with Joseph Karo author of Shulchan Aruch, of Safed who lived during the most of the 16th century). that initially Hevel, having heard from Kayin what G–d had said to him, was afraid of him seeing that his brother was so angry, and remained on guard against him. When Kayin told him that G–d had held out hope for him by promising that He would relate to him with fondness if he changed his ways, Hevel dropped his guard feeling certain that Kayin would indeed change his ways. When Kayin spoke to him in a friendly mien, i.e. ויאמר, he thought that this was proof that Kayin had changed. He therefore dropped his guard with fatal consequences for himself.
  
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  לכן כל הורג קין שבעתים יוקם, “therefore whosoever slays Kayin, vengeance will be taken on him sevenfold.” The plain meaning of this verse is that seeing that Kayin was worried about being murdered, G–d assured him that anyone murdering Kayin even after he had lived seven generations would be held accountable by Him. This is why Lemech who held himself as guilty of killing Kayin, even though he did so unintentionally, told his wives what would happen to anyone killing him on that account (Compare verse 25 in this chapter.) Lemech’s children were the seventh generation, after Adam. (Adam-Kayin-Chanoch-Irod-M’chuyael-M’tushael-Lemech-(Yaval,Yuval Tuval Kayin) He told his wives that the whole generation of such a killer fathered by himself would be held responsible for his murder by G–d, seeing that what he had done was due to his being blind and therefore totally innocent of any intent to harm a human being.
  
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  Verse 19
  
   ושם השנית צלה, “and the name of his (Lemech’s) second wife was Tzilah.” According to Rashi, it had become a custom for men to marry two wives, one for child-bearing and one for co-habitation, (indulging one’s libido). The second type of wife would drink a potion which would prevent her from becoming pregnant as a result of having sexual relations. The Torah telling us about Tzilah giving birth to a son, is to inform us that something went awry, [perhaps she only pretended to drink that potion, Ed.] Our author questions this as the Torah reported simply that Tzilah also gave birth, without hinting that this was unusual. We must assume therefore that the explanation of Rashi is based on the unnecessary word גם, “also,” in our verse, as having born children would have been something completely normal.
  
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   'אז הוחל לקרא בשם ה, “then men began to abuse the name of the Lord, (by applying it to idols).” According to our author the meaning is that men began to swear false oaths using the name of the Lord to appear believable. The word הוחל is seen as analogous to Numbers 30,3: לא יחל דברו, “he must not desecrate his word” (when swearing an oath).
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  זה ספר תולדת אדם, “this is the book of the history of mankind.” G–d even gave Adam an outline of the family trees of future generations. Some of this is reflected by the interpretations given by famous sages to the verse in Leviticus 19,18: ואהבת לרעך כמוך, (normally translated as “love your fellow man as yourself). In Torat Kohanim Rabbi Akiva is quoted as saying that that verse teaches us “a great rule, an all inclusive concept,” (a variation of Hillel who summed up the essence of Judaism as don’t do to others what you would not have do them to you.) Ben Azzai understands the words as applying to the end of the verse, i.e. אני ה', “I am the Lord,” a reminder that all human beings have been created in the image of the Lord, so that no race can feel superior to another race, [regardless of the colour of their skin. Ed.] He applies the verse even to people who due to their humility have a low esteem of their own value as not being allowed to forget that we are all descended from the same origin. Everyone must respect his fellow man’s dignity and honour, regardless of how unassuming he himself happens to be. He must look at the likeness of his fellow man seeing that he cannot look at himself objectively. [We are not speaking of mirror images. Ed.] It follows that our verse is more far-reaching in meaning than the verse quoted from the Book of Leviticus.
  
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  ויולד בן, “he begot a son.” Note that the Torah did not write “he begot Noach,” as it had done when listing the nine generations previous to Noach. This is already a hint that the future of mankind would be descended from this son of Lemech after the deluge. Noach  and his three sons and their wives were the only survivors of the deluge. An alternate interpretation. Metushelach, Noach’s grandfather, a G–d fearing person, advised his son Lemech not to name his firstborn son immediately after he was born, as all the other people of that time were idolaters and sorcerers, and if they had known why his father had called him Noach they would have tried to harm him had they known his name, by applying their sorcerers’ formulas.
  
  
  
  
  
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   לא ידון רוחי באדם לעולם, “My spirit will not rule within man forever;” this is a metaphor describing G–d as withholding man’s souls from participating in an afterlife after they had returned for Divine judgment. An alternate explanation: “I will no longer equip man with a heavenly soul.” (B’reyshit Rabbah 26,6.)
  בשגם הוא בשר, this word is an acrostic, the numerical value of its letters totalling 345, as does the numerical value of the letters in the word משה, (Moses) Moses lived for 120 years, meaning that he demonstrated that during 120 years on earth the human being can attain earthly perfection. This presupposes that such a human being had lived by the laws of the Torah. If man had not become corrupted, he could have attained such perfection by his own efforts without having to observe all the laws of the Torah, but it would have taken longer. This is why originally he was allowed to live to almost become one thousand years old. Once man only has a לב בשר, “a heart of flesh,” this process had to be drastically changed. [I have borrowed from the commentary of Rabbi Elie Munk in his “The call of the Torah.” Ed.]
  
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  ויתעצב אל לבו, “His heart was saddened.” According to Rabbi Acha bar Chanina in Breyshit Rabbah 27 when G–d watched as His earth appeared to head for destruction, He felt as if a mourner who has lost a dear relative. An alternate interpretation of this expression: the subject in this verse is man, who mourns only from the heart like a person who had placed leavening in his dough, and who says to himself when the dough did not rise: “it was I who made the recipe, therefore it is I who must accept the blame if the product is unsatisfactory, seeing that I was aware that it contained a potentially dangerous ingredient.” [The “leavening” is a metaphor for the evil urge within man, that G–d gave man when He made him. It was a calculated risk that G–d had been aware of from the outset. Ed.]
  
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  אמחה את האדם “I’ll dissolve the human species;” according to Rashi we must understand this as the human species consisting of earth and therefore subject to annihilation by water. G–d said that He would use water to bring about the dissolution of the human race. The expression used by the Torah according to Rashi to illustrate this is therefore מחוי, “dissolution,” instead of other words for destruction such as השמדה or כליה.
  
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  אלה תולדת נח נח, “these are the generations of Noach, Noach;” why has the name of Noach been repeated here twice? He was exemplary vis a vis spiritual beings in the heavenly spheres as well as vis a vis his contemporaries on earth. (B’reshit Rabbah, 30,4) The meaning is to tell us that whenever we encounter such a construction of a person’s name appearing twice in a row, it is to remind us that the person concerned was a righteous person. An example for this is found in Genesis 2,11, where the name Avraham appears twice in a row. This interpretation has been challenged in the Jerusalem Talmud where it is pointed out that we find the same repetition of a man’s name applied to Avraham’s father Terach, a renowned idolater and seller of heathen images (Genesis 11,27) The answer provided by B’reshit Rabbah is that Terach, though an idolater had become a penitent. It is this very fact that convinced our sages that he had become a penitent before his death. This also explains why Avraham was told by G–d in Genesis 15,15, that he would join his fathers in the hereafter.
  איש, “a man;” The author of Midrash Tanchuma (2) on this parshah, commences this paragraph with a quotation from Proverbs 11,30: פרי צדיק עץ חיים, ולוקח נפשות חכם, usually translated as “the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, a wise man captivates people.” According to Tanchuma, the meaning of Solomon there was to tell us that if someone dies without leaving behind children to posterity this is a disgrace and he bewails his fate. G–d in this case, when the departed person had been a righteous person, consoles him by telling him that the Torah he had studied while on earth will be considered by Him as his fruit. This is why the verse speaks of עץ חיים, “a tree of life,” instead of referring to the righteous person’s sons that he left behind. The Torah has been referred to as עץ חיים in Proverbs 3,18. Our sages relate that Noach did not die until he saw the earth having become settled by man and until all the seventy nations resulting from his loins be it directly or indirectly had become earth’s civilisation (after the destruction of the Tower) Of all the righteous people mentioned in the Bible the only one who was ever referred to as a צדיק תמים, “a perfectly righteous human being” Noach is the only one complimented in such a fashion. According to a statement in B’reshit Rabbah 30,8 anyone of whom the Torah ever used the adjective תמים, perfect, concluded his life after a multiple of seven years. [Just as a sh’mittah cycle is unit of seven years. Ed.] Rabbi Yitzchok son of Avraham, points out that this cannot be true as both Avraham and Noach to whom these attributes were applied died at 175 years and 950 years, both not multiples of seven. The Rabbi’s words therefore must be understood as multiples commencing with when the attribute תמים was applied to the persons concerned; in the case of Noach he had acquired that title when he was commanded to build the ark, 120 years before the deluge commenced. Since he survived after that for the 350 years we get a total of 470 years, from which we need to deduct the year he spent in the ark, -not really a year of life- and we have a multiple of seven year cycles, i.e. 67 times 7 equals 469. Avraham had been 99 years of age when he had another 77 years to live.
  היה, “he was;” whenever this expression is used in connection with a person, it implies that he saw a new world, i.e. he became privy to entirely new perspectives in his life. Noach certainly experienced a new world, and Joseph of whom the same word is used became the person responsible for saving the whole nation of Egypt from perishing by hunger. Moses had a similar experience, (Exodus 3,1 at the burning bush) so did Job (Job 1,1) when becoming subjected to sudden and terrible trials to test his faith in the Lord.
  
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  ואל אמה תכלנה מלמעלה, “and finish it to within a cubit from the top;” this was meant to prevent the rains from getting into the ark and causing its planks to rot. If you were to argue that the rains then could cause the width of the ark to start rotting, we refer you to the commentary of Rabbi Joseph Kara, who understands the subject in the verse to be the window. This window should be affixed in the upper cubit near the roof, the cover of the ark.
  
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  ומכל החי....תביא, “and bring from all living species, etc.” According to Rashi the wording includes species of demons. In B’reshit Rabbah 31,13 Rabbi Aushiyah claims that the oblique wording of the Torah was exploited by disembodied spirits to demand entrance to the ARK. Noach refused them entry until they could appear with their partners. He used the fact that the Torah added the words מכל בשר, “from all that is flesh,” to deny entrance. Another version is that “Lie” begged for entry into the ark. When Noach heard this he demanded that “Lie” come with its partner. “Lie” chose the spiritual representative of all thieves as his partner. When this arch thief asked “Lie” what it would give him for appearing before Noach as its mate, “Lie” answered that it would give him everything it acquired through falsehood. They therefore entered the ark side by side. This is the origin of the well known proverb: “whatever is sown by falsehood is reaped by thievery.” A different version quotes Noach as tying that pair to the outside of the ark without permitting it to enter it. [Rashi, i.e. the author of the Midrash, was probably forced to give such an interpretation as we might have thought that if all living creatures died except for Noach and his family, how come there was still falsehood and thievery on earth even after the deluge. Ed.]
  
  
  
  
  
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  מכל הבהמה הטהורה, “from all of the ritually pure domestic animals;” seeing that the Torah had not been given yet, and therefore there were no ritually impure domestic animals or creatures, Rashi understands the expression as referring to the domestic animals that would in the future be described as being ritually pure. We therefore learn that Noach had already studied Torah laws which had not yet been revealed publicly (B’reshit Rabbah, 40, based on Psalms 1,2) If so, why did the Talmud in tractate Zevachim folio 116 have to pose the question of how Noach knew, and to answer that the ritually pure animals came to the ark on their own, whereas Noach had to round up the others in order to bring them into the ark? According to the Talmud, Noach only recognised ritually pure animals after the event, not because he had learned the physical signs described in the Torah.  There is a third opinion according to which it became clear which animals had been ritually pure only after Noach offered some of these as offerings after having left the ark. This interpretation is also not logical as G–d had commanded him prior to entering the ark to take seven pairs each of the ritually pure animals into the ark, so that he must have known beforehand which animals to take. This is also what Rashi commented on chapter 8, verse 20. He had realised that the only reason he had been commanded to take seven pairs of the species concerned was in order to have these animals available after the deluge to serves as sacrifices. It would appear therefore that the statement that Noach had studied the Torah, must have referred to the instructions to take such ritually pure birds, (6,4) something which became clear to him when noting that these birds were monogamous, mating only with the same female. When he saw that the ark accepted more than one pair of certain animals, it became clear to him that the extra specimens must have been meant to serve as sacrifices as G–d considered them as ritually pure. “Studying Torah,” as mentioned by Rashi, must mean therefore that he learned Torah by keeping his eyes open and drawing the right conclusions. He had also noted that these animals had only kept company with members of their own species during the long months in the ark. This is most likely also the reason why, when the Torah wrote the details about the laws of chastity and forbidden sexual intercourse in Leviticus 18,23-24, it stated that Jews must not defile themselves through such animals.
  
  
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  והמבול היה מים על הארץ, “when the deluge covered the earth with water.” There is good reason to ask why G–d chose the deluge as the instrument with which to punish mankind, rather than any other means at His disposal. Our sages in the Talmud tractate Rosh Hashanah folio 12 answered this question by stating that this method was chosen as it conformed to the principle of making the punishment match the sin. Man had sinned by means of boiling water, (metaphor for extremely serious sins, involving sexual emissions that are considered as the result of the body becoming heated) so G–d chose equally severe measures as the means to punish them by. The subject has been illustrated by a parable in which a king magnanimously set aside a section of a city to serve as residence for blind people, and he provided them with all comforts in order to make their lives more tolerable. Whenever the king passed this way, the blind people would rise and shout in gratitude for the king’s generosity. Once the king heard their voices and enquired from his entourage who was the source of this shouting. He was told that it originated with the blind people whom he so lavishly supported. They added that the blind people do the same whenever they hear horses galloping in their neighbourhood. He responded by saying: “how much louder would be their shouting if they were able to see their benefactor with their own eyes.” He therefore commanded to return these blind people to their former locations, and to install people with eyesight in the section formerly reserved for the blind. He ordered that the new residents be provided with all that he had formerly provided the blind with. When these people now realised that they had been promoted, they lived it up. Instead of being grateful, whenever the king passed in their area they raised their voices cursing him for having forced them to relocate. When the king was told about this, he decided to execute all these people. The point of the parable is that originally the universe having been in chaos, was transformed into water, i.e. an element that is both blind and deaf. Even though, the waters praised the Lord for having thus raised their status. We know this from Psalms 93,3: נשאו נהרות ה', נשאו נהרות קולם, נשאו נהרות קולם, “the oceans sound o Lord, the oceans sound their thunder, the ocean sounds its pounding.” When the Lord heard this, He ordered the oceans which had covered the surface of the earth to be relocated so as to provide room for the earth to emerge and be seen. (Genesis 1.9) He created man in order to inhabit that earth, where previously there had only been water, providing man with fruit-bearing trees and all kinds of other luxuries, expecting, of course, to be rewarded with man’s expression of appreciation. The earth was so good that it required to be tilled only once in forty years. Instead, man took his good fortune for granted and instead of accepting the rules laid down by the Creator, rebelled against Him. When the Lord became aware of this, He had no choice but to punish them for their ingratitude. He commanded the waters to return to their original areas, allocated them at the beginning of creation. [The author credits his Rabbi with telling him this parable, who in turn had credited it to Rabbi Nathan Afniel.]
  
  
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  ויבא נח, ובניו, ואשתו ונשי בניו, “Noach, his sons, and his wife and his sons’ wives, with him entered the ark;” Rashi, analysing the sequence in which Noach and his family entered the ark, explains that the men and women did so separately, realising that as long as the deluge would last they would not be allowed to have marital relations. (Based on an ancient version of the Tanchuma)
  
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  ארבעים יום, “forty days.” According to Rashi, the first day is not to be counted. (as the first night no rain had fallen) The Torah had made a point of writing in verse 11: ביום הזה נבקעו כל מעינות תהום, “on this day all the fountains of the deep broke open.” Accordingly the 40 days came to an end on the 28th day of Kislev.” This does not seem accurate, seeing that he himself wrote on verse 24, where the Torah wrote that the water level on earth kept increasing for a period of one hundred and fifty days which would mean that they kept increasing until the first day of Sivan where the Torah spoke about the seventh month as the day when the rains stopped descending. (compare his commentary on 8,4) We would therefore have to include the first day of the “forty” days as being part of that count. I believe therefore that the rains had started falling as soon as it was daylight on the seventeenth of the second month, as the words: ביום הזה in our verse do not prove anything about which part of the day it refers to. We find this expression in the Torah on numerous occasions when it clearly includes the preceding night. (The author quotes Genesis 2,2, and Leviticus 23,28 as examples to prove his point.) The author also cites Seder Olam, an ancient history text, as supporting his conclusion. He quotes that text verbatim: “on this day all the fissures in the earth broke open, and rain fell on the earth from the sky. This state of affairs continued until the 27th day of Kislev, but the level of water covering the surface of the earth continued to rise until the end of 150 days, that day being the first day of the month of Sivan.” In light of what the author of that text writes, we must include the first day of the “forty” days given in the Torah in our total.
  
  
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  וישאר אך נח ואשר אתו בתבה, “there survived only Noach and the people and animals with him in the ark.” According to a quote attributed to Rabbi Yehudah hachasid, this wording contains a hint that the giant Og, later known as the king of Bashan, survived the deluge, the letters in the words: אך נח in our verse, which are unnecessary, have the same numerical value as the letters in the or עוג, (79)
  
  
  
  
  
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  ויעבר אלוקים רוח על הארץ, “ G–d made wind pass over the earth;” this was the same wind of which the Torah in Genesis 1,2 had written that it was “hovering” over the surface of the waters. In other words, at this point the earth had basically reverted to what it had been before the creation of light. It was this “wind,” G–d made use of now to repair the damage earth had sustained by making the waters subside.
  
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  ויחסרו המים מקצה חמשים ומאת יום, “the waters decreased at the end of one hundred and fifty days.” This date was identical with the first day of the month of Sivan. The ark came to rest in the seventh month, the month of Sivan, counting from the month of Kislev which was the month during which the rains had ceased descending. The “seventh” month here could not have been the seventh month after the rains began to descend, as that would have been Iyar, seeing that it had commenced during the second month of the year, i.e. during Marcheshvan. If we were to assume that the Torah referred to the seventh month after the rains had begun, a count of 40 days of rain falling, plus 150 days of the waters continuing to rise, this would bring us only to the 17th day in Iyar. Clearly, we must allow for days during which the waters had begun to recede, else how could the ark come to rest anywhere, seeing that the Torah told us that at its highest, the waters were 15 cubits above the highest peaks on earth? If we accept our interpretation the ark would have come to rest on Arrarat on the sixteenth day after having risen to its highest level. That date had been in the tenth Av, not Ellul. When the Torah, in verse 5, speaks of the tenth month, on the tenth of which the highest peaks became visible once more. According to Rashi’s calculation forty days elapsed (verse 6) elapsed before Noach for the first time lifted the window at the top of the ark to dispatch the raven on its mission, which it did not really carry out. Apparently sixty days passed between the time when the highest peaks became visible until the surface of the earth was no longer covered with water. If we were to assume that the highest peaks had not become visible until the month of Ellul (the tenth month when commencing with Marcheshvan when the rains first descended) we would therefore have to conclude that the waters subsided at a rate of one cubit per four days, 15 cubits during the 60 days commencing with the highest peaks having become visible again. According to this calculation, the bottom of the ark had been in eleven cubits of water at one stage at least. According to Rashi’s calculation we face the following problem: if as the Torah writes, (verse 6) Noach opened the window of the ark after forty days of it having come to rest on Arrarat and he sent the pigeon out more that 40 days after the ark had come to rest, how come that the pigeon did not find any place to park on? It surely should have been able to rest on some mountains slightly lower than Arrarat which was near there? Rashi was aware of this problem, and this is why he wrote on verse 6 that the highest peaks had become visible. According to my understanding we must assume that the mountain range of Arrarat at the time was not above the tree line, and that the tops of these trees were visible even earlier that the peaks themselves. Accordingly, we must understand the whole period as follows: the water level on earth began to recede after having constantly risen for 150 days. These days had come to an end on the first day of Sivan. On the seventeenth of that month the ark ran aground. Forty days after continuing receding of the water levels, Noach opened the window of the ark, i.e. on the tenth day of Tammuz. He immediately dispatched the raven. When after seven days the raven had not performed his mission, he sent out a pigeon. This was on the 17th day of Tammuz. The pigeon returned not having a place where to rest its feet. I venture to add on my own that we see an allusion to the dates of the beginning of the eventual destruction of the Temple which began on the seventeenth of Tammuz when the wall of Jerusalem was breached by the Romans. Israel- also known lovingly as יונה, pigeon, (Song of Songs 2,14) has never again found rest historically since that date when Noach’s pigeon could not find rest. Noach then waited another seven days to send out the pigeon again, and on that occasion it returned with a torn olive leaf in its beak, signaling that the earth was on the way to becoming normal again. This occurred in the month of Av, on the first of the month when the receding of the waters had come to an end. The next time the pigeon never returned having found it possible to live in freedom outside the confinements of the ark, seeing that the tops of the trees had become visible. This completed the 60 days it took from when the tips of the mountains to become visible as Rashi had stated. The month of Av was the tenth month, counting from when the rains first stated descending. All this is in accordance with what the Torah reported when it wrote that on the first day of the first month of the following year, the surface of the earth had become dry [though too soft to walk on without sinking into the ground. Ed.] I have found that Seder Olam, chapter 4 agrees with my explanation though it is worded differently. However, I find it difficult to understand that if as Rashi assumes the tops of the trees became visible before the peaks themselves had become visible why did the Torah write about the tops of the peaks being visible, instead of writing about the tops of the trees on them becoming visible? Even if we were to assume that only olive trees survived the deluge until that time as a result of what is written in verse 23, something that might be understood as the result of Rashi’s comment on that verse, [I fail to see how; Ed.] our author, bases himself on the tradition that Noach must have taken branches of fruit trees into the ark, else how could he have planted a vineyard, this was as he did not assume that any trees would survive. If indeed a single tree survived, the day on which this became evident was hardly worth a special mention. Regardless of all this, why would only the olive tree be the one surviving the deluge? If you were to answer that this was because in the future this tree and its fruit would be a basic necessity for the Jewish people in the Temple service, the same argument would be true also of the vines in the vineyard, whose fruit featured equally in the Temple service; so why did Noach have to take a branch with him into the ark instead of relying on some vines to survive the deluge? We would have to answer that the fruit of the vine was sufficient for Noach as a sample with which to start a vineyard, whereas a branch of an olive tree would dry out during the year in the ark so that it could not be revived when Noach came out of the ark.
  
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  והנה עלי זית טרף בפיה, “and behold, it had a sprouting olive leaf in its beak.” The word טרף in this sense also occurs in Ezekiel 17,9 i.e. כל טרפי צמחה תיבש, “all its sprouting leaves may wither.” [The normal translation of the word טרף is familiar to us from Genesis 37,33, where Yaakov used it when confronted with the bloodied shreds of his son Joseph, is “torn.” Presumably, the author felt that if that was the meaning of the word here, it would have been unnecessary, as how else could the pigeon have gotten hold of it. Ed.] Seeing the sprouting leaf, Noach knew that the waters had receded significantly. It was also clear to him that the pigeon had not found that leaf floating on top of the water. He was certain that it had been plucked from a tree that was in good condition.
  
  
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  למשפחותיהם יצאו מן התבה, “they left the ark as families.” On the face of it this sounds incredible; the Torah wishes to tell us that the animals which prior to the deluge had mated only with members of their own species were rewarded by being able to continue to do so. This was also why these pairs had seen fit to enter the ark together in the first place.
  
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  עוד כל ימי הארץ, “as long as earth will continue in existence, etc.;” this verse refers to what we read in the previous verse, where G–d promised never again to bring on a deluge. He added now that from that time on, nature will prove more or less predictable, each part of the earth experiences regular cycles of seasons and crops which ripen during those seasons will provide mankind with it needs. [The Torah states –after the Exodus and the giving to the Jewish people of the Torah- that as far as the Jewish people will be concerned, the earth producing its yield would depend on their keeping the terms of the covenant they had entered into with G–d at the revelation on Mount Sinai. Ed.]
  
  
  
  
  
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  ואך את דמכם לנפשותיכם אדרוש, “however for your own life-blood I will demand an accounting;” this is to be understood as an accounting for their death by people who deliberately strangle themselves as an act of suicide, avoiding the shedding of their blood in the process. B’reshit Rabbah, 34,13, explains the need for this verse as being that we might think that when Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah, (Daniel chapter 3 where their Babylonian names are used) agreed to be thrown into a fiery pit, clearly committing suicide, albeit as an act of sanctifying the name of the Lord, this was forbidden also. The reason that this verse was introduced by the word: אך, was to exclude such suicides, even that of King Sha-ul, who did not want to give the Philistines the satisfaction of having killed a king who had been crowed with the approval of the Lord. (Samuel I 31,4) In both of these instances the victims did not execute themselves but were executed or meant to be executed by someone else. Committing suicide with one’s own hands is an absolute no no. According to the opinion of Rabbi Shimon bar Avraham, also known as אוכמן, the Rabbis did not make allowances for what King Sha-ul had done. There is a true story of a Rabbi, who at the time of persecutions of Jews practicing their faith, personally killed many young Jewish children in order to forestall the Christians from raising them in the Christian faith. One of Rabbinical colleagues was very angry at that Rabbi on that account, referring to him as a murderer. The first Rabbi did not heed the second Rabbi’s warning not to become a murderer. Thereupon the Rabbi opposed to killing the infants said that if he had been right, his colleague would die a violent and painful death. Not only did the gentiles seize and kill that Rabbi-(who had killed the infants), but they stripped off his skin and placed sand between it and his flesh. Shortly thereafter, the decree forbidding the Jews to practice their faith was cancelled. If the first Rabbi had not killed all the infants, they would have been saved when the decree was cancelled.
  
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  ויאמר (נח) ארור כנען, “Noach said: “Canaan be cursed and become a lowly slave to his brothers" Our sages in B’reshit Rabbah 36,7 state that already when Noach entered the ark, he had been upset that he did not have a young son who could perform for him many chores that it had now become his task to perform personally. He therefore had resolved that when he would sire more children after leaving the ark, he would train some as his servants. Upon hearing him say something of that nature, his grandson Canaan went ahead and castrated him to prevent him from having more children. Noach therefore decided to treat Canaan as if he had been his fourth son and decreed that he should become a servant to his brothers. If you were to ask why he cursed Canaan more than anyone of Cham’s other children, a question which is justified according to the opinion that it had been Canaan who had castrated him, [Canaan could not have been even one year old when Noach left the ark, so that Noach must have failed to impregnate with wife until he had grown up, Ed.] how do we answer the problem according to the opinion that it was his son Cham, and not his grandson who had castrated him? A sage by the name of Rabbi Aaron, found a Midrash that Cham had discovered his father in a state of nudity, and told his brothers about it in a derogatory manner, and he had been overheard by Canaan, who had decided to castrate his grandfather. This is the meaning of the puzzling words: את אשר עשה לו בנו הקטן, “what his son the minor had done to him” (9,24) Grandchildren are often referred to in the Torah as if they were children, not grandchildren. Actually, the line could not have referred to Cham, as he was not Noach’s youngest son, as the Torah lists him as his middle son. (10,1) The Torah, in referring to Canaan as Noach’s youngest son, meant his grandson. [At that time he only had one grandson, so that he did not have to be named. Ed.] We find proof that grandsons may be called younger sons in Ovadiah: 1,2: הנה קטון נתתיך בגוים, “here I will make you the least among the nations;”Furthermore, according to Pirkey de rabbi Eliezer, chapter 23, the line in Malachi 1,6: בן יכבד אב  ועבד אדוניו, “a son is expected to honour his father, and a servant his master,” is interpreted as follows: when a son honours his father, all is well; if not, he will wind up as a servant to his master. [not found in my edition of the Pirkey de Rabbi Eliezer. Ed.] An alternate interpretation. The reason why Noach chose as punishment that the person who witnessed his disgrace become a slave was that seeing he was the one who saw his state of nudity first, it was his duty to do what any servant would to, i.e. to cover his nudity. Seeing that he had neglected to perform the duty of a servant, he was now condemned to remain a servant all the time. This is also why he used the expression עבד עבדים, “a servant of servants,” instead of simply עבד “servant.” Both Cham and his son Canaan were condemned to be servants to Cham’s brothers.
  עבד עבדים, “a slave for evermore.” What caused him this terrible curse? It was all because he had shamed his father. As a punishment, in future his descendants would be put to shame, as we know from Isaiah 20,4: כאשר הלך עבדי ישעיהו ערום ויחף שלש שנים אות ומופת על מצרים ועל כוש, “just as My servant Yeshayahu had to go naked and barefoot, the captives of Egypt and the slaves of Nubia young and old will have to go naked and barefoot.” But Yephet who honoured his father will be honoured by G–d in the days of the wars preceding the final redemption when G–d will reward him by humbling Gog and Magog, and by covering the shame of Yephet. (Compare Ezekiel 39,11).” He will also compensate Shem, at the time when the two priests, sons of Aaron, prepared to offer their unauthorised incense in the Temple, when only their souls were burned, but their bodies as well as their garments were left intact by the heavenly fire and were buried in a dignified manner. This was because they had also been descendants of Shem. (Leviticus 10,2-7)
  
  
  
  
  
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  פלג. “Peleg.” Rabbi Joseph Kara explains the reason why this son of Ever was called peleg, “division, segment,” was because in his time when the Tower was built and destroyed, the language of mankind, which as the Torah had reported (Genesis 11,1) was uniform and the basis of their unity, was interfered with by G–d, so that eventually there were 70 nations each with a language all their own. At the same time generation after generation man’s lifespan also became drastically shortened. At the time when Peleg was born it had shrunk to about 300 years.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ותהי שרי עקרה אין לה ולד, “Sarai remained barren, she had no fetus.” I find the last three words difficult to understand, as they do not seem to add anything to the statement that she was barren. It seems therefore that this was to tell us that she had no means of releasing a fetus even if she had been able to become pregnant. The Talmud in tractate Yevamot folio 64, states that both Avram and Sarai were hermaphrodites, possessing both male and female organs which had to be treated surgically. It quotes Isaiah 51,1-2: הביטו אל צור חצבתם ואל מקבת בור נקרתםת, followed by: הביטו אל אברהם אביכם ואל שרה תחוללכם as support for its statement, “Look to the rock you were hewn from to the quarry you were dug from; look back to Avraham your father, and to Sarah who brought you forth. For he was only one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many.” A different interpretation of our verse. The statement that she was barren refers to her present status, whereas the reference to the fetus was meant to predict something in the future. This is analogous to Genesis 21,2: ותהר ותלד שרה, “Sarah became pregnant and gave birth, etc.” We find a somewhat similar description in Leviticus 11,10 when the Torah refers to fish which have 
  
  
  
  
  
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  ואברכך, “I shall bless you;” I personally, not through any agent of mine.
  ואגדלה שמך, “I will make your name great.” I will add a letter to your name, so that its numerical value will amount to 248, corresponding to the number of limbs in your body. Your body will then be found to be whole, matching your name.
  והיה ברכה, “your blessing will precede My blessing,” i.e. when referring to you, in their daily prayers, people will first describe Me as מגן אברהם, “the Shield of Avraham,” before they will refer to Me as מחיה מתים,”the G–d who revives the dead.” An alternate interpretation: of the words: והיה ברכה “and be a blessing;” up until now, for the last two thousand years, I have been the only source of blessing for mankind; from now on the power to bless has been transferred to you, and you can bless whosoever you see fit to provide with a blessing. This is the reason why, when wanting to transfer this power to bless to his son Yitzchok, when he foresaw prophetically that Yitzchok would sire an Esau, Avraham could not bring himself to transfer this power to Yitzchok before he died, and he left it to G–d to decide if that power were to be transferred to him. This is why we read in Genesis 25,11, that after Avraham had died G–d bestowed this power on his son Yitzchok. The matter can be illustrated by a parable. A king owned a valuable orchard which he entrusted to one of his intimate friends to look after, and to irrigate properly. The friend began to undertake his task and found that there were two trees, one of which laden with a fruit containing a deadly poison, the other with an elixir of life. Both trees needed to be irrigated, but he found that the two trees were positioned in such a way that it was impossible to irrigate the one without at the same time also irrigating the other. He said to himself that if he irrigated the beneficial tree, he would simultaneously also prolong the existence of the poisonous tree. How was he to resolve this dilemma? He therefore resolved to leave well enough alone until the next time the owner of the orchard would visit it, when he could consult with him. At that time, he would follow the owner’s instructions. Another interpretation of the words: והיה ברכה. This is not so much to be understood as a blessing itself, but as a command to become the source of blessings. Wherever his journeys would take him, he was to make it his concern to spread the knowledge about his Creator and to bless the person with whom he came into contact. This is also what Avraham did, as we know from Genesis 12,8; ויקרא בשם ה', “He proclaimed the Name of the Lord,” (praising Him). Seeing that the people did not respond to his sermons positively, G–d resorted to bringing on a famine in the land.
  
  
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  ואברכה מברכך, “I shall bless those who bless you.” According to Midrash Tanchuma, section 4 on our portion, G–d had told Avraham that from him would come forth a tribe who would bless His (G–d’s) children. He referred to the priests who would come forth from Aaron and who would bless the Jewish people, as is written in Numbers 6,27: ושמו את שמי על בני ישראל, ואני אברכם, “so shall they put My name on the Children of Israel;” when Avraham asked: “who will bless them (the priests)?” G–d answered: “I shall bless them.” I believe that this is the correct interpretation of what the Talmud tractate Chulin folio 49 meant when the question was asked: “whence do we know that the priests themselves will be blessed, and the Talmud pointed to our verse as the answer to this question, i.e. “I shall bless those who bless them.”
  ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה, “and all the families of the earth shall count themselves blessed if they can establish family ties with you.” The root of the word ונברכו is the same as that of מבריך, “to graft.” They will consider it an accomplishment to have Abrahamitic blood in their veins.
  
  
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  ואברם בן חמש שנים ושבעים שנה בצאתו מחרן “and Avram was seventy five years old when he left Charan.” At first glance this statement is puzzling as the covenant of the pieces is reported as if it had occurred later than Avram’s departure from Charan (chapter 15). According to our tradition it took place 30 years before the birth of Yitzchok, and this is what the statement that the Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt, reported in Exodus 12,40 is based on. We know as a fact from the Torah that Avraham was one hundred years old when Yitzchok was born. According to Rashi, thirty years elapsed between the covenant of the pieces and the birth of Yitzchok. If so, Avraham could not have been more than 70 years old at that event. Lot joined him and was taken captive after having separated from Avraham during that same year still, and Avraham defeated the armies which had taken him captive, after which event G–d appeared to him as reported in chapter 15. He returned to Charan once more, and when he was 75 years old, G–d commanded him to move to the land of Canaan, i.e. “the land which I will show you.” (12,1) I have found confirmation of these dates in the book called Seder Olam, an ancient historical record, considered reliable by our sages. I am quoting verbatim from that text: “Avraham was 48 years old when G–d confused the languages of the people and they moved apart from one another. When G–d spoke to him at the covenant of the pieces, he was 70 years old. (this was while he was on the soil of the land of Canaan). He returned to Charan where he stayed for another five years. It follows that 27 years elapsed between the destruction of the Tower and Avraham’s departure from Charan a second time” Our verse refers to the second departure.
  
  
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  והכנעני אז בארץ, “and the Canaanites were in the land at that time.” Rashi interprets these words as meaning that at that period the Canaanites were in the process of capturing that land from the descendants of Shem whose king had ruled there in Jerusalem, then known as Shalem. It had been allocated to him by his father Noach. The difficulty with Rashi’s interpretation is that Rashi, when commenting on Hebron in Numbers 13,22, states that Hebron had been founded seven years earlier that Tzoan of Egypt. We know Cham had given that city (Chevron) to his oldest son [Kush and Mitzrayim having been twins? Compare table in Chronicles of Mossad Harav Kook Ed.]. It follows that Canaanites must have been in that land already long before Avraham came to it. This is also the conclusion in the Talmud, tractate Sotah folio 34. We must therefore assume that the details of this subject are the subject of a disagreement of the sages, and that Rashi was forced to side with one side, and chose this without mentioning that there is another opinion. [In the commentary of Haketav vehakabalah by Rabbi Mecklenburg, translated by this editor, the word שבעה in Numbers 13,22, is not understood as a number but as a reference to something superior, and the observation that fathers often treat younger sons with more affection than they have for the firstborn. According to the Bible, Canaan was Cham’s youngest son; (although that raises the question why Noach cursed him, instead of Cham’s eldest son) Ed. It is interesting that the Canaanites were allowed to exist without retribution by G–d for 47 years longer than the Egyptians, 7 years although they had been founded sooner, and 40 years because the first generation of Israelites had forfeited their right to inherit the land of Canaan as the result of the spies having badmouthed the land claiming that it devoured its inhabitants, and anyway could not be conquered by them. They were granted this extension because they agreed to have Avraham’s wife Sarah buried in Chevron.
  
  
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  ויט אהלה, “he pitched his tent;” Rashi already comments on the peculiarity of the word אהלה, being spelled with the letter ה at the end, when the pronoun ending for “his” should have been the letter ו. He gives as the reason that the Torah wished us to know that Avraham pitched his wife’s tent before he pitched his own. (based on B’reshit Rabbah). This raises the question why the same word is similarly misspelled in Genesis 9,21 when the subject was Noach’s tent? What are we to deduce from that? We may answer that the reason why the Israelites of the Kingdom of Jerobam, i.e. the ten tribes who had seceded from the Kingdom of David, were exiled, shortly after Solomon had died? According to tradition as spelled out in the Book of prophets, the decree to exile them was sealed because they indulged in debauchery caused by indulging in too much wine too many times. Noach having become too drunk occurred in his wife’s tent, or near its entrance. (Compare Amos 6,6, on the subject of these tribes’ drunkenness) Compare also Ezekiel 23,4: where the word אהליבמה for the capital of that kingdom which had really been Shomron, was changed to indicate that G–d had no place in that kingdom and in its rulers’ considerations. Both the word אהלה and אהליבמה are used by the prophet to describe the disloyal Jews in each kingdom. [The reader is referred to the commentary by Rabbi M. Eiseman in the Art Scroll edition of the Book of Ezekiel, even Jerusalem‘s name being changed in that chapter, as except during the reign of King Chizkiyahu things were not much better in the Kingdom of Yehudah. Ed.]
  
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  הנה נא ידעתי כי אשה יפת מראה את, “I am well aware that you are a physically attractive woman;” according to the interpretation of Rabbi Joseph Kara, the Torah abbreviated what Avraham said to Sarah, the full sentence including what is reported here as a separate sentence: “I know that because you are a beautiful –white skinned – woman as soon as they see you they will kill me and take you to the king’s palace to be part of his harem. In order to save my life, say that you are my sister, instead of my wife.” Although the Egyptians were idolaters, they observed the law of not sleeping with someone else’s wife. As a result, they resorted to murder instead. This sounds strange, as the same lawgiver that prohibited adultery also prohibited murder. Their reasoning was-presumably, that it is better to murder and commit that sin once, than to commit the sin of adultery day after day. Besides, they were afraid that any husband, whose wife had been kidnapped, would complain to their respective kings about this. Once the original husband was dead, no restitution could be made.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  אריוך מלך אלסר, “Aryoch, king of Elassar.” From this verse, i.e. the wording here, our sages decided that in a dispute between two major Talmudic scholars, Rav and Sh’muel, when the subject concerns secular matters we rule in accordance with the opinion of Sh’muel, whereas when the subject concerns ritual matters, matters regulating our direct relationship to G–d.], we rule like Rav. (Compare Talmud, tractate Shabbat folio 53.) Our sages describe Aryoch’s real names as being “Sh’muel, and the reason that he is called here Aryoch, is because the word is synonymous with being a monarch on earth, the secular part of the universe, whereas the name Elassar reminds us of the Hebrew word Issur, something forbidden by religious law. In other words: Aryoch arrogated to himself the right to give both secular and religious rulings on earth, treating earth as if G–d had no say in this terrestrial part of the (His) universe.
  
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  ויבא הפליט, “the one who had escaped (from the armies that captured Sodom and its satellites) came,” (and reported on the battle to Avraham) It was the angel Michael who told Avraham. If so, why is he referred to as if a human being who had escaped from Sodom? [According to a comment in a book by Rabbi Reuven Margolies, called Malachey elyon, in which the names and functions of all the angels about whom we have some information are listed (131), Michael is an alternate name for Mattatron, often cited in kabalistic literature, as G–d’s “general manager” in matters relating to earth,” with especial concern for the Jewish people and their well wishers. Ed.] As to the reason why he is called by the strange name פליט, “refugee, escapee,” according to a tradition, when G–d dispatched Samael and his forces to earth from heaven, Samael being another name for the perennial Satan, the latter tried to force Michael to go down to earth with him, and G–d at the last moment took hold of his wing in order to keep him in the celestial spheres. Ever since then, the angel Michael has acquired the nickname פליט, “escapee.” Concerning this escapee, the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 33,21, says: בא אלי הפליט מירושלים לאמור הכתה העיר, “the angel Michael came to me to inform me that Jerusalem had been conquered by the Babylonians.” The prophet then is assigned a task by G–d.
  
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  וירק את חניכיו, “he mobilised all those whom he had trained;” Avraham told all these men that they were about to go to war and if someone was afraid for his life due to sins he had committed, he was free to go back home. (Compare Deuteronomy 20,8) When they heard this, they all decided to return to their homes, with the exception of his loyal servant Eliezer. G–d told Avraham not to worry and to let them go home, as He would empower Eliezer to possesss as much power as all these men had possessed combined. The numerical value of the letters in the name אליעזר total 318, and that is why the Torah described his ”army” as consisting of 318 men. (Compare Talmud, tractate Nedarim, folio 31) In addition, we have two interpretations of the Talmud scholars Rav and Sh’muel, respectively, the former saying that the word וירק in our verse refers to “pouring words of Torah into these potential soldiers, whereas Sh’muel says that he overcame their fears by giving them large quantities of gold. (same folio in the Talmud) His objective was to instill in these men the will to save as many lives as possible, not to fight for the sake of the loot they might capture by killing fellow human beings. [This editor has some difficulty with the explanations offered, as in verse 24 of our chapter Avraham insists that the men who had fought with him receive their share of the loot. Ed.]
  
  
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  ויכם וירדפם, “he smote them and put them to flight.” Midrash Tanchuma asks: “who ever heard of soldiers pursuing dead people? How are we to understand this sequence in the verse?” He therefore understands our verse as meaning that Avraham and his men pursued the soldiers of that army, and G–d killed them.
  
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  ומלכי צדק מלך שלם הוציא לחם ויין, “and Malki Tzedek, King of Shalem, produced bread and wine, etc.” This was the custom in which soldiers returning from battle would be welcomed. They were naturally tired and worn out, and needed to replace spent energy by imbibing drink and consuming food. An alternate explanation: the reference to bread and wine, specifically, is a hint that just as that King was a priest, so priests of the Jewish people would perform temple service offering libations of wine and the showbreads to the Almighty on a regular basis. In this instance Malki Tzedek, up to now a priest of the supreme G–d, forfeited that honour when he blessed Avraham before first blessing the Almighty, Who had enabled Avraham to become the victor. When David, in Psalms 110,4 said: נשבע ה' ולא ינחם אתה כהן לעולם על דברתי מלכי צדק, “the Lord has sworn and will not relent, ’you are a priest forever, a rightful priest by My decree,’” he referred to the incident in our verse which cost Malki Tzedek his priesthood. [All the people killed in that battle were actually killed by G–d, as a priest who has killed a human being is forthwith denied the right to perform service in the Temple. Abraham certainly had represented the priesthood in his age. He was “officially” appointed as such after this incident. Ed.] According to the Talmud in Nedarim 32, quoted earlier, this is all derived from the word כהן, “a priest,” which our sages understand to mean that his offspring were not priests.
  
  
  
  
  
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  אל תירא אברם, “do not fear, Avraham.” Having miraculously succeeded to kill these mighty kings and their armies, Avraham was now afraid that he used up his spiritual “capital” i.e. any merits he might have accumulated by his good deeds thus far. G–d now reassured him on that score, saying that he need not worry about that. On the contrary, if someone removes thorns from the paths of people, something that might have harmed them, he is doubly deserving of protection by Him. (Midrash Tanchuma section 10) This may well be why the sages composing the Amidah prayer referred to G–d as “shield of Avraham, at the conclusion of the first benediction.” At the time when Yitzchok was lying bound on the altar his father had put him on Mount Moriah, his soul escaped to heaven only to return to him and to revive his body. This may account for the second benediction in the Amidah prayer concluding with G–d being referred to as “reviving the dead.” We find a statement in B’reshit Rabbah 65,10, that the reason why Yitzchok’s physical eyesight was dim after the experience on Mount Moriah, is due to the fact that he had had a glimpse of the essence of G–d during his soul’s brief stay there, and the Torah told us, i.e. Moses was told by G–d (Exodus 33,20) that a visual image of the essence of G–d is denied human beings while they are still alive. When Yaakov, in his dream of the ladder, observed the angels ascending and descending from heaven and accompanying him at all times, while constantly singing the praises of the Lord, this may be the reason why the third benediction, symbolising Yaakov, ends with G–d being described as “the holy G–d.”
  
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  כה יהיה זרעך, “so shall be your seed.” Rabbi Tanchuma son of Acha, basing himself on this phrase, commented that it is an assurance that there will never be fewer than 30 righteous people on earth at all times. He uses the word יהיה, “will be (singular),” as his proof. [The numerical value of the combined letters in that word is 30. Ed.]
  
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  ותרדמה נפלה על אברם, “and a deep darkness (sleep) had fallen upon Avraham. During this sleep G–d showed Avraham that his descendants would endure the enslavement to several kingdoms at different times as well as the collapse of these kingdoms (empires). When he was told to קחה לי עגלה משולשת, “take for Me a three year old calf,” (verses 8) this was a reference to the fourth (and last) of these empires, which would subjugate the Jews more cruelly and for longer than any other. This has been confirmed by a vision experienced by Daniel, (Daniel 7,7) with the words: דחילה ואמתני, “excessively terrifying and awesome.” The עז משולשת , “three year old goat,” represents the Greek empire. (Daniel, 8,5 וצפיר העזים בא מן המערב, “and the-goat came from the west across the surface of the whole earth.) The three year old ram, איל משולש, represents the empire of the Medes and Persians; mentioned in Daniel 8,8, i.e. וצפיר העזים הגדיל עד מאד, “and the he-goat grew exceedingly.” The תור, in our verse refers to the empire of the Ishmaelites. The word here has to be understood as the aramaic,תר ,שור, “ox or bull”. (The author on a Targum, unfamiliar to this editor) The גוזל in our verse refers to the Jewish people. It appears in that sense in Song of Songs, 2,14, as well as in the same Book, 6,9).   Rabbi Acha claims that the word משולש and משולשת is a metaphor for anything that is exceedingly strong. He quotes as support for his view Kohelet 4,12: והחוט המשולש לא במהרה ינתק, “and the threefold cord will not tear easily.” Rabbi Mesharshia, interpreting the word משולשים, understands the rule of the empires while the Israelites are under their domination as occurring during three different periods in history. The first time each of these empires states, or Kingdoms, dominates the Israelites on their own. unaided by other powers. The second time, two of those powers combine in subjugating the Israelites On the third occasion, during the period ushering in the messianic age, they all combine in their assault, as a result of which the Messiah will appear. He quotes Psalms 2,2; יתיצבו מלכי ארץ ורוזנים נוסדו יחד על ה' ועל משיחו, “all the kings of the earth and its regents will take a combined stand against the Lord and His messiah.” Rabbi Yoshua, in referring to the phrase: ויבתר אותם בתוך “he divided them in the middle,” understand the subject in that phrase as being the respective swords of Avraham’s opponents, thus breaking their power in half. He adds that if Avraham had not succeeded in doing this, the earth as we know it could not have continued to function. Concerning the Torah writing that Avraham did not divide the צפור, this is why that bird represents the Jewish people, and no other species of birds has ever been called tzipor, a young turtle dove. וירד העיט על הפגרים, “when the vultures tried to descend on the cadavers, (Avraham chased them away).” The word עיט here is a metaphor for David (the King) he has been compared to a coloured vulture. Compare Jeremiah 12,9: העיט צבוע נחלתי לי ,העיט סבב עליה, אספו כל חית השדה התיו לאכלה, (normal translation from beginning of that verse: “My own people acts towards Me like a bird of prey or hyena; let the birds of prey surround it, go gather the wild beasts bring them to devour.” The metaphoric interpretation our author cites and which is also mentioned by Rashi, understands the עיט, as being coloured, as it is so different from all other birds and stands out therefore. The gentile nations view the Jewish people as different and therefore cannot abide it. They gather together in order to commit genocide of the Jewish people. This enables us to understand why Avraham in his dream is described as “reviving, וישב”, the corpses of the slain Jews, so that we would have here a first hint that Jews will be resurrected in due course (as described in Ezekiel chapter 37). (Compare Psalms 147,18, where the expression yashev occurs in such a positive way.) Another explanation credited to Rabbi Eleazar, feels that our verse proves that the power of any of the aforementioned kingdoms which excel in persecuting Jews will not last for more that a single day in G–d’s calendar, as such a “day” is a thousand years in our calendar. (Compare Psalms 90,4: כי אלף שנים בעיניך כיום אתמול כי יעבור, “for one thousand years in Your eyes are as yesterday that has passed.”) A colleague of Rabbi Eleazar concurred with him, adding that additional proof could be cited from Lamentations 1,13, נתנני שוממה כל היום, “He made me desolate all day long.” The power of this last empire would gradually evaporate in the west, symbol of the day coming to an end, and the ascent of the Jewish people would commence in the evening as predicted in Zachariah 14,7: והיה לעת ערב יהיה אור, “and it will be that at evening time there will be light.” Another thing that can be predicted based on Avraham’s dream and its wording is that there will be a total of four eras of suppression of the Jewish people; the expression אימה חשיכה, refers to the suppression of the Jewish religion in the time of the Seleucids, Antiochus, who tried to eradicate us spiritually by forbidding us to practice our religion, whereas the empire following the decline of the Greeks, the Medes produced Haman who tried to eradicate us physically. The word נופלת, refers to the Babylonian empire during the heyday of which the first Temple was destroyed and most of our people (that had not been exiled when the ten tribes were exiled by the Assyrians), were exiled. The word עליו refers to the suppression of our people by the Ishmaelites, who will be overcome by the Messiah, descendant of David, as predicted in Psalms 132,18: שם אצמיח קרן לדוד, ערכתי נר למשיחי, “there I will make a horn sprout for David, I have prepared a lamp for My anointed one.” Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah is on record as having said that these empires were created by G–d only to serve G–d as firewood to heat up the fires in hell. This is why the Torah wrote here: והנה תנור עשן ולפיד אש, “and behold there was a furnace and a flaming torch (verse 17),” and we find a reference to this phenomenon also in Isaiah 31,9: נאום ה' אשר אור לו בציון ותנור לו בירושלים, “says the Lord Who has a fire in Zion and a furnace in Jerusalem.” This is the way in which G–d illustrated to him that there is such a region we call gehinom, (hell). He also showed him the Torah and the animals used for the sacrificial service in the Temple, indicating to him that as long as his descendants would observe both, they would never have to be afraid of gehinom. Nonetheless, He showed that even the Temple would be destroyed one day, so that the sacrificial service would not be able to be performed. He asked Avraham if he preferred that his descendants descend to gehinom at a time like that, or if he preferred that they endure slavery and persecution while alive on earth. Avraham was in a quandary how to answer such a question. This is why we read in Deuteronomy 32,30, that even the gentiles came to the conclusion that the sudden and drastic decline of the fortunes of the Jewish people could only have come about because their צור, (Rock), metaphor for the patriarch Avraham in this case, had “sold them out.” (had chosen persecution and exile for his descendants rather than gehinom.) According to Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, an ancient kabalistic text chapter 28 the word צור in Isaiah 51,1: הביטו אל צור חצבתם, “look at the tzur from which you have been hewn,” is also a reference to the patriarch Avraham. [My edition of Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, while quoting Isaiah 31,9 in the sense that our author quoted Rabbi Eliezer ben Azaryah having done, does not refer to Isaiah 51,1 at all. Most of the other text quoted here has been taken from that chapter in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer. Ed.] [In the event that any of my readers finds it strange that the 400 years of bondage etc. in Egypt are not referred to in Avraham’s dream at all, 1) he was told about this while awake, 2) in Egypt the Israelites had not been a people in the sense of having their own land and a political union known as “state.” This only began at the time of the Exodus, and specifically when Joshua conquered the land of Canaan. Ed.]
  
  Verse 13
  
  ועבדום, וענו אותם, “they will serve them; and they (the masters) will oppress them.” This was the answer to Avraham’s question: במה אדע כי אירשנה, “how will I know that I will indeed inherit it (the land) even vicariously,” in verse 8, where Avraham asked for some kind of guarantee that G–d’s promise to him would not be negated by his descendants forfeiting their claim to its fulfillment.
  ארבע מאות שנה, “for four hundred years.” This is a separate revelation from G–d to Avraham. Another interesting explanation is that the numerical value of the letters in Avraham’s question במה adds up to 400 when you use the system known as  א-ת, ב-ש, ג-ר, i.e. substituting the letters commencing by reading the alphah-bet backwards. Furthermore, the Talmud in tractate Nedarim folio 32, comes to the conclusion that the Jewish people had to suffer the penalty for their founding father having asked G–d for proof that His promise would come true, [although seeing that he had been unable to have children until that time would seem to us as a reasonable question. Ed.] Another reason given is that when Avraham agreed to the King of Sodom to have his citizens whom he had taken prisoner restored to him, he is punished for missing out on a chance to convert these people to monotheism. (Compare Genesis 14,21)
  
  
  Verse 14
  
  ואחרי כן יצאו, “and after that period they will leave, etc.” We would have expected the Torah to write the word ואחר here, instead of ואחרי. The reason for the extra letter י is that this is a hint to Avraham that the Egyptians will have to endure ten plagues before releasing the Israelites. (B’reshit Rabbah 44,20)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  התהלך לפני והיה תמים, “walk before Me and become complete, free from blemish.” In order for Avraham to achieve this stature, G–d added the letter ה, a metaphor for His name, to Avraham’s name. The numerical value of the letters in Avraham’s name would then amount to 248, the number of limbs in his body. This is the conclusion arrived at in the Talmud, tractate Nedarim folio 32. According to Romi bar Abba, the reason why Abraham was first known as אברם and subsequently as אברהם is that originally G–d gave him control over 243 limbs, whereas from now on he had control over all of his 248 limbs. They are: two eyes, two ears, his torso, his head. If you want to realise how important the physical act of circumcision was, you will find this explained on folio 31 of tractate Nedarim. In the commentary known as Mechilta, it is stated that the reason why both Avraham and Sarah are never again referred to by their original names, as opposed to Yaakov, who after G–d changed his name to Yisrael is frequently still referred to by his original name Yaakov, this is because after both had their names changed, their original names had not been obliterated completely as the letters of their original names had been retained also as part of their new names. Their names had only been “improved.” Israel being a totally new name was not meant to invalidate his original name. The only reason we know this is because the Torah continues to make use of it. [The name Yaakov, given to him by outsiders, not his father, had suggested that he was somehow inferior spiritually already from birth. The angel in his nocturnal wrestling match had alluded to this. (Genesis 32,29) The Torah by continuing to use it, shows that in G–d’s eyes it never reflected upon him in a negative fashion. Ed.] The sages of the Mechilta add further that the reason why the name of the third patriarch, Yitzchok, has never been changed or amended, is that he had been named by G–d Himself, long before he had even been born. (Verse 19 in our chapter)
  
  
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  Verse 21
  
  ואת בריתי אקים את יצחק, “and My covenant I will establish with Yitzchok;” the word אקים is to be understood as an acrostic from the phrase: אשר קידש ידיד מבטן, a phrase recited after every circumcision, meaning: “who is well beloved already when he emerges from the womb.”
  
  Verse 22
  
  
  
  Verse 23
  
  בעצם היום הזה, “on this very day;” According to Rabbi Gamliel, Avraham sent a messenger to Shem, son of Noach, and invited him to circumcise him and his son Ishmael. Not only that, but the date was the tenth of Tishrey, i.e. Yom Kippur which during that year occurred on a Sabbath. He derived this from the use of the expression בעצם היום  in Leviticus 23,29. [Presumably Avraham knew that performance of this commandment on the eighth day of a newborn child overrides the prohibitions of the Sabbath and even Yom Kippur. Ed.] This is why every year on the recurrence of that date, G–d reminds Himself of Avraham’s having performed this commandment and it is a factor contributing to atoning for all of our sins on that Day. In B’reshit Rabbah, there is a version describing that after Avraham had already had the knife and his foreskin in his hand to perform the circumcision on himself, he became afraid that he might tremble due to his advanced age. G–d thereupon assisted him and guided his hand; this is why we say in our daily prayers in the morning when relating to this event: וכרות עמו הברית, “He cut the covenant with him (Avraham).” The quotation is based on Nechemyah 9,8. The usual translation of the word, inaccurate is: ”He concluded” Ed.]           
  
  Verse 24
  
  
  
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  Verse 26
  
  בעצם היום הזה, “on this very day;” According to Rabbi Gamliel, Avraham sent a messenger to Shem, son of Noach, and invited him to circumcise him and his son Ishmael. Not only that, but the date was the tenth of Tishrey, i.e. Yom Kippur which during that year occurred on a Sabbath. He derived this from the use of the expression בעצם היום  in Leviticus 23,29. [Presumably Avraham knew that performance of this commandment on the eighth day of a newborn child overrides the prohibitions of the Sabbath and even Yom Kippur. Ed.] This is why every year on the recurrence of that date, G–d reminds Himself of Avraham’s having performed this commandment and it is a factor contributing to atoning for all of our sins on that Day. In B’reshit Rabbah, there is a version describing that after Avraham had already had the knife and his foreskin in his hand to perform the circumcision on himself, he became afraid that he might tremble due to his advanced age. G–d thereupon assisted him and guided his hand; this is why we say in our daily prayers in the morning when relating to this event: וכרות עמו הברית, “He cut the covenant with him (Avraham).” The quotation is based on Nechemyah 9,8. The usual translation of the word, inaccurate is: ”He concluded” Ed.]           
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  וירא  אליו ה' באלוני ממרא, “The Lord appeared to him at eloney mamre, etc.” According to Rashi, Mamre was the man who had advised Avraham strongly to carry out G–d’s command to circumcise himself. This is why this revelation took place while Avraham was on his property. The obvious question here is why someone of the stature of Avraham needed to consult with his friends about if and how to relate to G–d’s commandment. He had been tested as to his faith in Him on ten occasions, and he had passed all these tests without consulting with anyone, why would he suddenly feel the need to “consult” anyone? The answer clearly must be that Avraham did not “consult” with anyone in order to decide if to carry out G–d’s command; he only asked his friends if to perform this commandment on himself in the privacy of his tent or publicly, in order to demonstrate his loyalty to G–d’s command. His purpose in doing so publicly would be in order to encourage others to emulate his example. When the Torah described him as performing the act of circumcision בעצם היום הזה, (Genesis 17,23) these words mean: “in broad daylight, for all to see.” Mamre was given credit by G–d for having given Avraham this advice. A different interpretation of our verse: Avraham consulted with Mamre regarding the exact part of his body where the “circumcision” had to be performed. He therefore advised him to perform this operation on the organ that represented his masculinity. After all, G–d had restricted the performance of this rite to the males of the species. (17,10) He also advised him to commence with circumcising himself and his son Ishmael first. Once his slaves and friends would observe this, most of them would follow willingly without protest. The Torah testifies in chapter 17, verse 27 that all the members of Avraham’s household (including hired help) were circumcised on the same day that he was. If you were to ask why Mamre, himself, who gave Avraham this advice, did not have himself circumcised also, the answer is that eventually he did do so as reported in a Midrash.
  כחם היום, “during the hottest part of the day.” This is the time at which people consume their lunch. This was usually during the fourth hour of the day. This is in accordance with the commentary of Rav Papa in the Talmud, tractate Shabbat folio 10. Avraham at the time was on the lookout for prospective guests at the entrance to his tent.
  
  Verse 2
  
  
  
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  Verse 8
  
  ויקח חמאה וחלב, “he took curd and milk, etc.” this teaches that he fed them both milky and meaty dishes. When G–d was ready to give the Torah to the Israelites, the angels are reported as having said to Him (Psalms 8,2): תנה הודך על שמים, “You have covered the heavens with Your glory” [This is perceived as the angels demanding that the Torah remain in the celestial regions of the universe. Ed.] G–d replied to them: “in My Torah it is written that milky and meaty dishes not be consumed at the same meal (Exodus 23,19), yet when you descended to earth you partook of such a mixture at Avraham’s table. (The inference is clear, i.e. “the laws of the Torah do not apply to you.”) As soon as the angels heard this they withdrew their objections to the Torah being given to people on earth. This is the deeper meaning of Exodus 34,27: כי על פי הדברים האלה כרתי אתך ברית ואת ישראל, “for in accordance with these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel.” What do “these words” refer to? They refer to the verse prior to this where eating meaty and milky dishes at the same time has been prohibited. Nonetheless, this metaphorical explanation appears to contradict another metaphorical interpretation (Midrash) in which we have been taught that Avraham personally observed not only all the Biblical laws of the Torah, but even the “fences” surrounding them to protect us against violating the prohibition itself. The particular example quoted there for such a “fence” is interestingly the subject of eyruv tavshilin, certain preparations of food when the holiday occurs immediately before the Sabbath. But that is not the only way of explaining the Midrash. The word: eyruv, actually means “mixture,” so that the Midrash may have referred to a mixture of meaty and milky courses of the same meal, so that there is no contradiction at all. Seeing that Avraham is reported as first having served milky dishes, and the meat subsequently, it is reasonable to assume that he wished to give his guests something to eat before freshly slaughtered animals, that had to have their blood removed could be cooked or roasted on the spit. The interval would have sufficed not to violate the laws of mixing milk and meat. [If people ate their main meal during the fourth hour after sunrise, seeing that these men (angels) did not arrive at Sodom until evening, there would have been plenty of time for their eating both. Ed.]
  ובן הבקר אשר עשה, “and the calf which he had prepared;” this is not the only time when the word עשה, does not, and could not mean: “he had made,” we find it used in the same sense as here also in Genesis 1,7: ויעש אלוקים את הרקיע, where it could not mean that “G–d made the sky or firmament,” as He had already decreed for it to come into existence in the verse prior to that. It meant that He made it functional, made it ready to fulfill its purpose. (Based on Rashi)
  ויאכלו, “they ate.” Seeing that angels cannot eat, the meaning of the word is that they burned it in the sense of consuming it, just as food is burned by our bodies to provide us with energy enabling us to continue to exist. [We know that these “men” were angels, from what followed when they arrived in Sodom. Ed.] The word אכל is used in the same sense when Moses in Exodus 3,2 observed that the burning bush was not being consumed (eaten) by the fire.
  
  
  Verse 9
  
  
  
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  Verse 11
  
  חדל להיות לשרה אורח כנשים, “Sarah had ceased to have the periods of women.” She suddenly saw menstrual blood again, something that does not occur in women over a certain age which she had long passed attaining. The meaning cannot be that “she did not see such blood,” as in his commentary on verse eight, Rashi told us that she menstruated, and that this was the reason why she did not bake and offer bread as she had been commanded to do by her husband (Compare verse 6)
  
  Verse 12
  
  
  
  Verse 13
  
  ואני זקנתי, “and I am old.” Our sages base their view that it is permissible sometimes to tell a “white” lie when the purpose is to preserve harmony between husband and wife, based on this verse, where what Sarah obviously meant was that her husband was too old to sire a child, seeing that she herself had experienced rejuvenation. (Talmud, tractate Baba Metzia folio 87). Seeing that she had not said anything aloud about what she thought about her husband, G–d, i.e. His angel, still saw fit to change what she had thought to herself, in order to preserve her image as a dutiful wife respecting her husband’s masculine dignity. Our author bases his interpretation on the use of the word היתה, “was,” instead of תהיה, “will be,” in verse 12. There is however an opinion which does not agree at all that G–d or His angel had changed the words that Sarah had thought but not uttered. It argues that it is totally absurd to argue that anything appearing to us as a lie could have been uttered by G–d or His agent, an angel. The author of that opinion quotes Psalms 101,7: דבר שקרים לא יכון לנגד עיני, “he who speaks untruths shall not stand before My eyes,” in support of his statement. He claims further that what Sarah had (thought) reported as having said was indeed what is quoted by the Torah, i.e. ואני זקנתי, “and I have become old.” These words are to be understood as her wonderment at how she could have become pregnant even in spite of having seen menstrual blood once more, seeing she was way beyond child-bearing age, and had never previously conceived. The angel did not alter her words, he only did not report all of her words. In this manner he prevented any bad feeling on the part of Avraham. Any ordinary person, other than a Divine creature, is permitted to tell white lies in order to preserve שלום בית, family harmony. If you were to argue that Avraham would not have cared, seeing that he was aware that what she thought or said was true, we must assume that he was still trying to impregnate Sarah but had been unsuccessful. 
  
  Verse 14
  
  למועד אשוב אליך, “at the appointed time I will return to you, etc.” this phrasing is a hint that the birth of Yitzchok would occur on a date subsequently part of the Passover festival. (Talmud tractate Rosh Hashanah folio 11). The numerical value of the letters in the word למועד equals the numerical value of the letters in the word בפסח (150).
  כעת חיה, according to Rashi, this means “at a time of year such as now, when nature is in full bloom, entirely alive.” Seeing that the angel did not say בעת, at the time, but כעת, “around that time,” it is clear that he referred to the time when Sarah’s pregnancy would result in her giving natural birth at the end of the cycle. She would not give birth prematurely. The expression חיה for a woman giving birth occurs elsewhere also. Our sages in the Talmud tractate Taanit folio 2, have stated that there are three keys which G–d does not hand over to any agent (prophet or angel) They are: the key to resurrections, to rainfall, and to giving birth. This is also why the angel could not predict the precise date when Sarah would give birth, only an approximation, i.e. כעת, “at approximately that time.” I believe that Rashi’s interpretation of these verses coincides with the one we find in the historical text known as Seder olam, world history, as well as with the commentary in the Mechilta. (chapter 5) According to those calculations, G–d had had this conversation with Avraham culminating in the destruction of Sodom on the fifteenth day of Nissan. Yitzchok was born on that day in the year following. According to B’reshit Rabbah 48,12, the words Avraham had used when telling Sarah to knead and bake bread, לושי ועשי עגות, also suggest that it was Passover (the date of) [as did the fact that on the evening of that same day, Lot fed the angels matzot, unleavened bread. (Genesis 19,3) Ed.] This date had also been referred to in conjunction with the circumcision (Genesis 17,21) when G–d had told Avraham about the birth of this son whom he was to call Yitzchok. At that time the time frame told him was: “next year.”   However, the above is in contradiction to what we read in the first chapter of the tractate Roshashah, folio 11, where the words:  למועד אשוב אליך are understood to refer to the dates on which the Sukkot festival would occur in the future. The first “מועד” would then have been Passover. This would also agree with what we have read in Pirke de rabbi Eliezer chapter 29, according to which Avraham circumcised himself on the date of the day of Atonement. In the Talmud, tractate Baba Metzia, folio 87, the angels are reported as having visited Avraham on the third day after his circumcision, and that is when Sarah overheard the prediction that she would give birth to a son, and that the words “at this time,” have to be understood as 2 days prior to the date of Sukkot. It is also stated in the Talmud, tractate Rosh Hashanah, that Sarah became pregnant on Rosh Hashanah. When mention is made elsewhere that this occurred on the festival, this need not be understood literally, as it was two days earlier. Furthermore, according to our tradition, also Rachel and Chanah who had endured years of being unable to conceive were remembered by G–d on that festival and became pregnant and subsequently gave birth. This is the version of events accepted by Rashi. If one were to question what precisely was meant by the angel speaking of the מועד in the following year, if it would refer to Sukkot, that would be more than a year later, as the next festival would be Passover in the same year, we must assume that the quotation from the Talmud is by a sage who accepts the opinion of Rabbi Yoshua, that the earth was created in the month of Nissan, (Rosh Hashanah there), in which case Passover would be in the following year and that this is why the angel added words that applied to the following year. [The important thing is that the Torah testifies that Sarah gave birth at the time that been predicted here, compare Genesis 21,2. Ed.]
  
  
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  המכסה אני...ואברהם היו יהיה לגוי גדול, “how can I conceal from Avraham...seeing that he will develop into a great and important nation?” G–d would not have revealed the future to Avraham except for the fact that he had a future way beyond his physical death. What difference would it then have made if he knew about the fate of Sodom and what had caused it? Seeing that Avraham would become a witness to My exacting retribution from sinners, (even when I do not bring on another deluge) he will be not only be telling his offspring about it, but use his first hand knowledge as a reason to impress them with the fact that G–d not only knows what goes on here on earth, but reacts to it appropriately at a time of His own choosing. Only by paying heed to that knowledge will they live to inherit the land of the Canaanites who will then share the fate of Sodom more or less, [their land not being destroyed. Ed.] 
  Unless his descendants were to practice justice and righteousness, they would not inherit that land. 
  
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  Verse 27
  
  ואנכי עפר ואפר, “although I am only dust and ashes;” Avraham hints that he by rights should have become earth, i.e. killed, in the war against the four kings, or he should have become ashes already when he submitted to the fires in Nimrod’s furnace. If he had been saved, it was only because G–d had displayed His mercy for him.
  
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  אולי ימצאון שם עשרה, “perhaps there can be found there ten?” According to Rashi, Avraham knew already when he had asked if forty five would be sufficient, that G–d would not accept a total of less than fifty in order to save all five towns. He would not accept less than a minimum of ten innocent people per town. If Rashi were correct, why did G–d answer Avraham when he asked about 45 righteous people with the words: לא אשחית, “I will not destroy?” He repeated answering him with the same answer when twenty or thirty righteous people were the subject of Avraham’s question or plea? G–d had made it plain that in order to forgive all five cities there had to be no less that 50 righteous people, i.e. at least ten in each of them. If there were twenty or thirty, the cities containing them would be saved, but none that contained fewer. The promise not to destroy included also not imposing other hardships on those cities at the present state, When Avraham asked about the forty five, he meant that if G–d Himself would not be prepared to be the tenth in each town so that all the inhabitants at this time would be spared. He did not mean that if there were only nine righteous people in each town that they would go scot free; they would not be destroyed but be subjected to a lesser punishment. G–d promised that if there were at least ten righteous people in any one of these cities, not only would He spare that city from destruction, but He would not exact judgments from its guilty people at that time. The number ten is a round number and therefore important enough not only to protect that quorum but also those living alongside them. [Avraham could not have been completely ignorant of this, else why did he not start with a higher number? Ed.] He knew that the eight people in Noach’s ark had not been enough to save the remainder of the human species from destruction at that time, including devastating the earth they had dwelled on. Avraham knew that it would be pointless to ask G–d to desist from destroying all these towns when they could not even point to a quorum of righteous people in any of their cities. At any rate, counting a righteous person in one city, i.e. a city that had eleven righteous people as if the eleven would be added to nine righteous people in another town was also not acceptable. Some commentators hold that the reason that Avraham did not pray for less than ten people was that he thought that Lot, his wife, four children and their spouses, would have made up the quorum. G–d’s response reassured him that if indeed Lot and his family were righteous, they would not be killed in what was about to happen.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ויבואו שני המלאכים סדומה בערב, “two of the angels arrived in Sodom in the evening;” when Lot saw them, he asked them for the purpose of their visit. They told him that it was their mission to destroy the city. The reason why they volunteered this information was that they said to themselves that if they were simply to order him to leave town with their families without giving them a plausible reason, they would simply ignore them. But, since they had taken it upon themselves to reveal something G–d had not intended to be revealed at that time, they were punished by Him, by being exiled from the celestial regions for 138 years. This was in spite of the fact that what they had done had been well intentioned. Angels are subject to penalties even for committing “minor” errors by not having checked with their Master first, relying on the superior wisdom with which they had been endowed. This superior knowledge enables them to know what goes on in the minds of human beings. We find another example of punishment as warnings for celestial creatures where Mattatron, G–d’s “general manager” for running the universe on His behalf, was punished as stated in the Talmud tractate Chagigah, folio 15. This angel was expelled (temporarily) from the celestial regions and punished with sixty fiery strokes, in order to warn him not to fall victim to the same error as Elisha ben Avuyah on earth, who had arrived at the conclusion that Satan is an independent force in the universe rather than also a messenger carrying out missions on behalf of his Divine master. Rabbi Yehudah hachassid said that angels are punished with sixty lashes whereas human beings are not punished by more than forty (39) lashes, is that on earth already thirteen year olds qualify for such punishment, whereas such punishments are inflicted on over twenty year olds in the celestial regions. Just as 39 lashes on earth are three times thirteen so sixty is three times twenty.
  
  
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  ואיש אין בארץ לבא עלינו “and there is no other man left on earth to impregnate us with his sperm.” According to Ibn Ezra, they did not think that there were no more males alive on earth, but they thought no other man would be a suitable marriage partner for them for spiritual reasons. Since they had been miraculously saved by G–d, they considered themselves as of superior status.
  
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  ותהרין, “they became pregnant;” according to Rashi, this point is made by the Torah to show the miraculous intervention by G–d that although it is a natural law that a virgin does not become pregnant as a result of sleeping with a man for the first time, in this instance there was help from heaven. [If this had not been a firm conviction by earlier generations, all the documented stories about priests being the ones to deflower virgins before they were given to their respective husbands, would make no sense at all, as many such virgins would have given birth to children from such priests’ semen. Ed.] According to Bereshit rabbah 51,9 quoting Devarim 22,17, the words: ואלה בתולי בתי, “these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity,” are proof that Judaism does not accept the so-called principle accepted by the gentiles on this subject.
  
  
  
  
  
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  הנה נתתי אלף כסף לאחיך, “here I have given one thousand silver pieces to your brother;” The root אלף has different meanings in different contexts. For instance, in Job 33,33, ואאלפך חכמה, it means: “I will teach you wisdom.” It also appears as an expression for excessive desire, as in Genesis 31,30: כי נכסוף נכספת, where Lot acknowledges Yaakov’s great “longing to return to his father’s home after so many years of absence.” In our verse the correct interpretation is that Avimelech having given this amount of silver to Sarah’s brother Avraham who had told him that he was her brother, means that it should teach her a lesson to really love him. An alternate interpretation is that it is used as an expression for craving after material wealth as in Deuteronomy 7,13: שגר אלפיך, “the exceptional increase in your flocks and sheep, the example quoted by Rashi who says that it is a metaphor for riches, something nearly everyone is craving for. הנה לך כסות עינים, “here it shall serve you as a cover for the eyes;” Avimelech refers to the word אחיך, saying that Sarah had described her husband as her brother out of a sense of chastity. Had she referred to him as “my husband,” anyone hearing her say this would immediately have understood it as “my sexual partner.” She was too chaste to refer to anyone other than to her husband in such terms.
  ואת כל ונוכחת, “and you will be found justified before all and sundry.” Avimelech warns her that not everyone understands such lofty moral standards; therefore they would have taken you at your word, not knowing that they were a metaphor. In future, therefore, she is not to mislead people by describing her husband as her brother. The only people who do not misunderstand your reference to your ”brother”, are the ones that are part of your household. Beware not to be the source of being so misunderstood.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ותהר ותלד, “she conceived, became pregnant and gave birth.” The reason why both stages are mentioned is that just as conceiving-becoming pregnant was painless, so her giving birth was also painless.
  
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  בן שמונת ימים, “when eight days old;” Nowadays (author’s time) the parents are in the habit of bringing the baby to the Synagogue where he is welcomed with the words: ברוך הבא, “blessed be the new arrival.” The reason why this formula has become popular is that the numerical value of the word הבא=8. The benediction therefore is meant to say: “blessed be he who is being circumcised on the eighth day.”
  
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  'ותאמר: מי מלל וגו, she said: “who would have dared predict, etc.” This was a way of giving thanks to the Lord. It is similar to Isaiah 3,10: אמרו צדיק כי טוב, “tell the righteous that he has done something good.” Sarah here gave thanks to whosoever had foretold her husband Avraham that she would bear him a son in her old age and would even be able to nurse not only him but also other babies. In other words: she thanked the Lord. An alternate interpretation of this exclamation of Sarah: “Who would have foretold that Avraham was still virile enough still to have impregnated Sarah so that she could produce a healthy son.” According to this interpretation the word מלל  is similar to the word מלילות in Deuteronomy 23,26: “(plucking) ears of corn.”
  
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  ויכלו המים, “the water was used up;” Rashi adds that it is the custom of sick people to drink a lot of water, so that the water was not used up as it had been insufficient for the journey to start with. This interpretation is somewhat puzzling, as we have been told in the Talmud, tractate Baba metzia, folio 87, that prior to the report in the Torah about Yaakov falling sick shortly before his death, sickness as we know it did not exist. We would have to conclude therefore that what the Talmud meant that until Yaakov fell sick, for no visible cause, no one fell sick without visible cause. Yishmael’s “sickness” was not a sickness in the accepted meaning of the word but was the result of Sarah having used the “evil eye” to cause this.
  
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  רובה קשת, “an archer.” He was hunting by shooting arrows at his prospective victims. The word רובה is used here in the same sense as Genesis 49,23, where Yaakov uses it in his blessing for Joseph, i.e. ורובו, implying that his brothers, or Potiphar and his wife, had hunted him. Some commentators understand the word as a Hebrew alternative for the Aramaic word: רביא, translation of Isaiah 9,5: כי ילד יולד, “for a child has been born;” We find in the Talmud, tractate Chulin folio 20, the expression: יקבלו הרובים את תשובתן, “let the children (of Rabbi Chiyah) receive their reply.”
  
  
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  אלוקים עמך, “G–d is on your side.” Originally, they had thought that if Avraham was such a righteous individual he would not have expelled his firstborn son. After observing Avraham’s lifestyle, his success, and good deeds, they had come to the conclusion that his G–d had approved all of what he had done.
  
  
  
  
  
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  שבו לכם פה, “you remain here, awaiting our return!” A Midrash quotes Avraham as saying to his son Yitzchok after he saw a single mountain covered by a cloud, what he saw. Yitzchok responded that he saw a beautiful mountain above which a cloud was resting. He then returned to the lads who had accompanied him and Yitzchok, and asked them what they had seen. They said that they had not seen anything unusual. Therefore Avraham understood that they were not to accompany him any further. He considered that their powers of perception were no better than those of a donkey which accompanied them. This is why the Talmud taught in tractate Yevamot, folio 62, that the genealogy of any slave is no better than that of a donkey, i.e. cannot be determined with any degree of certainty.
  
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  ויקח את המאכלת, “he took hold of the knife.” This was the knife that would be used in cutting up the flesh of an offering after the animal‘s throat had been cut. A different view. The word is used metaphorically, (based on the meaning if אכל “eating,” as the root of the word) it is the instrument that since that time has been feeding Israel throughout history since that time as we all still benefit from Avraham’s having passed this “test.”
  
  
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  והנה איל אחר, נאחז בסבך בקרניו, “and behold, behind him a ram had been caught with its horns in the thicket;” according to B’reshit rabbah, 56,9, the strange word “behind” in this verse is interpreted as G–d having said to Avraham, that He could foresee that his descendants would likewise be caught up in various kinds of sins at different times, and that by using the ram’s horn on designated days of the year and blowing its horn, they would be able to secure for themselves atonement as their founding father Avraham had willingly offered his beloved son as an offering to Him. Ram’s horns which are open ended at both ends are to remind the Jewish people that though they will seemingly enter a dark tunnel when sinning, there is light at the end of the tunnel if they do penitence; blowing the ram’s horns when asking G–d for forgiveness is one of the means of obtaining forgiveness. The ram’s horn may therefore be viewed as an advocate on our behalf.
  
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  ויקרא אברהם שם המקום ההוא: ה' יראה, “Avraham named that site: “The Lord will see.” The place is known in our days as the mountain of Moriah. It is called thus as it became a mountain due to the extreme degree of awe of the Lord Avraham had demonstrated there. It had actually first been a valley. Suddenly it was transformed into a tall mountain. Since it had previously been called “shalem” as we know from when its king congratulated Avraham on his victory over Kedorleomer and the kings with him (Genesis 14,18) Avraham now added another word to its name, i.e. יראה, “awe of the Lord,” so that after David conquered it from the Jebusites it is called “Y’ru-shalem.” [The name actually occurs already in chapter 10 of the Book of Joshua, but it did not become part of the Kingdom of the Israelites till some 400 years later. Ed.]
  השם יראה, “the name of the attribute of Mercy of the Lord will become manifest.” According to our author, the name is meant to demonstrate not only to G–d but to mankind, that at this place Avraham had demonstrated the ultimate degree of being in awe of the Lord by being willing to sacrifice his son to him.
  אשר יאמר היום בהר ה' יראה, “of which it be said today, i.e. (nowadays)”on the mountain of the Lord He can be perceived as having manifested this attribute of His. ” Avraham was concerned that people knowing he had been commanded to sacrifice his son, and had returned with his son, might think that he had been unable to bring himself to do this. The name of that mountain was to be a sign that the abandoning of the original command had nothing to do with his being unwilling or unable to carry it out. We are told in the Midrash that when G–d, i.e. His angel, said to Avraham: “do not dare touch the skin of the lad,” Avraham was not willing to desist until G–d swore to him  that He would consider the ashes of the ram that he would slaughter a if they had been the ashes of his son. [This editor finds this difficult, as Avraham had not seen the ram until after he had desisted, as the Torah clearly tells us. Since the author did not reveal which Midrash he has seen this in, I cannot check it. Ed.] Our author adds that as soon as Avraham had taken Yitzchok off the altar, he asked G–d for His signet ring as proof that He had told him this. G–d answered that legally He was not obliged to put his seal on what He had said, as Avraham had not requested it before taking Yitzchok down from the altar. However, having high regard for him, He would hand over that seal to Yaakov instead, and that this is what we derive from the line in Michah 7,20: תתן אמת ליעקב, חסד לאברהם, “Who grants truth to Yaakov and loving kindness to Avraham.” [G–d’s “seal” is proverbially known as אמת, “truth.” Ed.]
  
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  וישב אברהם, “Avraham went back, etc.;” why has Yitzchok not been mentioned here? What did he do now? Avraham sent him off under cover of darkness to protect him against the “evil eye.” It is noteworthy that when Chananyah, Mishael, and Azaryah, after they had escaped unharmed from Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace have never been heard about again. (Daniel chapter 3-4, with Babylonian names for them) According to one view in the Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, folio 91, these men were killed by the evil eye. According to the view of Rabbi Shimon ben Yehutzdak, they changed their place of residence and went to study Torah with Joshua, the High Priest. He bases his opinion on what is written in Zecharyah 3,8: שמע נא יהושוע הכהן הגדול אתה ורעיך היושבים לפניך כי אנשי מופת המה, “hearken well O High Priest Joshua, you and your colleagues sitting before you! For these men are to be wondered at.” According to B’reshit rabbah 56,11, the line means that the three men we mentioned were chosen by Me to serve as survivors after I performed miracles for them.
  
  
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  את עוץ בכורו, “his firstborn son Utz, etc.; according to B’reshit rabbah this is a reference to Job (Job, 1,1) where we are told about Job living in the land of Utz.
  קמואל, he is supposed to be identical with the prophet Bileam, who tried to manipulate, rise up against, G–d (Yalkut Shimoni)
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  'ויהיו חיי שרה וגו, “the lives of Sarah were, etc.” the description of Sarah having had more than one life must be understood as follows: during the first ninety years of her life she had been childless. Anyone who has no children is really considered as if dead. When you look at the numerical value of the letters in the word ויהיו the total is 37. This is the Torah’s way at showing us that the last thirty seven years of Sarah’s life were really the ones that counted.
  חיי שרה, “the lives of Sarah;” according to Rashi all the years that Sarah lived on this earth were equal in the sense that she was a good person during all these years. When we look at the way the Torah describes the years of Yishmael after his death, (Genesis 25,17) the Torah describes them in the same terms, i.e. ואלה שני חיי ישמעאל מאת שנה ושלושים שנה ושבע שנים; does Rashi imply that the Torah compliments Yishmael in the same manner as it complimented Sarah? When we accept that the word ואלה, “and these,” are a hint that he had become a penitent, as Rashi derives from the manner in which his burial is described in the Torah in same verse from the fact that he is described as having been gathered into his forefathers, and we know that a proselyte is considered as if newly born from the day of his conversion, i.e. free from sin, it follows that the years he had lived prior to this have now been converted as a prelude to his conversion, i.e. as part of that conversion process. Another way of explaining the Torah’s wording of the death and burial of Yishmael: the Torah did not preface his death with the unusual words: “and the lives of Sarah were,“ words which alert us that they must have more meaning than the plain text suggests. When Sarah’s death is reported the word חיי, “lives of,” is mentioned twice, not only once. This calls for closer examination. Rashi, therefore was quite correct in alerting his readers to this.
  
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   בקרית ארבע, “in the town or village known as the city of the “four.” The word ארבע is the name of the person after whom the town was named as is stated in Joshua 14,15: קרית ארבע האדם הגדול בענקים, “the town of Arba, the great man among the Anakites.”
  
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   ויענו בני חת, “the members of the tribe of the Hittites, replied;” on these words Rabbi Elazar commented that untold numbers of pens have been broken and untold amounts of ink have been used up for the Torah to repeat the expression בני חת, “the members of the tribe of the Hittites, in this paragraph no fewer than ten times. Our sages say that we learn from here that anyone who assists a righteous person to receive his due share is viewed as if he had observed the commandments in all the Five Books of Moses. We find in Kings II 4,42, as similar –apparently unnecessary repetition- when told: ואיש בא מבעל שלשה ויבא לאיש האלוקים לחם, בכורים, עשרים לחם שעורים וכרמל בצקלו ויאמר: תן לעם ויאכלו. “A man came from Baal-shalisha and he brought the man of G–d some bread from the first reaping- twenty loaves of barley bread and some fresh grain, in his sack; and Elisha said: give it to the people to eat.” (The prophet in this paragraph was Elisha) Anyone reading this paragraph must wonder was Elisha then a priest that the bikkurim would be brought to him? The answer given is that when someone brings a Torah scholar a gift it is considered by our sages as if that person had personally erected the Temple and had offered the first fruit, bikkurim, therein (Talmud tractate Ketuvot folio 105). We find a third occasion when unnecessary repetition seems to occur in the Bible in the Book of Joshua (Joshua 7,10) in connection with Achan who had stolen from the loot of Jericho; in that report the word גם is repeated five times, though it could easily been avoided. On that occasion our sages interpret the constant repetition of the word גם by saying that it teaches that if someone steals property belonging to the Temple treasure it is considered as if he had transgressed all the commandments of the Five Books of Moses. Another way of looking at this particular example: If you take the respective first and last letters in the last letter of each of the five Books of Moses, i.e. the letters ב-ם from the last word in the Book of Genesis במצרים, plus the letters מ-ם in the word מסעיהם at the end of the Book of Exodus, plus the letters ס-י from the word סיני at the end of the Book of Leviticus, plus the two letters י-ר of the word יריחו at the end of the Book of Numbers, i.e. ס-י from the word סיני at the end of the Book of Numbers, plus the letters י-ל from the word ישראל at the end of the Book of Deuteronomy you will have the numerical value of the word חרם=248. The sin of Achan was stealing from חרם, from what belongs to G–d. (Attributed to Sefer Chassidim page 106, (in the edition with Rabbi Price’s commentary)
  
  
  
  
  
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   ברך את אברהם בכל, “He blessed Avraham in all respects.” This was due to the merit he had acquired when tithing the loot of the war against the Kings with Kedorleomer and giving it to the “priest,” who was the King of Shalem. (Genesis 14,20)
  
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   אלוקי השמים, “the G–d in heaven, etc.;” we must note that Avraham did not, at this stage, describe G–d as also being the G–d acknowledged on earth. He described the situation as it was, i.e. that up until this time the G–d of Israel, or even the G–d of creation had not been acknowledged as such on earth. This fact is reflected in our central daily prayer the עמידה, consisting of 18 (+1) benedictions we do not refer to G–d as “King” in the opening benediction which describes Him as the G–d of Avraham and that of the other two patriarchs. [Whenever we recite a benediction before eating even a morsel or drinking a mouthful of water, we do add the fact that He is the King of the universe. Ed.] (Compare Sifrey on parshat Ha-azinu, section 313).
  
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   ונקית משבועתי זאת, “you will be absolved from this oath I demand from you.” The apparently unnecessary word: “this,” is to warn Eliezer that the only part of the oath he will be absolved from if the woman refuses to leave her home, is Yitzchok must not go there to wed her. He would still be obligated to look for a suitable wife for Yitzchok. According to this interpretation, we must assume that the “friends” of Avraham, Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre, were not of Canaanitic descent.
  רק את בני לא תשב שמה, “as long as you do not bring my son back to the land from which I emigrated.” The words: “bring back”, is somewhat strange seeing that Yitzchok had never been in Charan, having been born in Canaan. Although Yitzchok had indeed never been in Charan, the term שיבה for “returning” is applicable to him because of Eliezer who had been going to the land of Canaan with Avraham and now as Yitzchok’s emissary (accepting tokens of marriage) While it is true that this was not a return in the full sense of the word, Eliezer had already been there with Avraham before the latter left Charan. We find a similar situation in Ruth 2,6, when Ruth is “returning” to the land of Israel with her mother-in-law Naomi, and although Ruth had never been there before, she too is described by one of Boaz’s hired hands as “returning” from the land of Moab. The reason why she was so described was that she was accompanying her mother-in-law who was definitely returning in the full sense of the word.
  
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   ובה אדע, “and through her (conduct) I will know, etc.” according to Rashi, this wording is a kind of plea by Eliezer. This presents an apparent conflict with a statement by Rabbi Sh’muel son of Nachmeni in the Talmud, tractate Taanit, folio 4, according to which the Bible names three people whose requests from G–d were considered as inappropriate, Eliezer’s request here being one of the three. When we examine Eliezer’s request, if a blind girl had performed the tasks he had requested as proof of her worthiness to become the wife of Yitzchok, he would have had to choose her. According to Rashi’s interpretation, there was nothing inappropriate in Eliezer’s request.
  
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   ויקח האיש נזם זהב, “the man (Eliezer) took out a golden nose ring, etc.;” The sage Rabbi Moshe, interprets this verse as its face value, understanding the words to mean that in preparation of events, Eliezer took out of his satchel jewelry which he would give to Rebecca if she would meet the conditions he had outlined, (and which she was of course quite unaware of). He then asked her about her family status, and when told that she was member of Avraham’s family he gave here the jewelry as a gift. The Torah abbreviated somewhat in its report of what happened, something that is not unusual. That this is so is clear from the sequence of events Eliezer described during the meal, when he filled in the words that have been omitted here. Even here, (contrary to the way some people interpret our verse) the Torah did not write that he gave her the jewelry before having established her family status.
  
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  אלי לא תלך האשה אחרי, “perhaps the woman (that I chose) will not follow me. (to this land).” Rashi comments on this that it is remarkable that the word: ulay here is spelled without the letter ו after the first letter as we would have expected, and that this is a hint by Eliezer who had a daughter, that he secretly hoped that the refusal of a potential bride from Avraham’s family to move to the land of Canaan, might make his master Avraham willing to let her become Yitzchok’s wife. [Rashi bases himself on an interpretation by B’reshit Rabbah on why in the report of the conversation between Avraham and Eliezer on the same subject in 24,5 that letter ו is not missing. Ed.] It is difficult to understand why he did not write this comment already on verse eight in this chapter where Avraham had not excluded a marital union with the daughters of any of his three friends Aner, Eshkol, and Mamre, although they were Canaanites, and not slaves from Damascus, and Avraham had Eliezer released him from his oath in the event that a girl from Charan were to refuse to move to the land of Canaan. We must assume that Avraham had felt that the curse that rested on Canaan had already run its course, whereas the curse on Eliezer’s antecedents had not yet run its course, so that marriage into that family would be spiritually much more dangerous. B’reshit Rabbah 59,9, states specifically that Eliezer was a descendant of Cham, whose son Canaan Noach had cursed. In the book: Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 15, Eliezer is identified with Og King of Bashan, whom the Israelites slew in a battle during their last year in the desert. [My edition of Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer does not have this, and my research of a lengthy article about Og by Dr Admiel Kosman of the Bar Ilan university, also does not bring any source for that statement. Ed.] According to our author, the following is the text in his edition of Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer. “Eliezer has been described as the most senior servant, and added that he was a servant for evermore. When he did Yitzchok a great favour by choosing a wonderful wife for him, Yitzchok freed him forever. G–d then rewarded Og by making him King of Bashan. If this is true, why did G–d order Moses to kill Og as a punishment for defending his country against invaders? According to Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer he was a perfectly righteous man! We also know from the Talmud, tractate Sofrim chapter 21, as well as from Derech Eretz zuttah, tractate Sotah, 1, that he was one of only nine people who immediately upon drawing their last breath had their souls transferred to the spiritual hereafter. This matter was discussed in connection with a tradition that when Yitzchok first joined Rivkah in the marital bed, and found that she was not a virgin, he suspected Eliezer as having been to blame for this. He said to him: “may you live as long and enter paradise as you are innocent of my accusation!” In light of all the above, we must assume that there had been two Kings called King of Bashan, one during Avraham’s lifetime and another during Moses’ lifetime. It was the former who was so righteous. Each one of these two persons, once crowned king, used the title King of Bashan, seeing that all of Bashan’s king were called Og, just as all of Egypt’s kings were called Pharaoh.
  
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  ויאמר אחיה ואמה, “Her brother and mother said;” Rashi, noticing that Betuel, Rivkah’s father is not quoted as making a response to Eliezer, says that he actually wanted to prevent the marriage so that an angel was dispatched by G–d to kill him in order to prevent him from carrying out his objection. He says so although the Torah had quoted both Lavan and Betuel as agreeing to the match being made in heaven in verses 50-51. An alternate interpretation explaining Betuel’s “silence.” He had meant to poison Eliezer so as to prevent the marriage. An angel switched plates while Eliezer was speaking and when Betuel started eating he died from his own poison.
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
   ויקח אשה ושמה קטורה, “he married a wife whose name was Keturah.” Although in years to come, Israelites were not permitted to marry Egyptians, seeing that the Torah decreed in Deuteronomy that only commencing with the third generation after conversion were Egyptians acceptable as potential marriage partners, even if it was Hagar who had been converted, the fact that her father was Pharaoh that made her only a second generation even if we consider him as a first generation convert. According to B’reshit Rabbah 61,4, Avraham married her at the express command by G–d.
  
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  ויתן אברהם את כל אשר לו ליצחק, “Avraham gave all that was his to Yitzchok.” How could he have done so, seeing that the Talmud in tractate Baba batra folio 133 denies a father the right to transfer his estate even from a unworthy son to a worthy son, the reason being that the son from whom his potential inheritance is taken away may have a worthy son himself, whereas the son to whom it has been transferred may have an unworthy son. (Compare Talmud tractate Pessachim 49) We read in Job 27,17 concerning the definition of a righteous person that יכין וצדיק ילבש וכסף נקי יחלק, “the just will put it on, and the innocent shall divide the silver.” [The problem is how could Avraham disinherit his firstborn son Yishmael legally? Ed.] It is especially puzzling since according to the Talmud in tractate Yuma folio 28, credits him with even having observed Rabbinic ordinances, such as certain procedures for preparing food when a festival day is followed by the Sabbath when preparing food is forbidden. We have to conclude that both Avraham and Yishmael were actually converts, neither having been born as Jews. Converts do not legally inherit their fellow converts, neither by Biblical law nor by Rabbinic decree. (Talmud tractate Kidushin folio 17). Rabbeinu Chananel bar Sh’muel suggests that Avraham gave all he had to Yitzchok before the sons of Keturah had been born, This is indicated by this having been reported already in Genesis 24,36: where he is reported immediately after Sarah having given birth to him as receiving all of his father’s estate. [Seeing that Yishmael, as Hagar’s son was the son of a slave woman, he could not legally own anything that had been Avraham’s or Sarah’s as slaves do not own their master’s or their mistress’ property. So where was the problem? Ed.]
  
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   נתן אברהם מתנות, “Avraham had already given gifts.” According to the Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin folio 91, these “gifts” were the ability to utter the names of the holy name of the Lord without thereby incurring severe harm. Even nowadays, according to our author, the Moslems who are trained in theology are able to do this without coming to any harm thereby. It was difficult for Rabbi Moses to understand how Avraham a great and devout man could possibly have taught the holy Name of the Lord to wicked people. In view of this problem, Rabbi Yaakov, son of Rabbi Nachman, interpreted that line in the Talmud differently by saying that the word טומאה used in the Talmud there refers to the names of certain demons. The names of these demons are associated with the evil spirits making their homes in certain ruins, or certain cemeteries as described by the Talmud in tractate Chagigah folio 3. This is alluded to by the fact that the spelling of the word “matanot” is spelled as if it were a singular, the letter ו having been omitted. As spelled in the Torah here, the numerical value of the letters in the words נתן אברהם מתנת equals the numerical value of למדם להשביע השדים. [I have not quite figured this out. At any rate, the idea is that Avraham taught these sons of his how, when they used the names of deities when swearing an oath, they could do it in such a way as not to be guilty of violating the third of the Ten Commandments. To The reader who is interested in pursuing this further I suggest that he turns to the commentary on Sanhedrin 91 by Rabbi Reuven Margolies, page 136 מרגליות הים. Ed.]
  
  
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   יצחק בן אברהם, אברהם הוליד את יצחק, “Yitzchok the son of Avraham; Avraham sired Yitzchok. The numerical value of the letters in the word הוליד, is equivalent to the numerical value of the word דומה, “to be a look a like;” it suggests that Avraham and Yitzchok’s facial features made them look as if they were clones.
  
  Verse 20
  
  ויהי יצחק בן ארבעים שנה, Yitzchok was forty years old, etc.” According to Rashi, the forty year old Yitzchok married a three year old Rivkah. This is difficult as we have learned from the Sifri that there were three people who reached the same age, i.e. Kehat, Ben Azzai and Rivkah, and the Torah stated that Kehat died at the age of one hundred and thirty three. (Exodus 6,18.) If this were correct she must have been eleven years older than three when she married Yitzchok. [There is no Sifri on the Book of Genesis, but the Midrash hagadol, which originated in Yemen, also claims that Rivkah was 14 years old when she married Yitzchok. Ed.] Rashi’s calculation goes as follows: Rivkah was married at 3 years, and was 23 years old when she gave birth to Esau and Yaakov. Yaakov was 63 years old when he fled to Padan Aram as Rashi explains at the end of this portion. He then spent 14 years in the academy headed by Ever, great grandson of Noach. After that he worked 20 years for his uncle Lavan. He spent 2 years on his return journey home during which time he was informed by Rivkah’s nursemaid that his mother had died, as Rashi explains at the end of parshat Vayishlach, in connection with the burial of that nursemaid called Devorah, and the naming of an oak tree after her. According to this calculation, Rivkah could not have lived to an age older than 123 years. This is also the opinion of Rabbi Yehudah according to whom Rivkah must have been 14 years old when she got married. If you accept that view, Rivkah died at the age of 133. According to this calculation, what we read in seder olam, chapter 1, that Avraham was informed about the birth of Rivkah while on the way home from the binding of Yitzchok, she must have been 11 years old already at that time. This is what bothered Rabbi Moshe Shlomoh ben Avraham known by the acrostic אנסימא"ן, when discussing that a virgin is given 12 month between betrothal and consummation of the marriage (Talmud tractate Ketuvot, folio 57) The Talmud there derives this from the words in our portion, when Rivkah’s family demanded 12 months delay from Eliezer before Rivkah going with him. If Rivkah had been 14 years old already, she would have been considered an adult, and her father would not have had the right to tell her what to do (unless she still continued to live in his house) The Talmud there gives a girl who is over twelve and a half years old at betrothal only thirty days before becoming wed to her fiance, just as the length of time required before a widow can remarry. Our author leaves the question open, not having heard how to reconcile these data to the satisfaction of all scholars. 
  
  Verse 21
  
  לנח אשתו, “in the presence of his wife.” The numerical value of the word אשתו=707, is the same as the combined numerical value of the words: אש וקש, “fire and straw.” This is a hint that Rivkah would give birth to one son, comparable in spiritual values to fire, and another whose value in terms of spiritual values was no better than straw. The prophet therefore compared Yaakov to fire and Esau to straw. (Ovadiah 18)
  
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  ורב יעבוד צעיר, “and the older one will serve the younger one.” Our author understands the word רב here not as “older, senior,” as do most commentators, but as meaning הרבה, “many, a great number.” Esau himself used the word in that sense when he told his brother Yaakov: יש לי רב, “I have lots,” (Genesis 33,9) The word may mean “lots” in terms of “time;” i.e. Esau would serve Yaakov for a long time.
  
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  ויצא הראשון אדמוני, “the first baby emerged, reddish looking;” according to a Midrash, when his father saw that, he concluded that the blood of the infant had not yet matured to the stage when he could be circumcised without that operation endangering his life, and that is why he delayed the date for the circumcision. Something similar is related in the Talmud, tractate Shabbat, folio 134, where Rabbi Nathan relates that he once met a lady who had lost two of her children as a result of circumcision. She asked him if she had to circumcise her third son also and risk losing him too. When Rabbi Nathan looked at the infant, he noted that his skin looked extremely red. He therefore told his mother to wait with circumcising him until this red skin would become normal looking. She did so, and circumcised him in due course and he survived without further problem. When Yitzchok waited a year or two for the skin colour of Esau to change and it did not happen, he assumed that this son was going to remain in that condition, but he still did not circumcise him. When he turned 13, he still restrained himself from circumcising him. He had waited all this time thinking that seeing he had not been circumcised at the age of eight days he would circumcise him at the age Yishmael had been circumcised. This is what was meant in the Book of Ezekiel chapter 35,6: אם לא דם שנאת ודם ירדפך, “surely though you have hated blood, blood shall pursue you.”
  
  
  Verse 26
  
  ויקרא שמו יעקב, “he called his name Yaakov.” The name Yaakov has four letters, symbolising the four crowns with which his descendants would “crown” the Almighty. The letter י symbolises the Ten Commandments. The letter ע symbolises the seventy elders. The letter ק symbolises the length of hundred cubits of the Sanctuary built by King Solomon. (Kings I chapter 7) The letter ב symbolises the two Tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were inscribed. The Israelites were redeemed from slavery in Egypt due to the merit of Yaakov. We know this from Psalms 105,10: ויעמידה ליעקב לחק, לישראל ברית עולם, “He confirmed it as a decree for Yaakov, as an eternal covenant for Israel.” If it had not been for the fact that G–d wanted Yaakov to be born, He would not have saved Avraham from Nimrod’s furnace. (B’reshit Rabbah 63,2).This is what the prophet Isaiah 29,22, had in mind when he wrote: כה אמר ה' אל בית יעקב אשר פדה את אברהם, “thus said the Lord to the house of Yaakov which had redeemed Avraham. A different interpretation of that verse in Isaiah [which begs the question, Ed.] by Yalkut Shimoni: Yaakov released Avraham from the heartache associated with trying to raise children. [He did so by successfully raising all his children in his spirit, something neither Avraham nor Yitzchok had been able to do. Ed.]
  
  
  Verse 27
  
  ויגדלו הנערים, “the lads grew up;” according to Rashi and the Midrash, as long as the twins had not attained the age of 13 one could not tell their characters apart. As soon as they reached that age it became evident that they pursued totally different objectives in life. The matter can be compared to thorn bushes growing up next to myrtles. Until they have developed, they look alike and neither emits any fragrance. After a while, the fragrance emitted from the myrtle distinguishes it drastically from the thorns of the thorn bushes. You might question that according to Rashi, Esau was only thirteen years old when he already chose to worship idols, while the same Rashi claims that when Esau sold his birthright he was `15 years old on the day of Avraham’s burial, and he claims that Avraham died five years earlier than originally decreed by G–d to spare him watching his grandson become an idolater; how can these two statements be reconciled, if Esau became an idolater already at the age of thirteen? This question has actually been raised in the Jerusalem Talmud! The answer given there is that Esau hid his idolatry for two years so that during the last two years of his life, Avraham had not become aware and grieved by it. As soon as Avraham died, Esau no longer hid the fact that he had become a heretic.
  
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  הלעיטני נא....על כן קרא שמו אדום, “please let me swallow some of this red stuff.... this is why henceforth he is called Edom.” According to the plain meaning of the verse,-i.e. when read superficially,- his name now became associated with his having referred to the stew Yaakov was cooking as “red stuff.” He was referring to a few lentils. We are told this, as from now on Esau called himself “the red one,” whereas at birth only other people called him thus on account of the colour of his skin.
  כי עיף אנכי, “for I am tired, worn out;” according to tradition, on that day Esau had killed Nimrod the foremost hunter in the world up to that time, and its ruler. Nimrod had challenged him to a duel as he had not asked him for permission to use his hunting grounds. He had consulted with his brother what to do about this. Yaakov had told him that as long as Nimrod was wearing the garments which had once belonged to Adam he was invincible. As soon as he would take off those garments he could easily be overcome. Esau engineered to find him without those garments and killed him. On that day he was exhausted from that effort. Our author quotes Jeremiah 4,31: כי עיפה נפשי, “for my soul is worn out,” as an allusion to that incident.
  
  
  Verse 31
  
  מכרה כיום, “sell to me as of today!” Yaakov refers to the value of Esau’s birthright as of that day, and offers to pay that price. Seeing that the value is completely potential, Esau not knowing if Yaakov will outlive him or will outlive his father, the price must surely be minimal. In either of those two events the birthright would be completely without any value.
  
  Verse 32
  
  ויאמר עשו הנה אנכי הולך למות, Esau said: “seeing that I am likely to die young (due to my lifestyle), I am willing to sell my birthright for a mess of pottage, seeing it is only an intangible asset. In light of these considerations, I might as well sell it to you.”
  
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  ויבז עשו את הבכורה, “Esau had already displayed disdain for the asset known as birthright.” This is why Yaakov bought it from him. We find that Rabbi Yehudah Hachassid, referring to this verse, claims that if one finds a confirmed sinner in the possession of holy texts such as a Torah scroll, it is permissible to use subterfuge to get him to sell it.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ויקרא שמה שטנה, “he called its name Sitnah. (hatred, enmity) He had given the Philistines the benefit of the doubt regarding denying his claim to the first well his servants had dug. But now he knew that that had not been mere coincidence, but a display of their hatred of him.
  
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  ואחוזת מרעהו, “and a group of his friends,” (as per Targum) Some commentators believe that the word אחוזת refers to an individual named thus. (B’reshit Rabbah 64,9). This is supported by the messorah, (the notes made by the sages responsible for ensuring that the text of the Torah is accurate.) מרעהו, “his friend.” As far as the prefix  מ in that word is concerned, it is not a prefix but part of that person’s name. We find something similar in Judges 15,6: ויתנה למרעהו, “he gave her (Samson’s wife) to מרעהו. “ 
  
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  כאשר לא נגענוך וכאשר עשינו עמך רק טוב ונשלחך בשלום וגו', “just as we have not harmed you physically, and we have done you nothing but good, and allowed you to depart unharmed, etc.;” when reading this line our author was reminded of the parable concerning the type of gratitude a lion boasted as having displayed. A lion once had a fishbone stuck in his throat. He announced that anyone who would remove it would be richly rewarded. Upon hearing this, a bird known as Agron which has an exceptionally long neck, succeeded in removing this bone from the lion’s throat. Having done this, he asked the lion for his reward. The lion responded as follows: “is it not enough for you that while you had your head in my mouth I did not kill you? You have a nerve in asking me for an additional reward.” Avimelech acted in a similar manner by boasting that he had done Yitzchok a great favour by allowing him to leave his country without harming him when he had had a chance to do so. He implied that it was his custom and that of his people to take advantage of uninvited visitors.
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  ותכהינן עיניו מראות, “his eyes had become weak from seeing (too much).” One opinion cites Exodus 23,8 where the Torah tells us that accepting a bribe corrupts, i.e. blinds the eyes of even normally honest judges. Yitzchok accepting venison hunted by his son Esau, caused him to overlook the numerous shortcomings of his son Esau without rebuking him. An alternate explanation of the word: מראות, “from seeing.” G–d weakened his eyesight in order to enable Yaakov to secure Esau’s blessing for himself. This is presumably the reason why Rashi wrote that his eyesight became impaired from the smoke rising from the animals offered as sacrifices to a variety of idols. (Tanchuma, 8) The Midrash there explains this by means of a parable. When a person has two implements at his disposal, one made of bone, the other of earthenware. When he chooses to perform certain tasks with the earthenware implement for which it was not designed, it is liable to break into pieces. On the other hand, if he were to perform the same task with the implement made out of horn, it would not break into pieces.           Yitzchok who was Avraham’s son, i.e. made of earth as G–d had made Adam, could not tolerate the smoke from these offerings of his daughters-in-law. Rivkah, being a woman, i.e. her origin was the bone of the first woman from which Chavah had been constructed, was not affected by that smoke.
  ויקרא את עשו בנו הגדול, “he called his senior son Esau.” From this adjective used by Yitzchok when calling Esau, we learn that when fortune smiles on the wicked it is permitted to flatter them. An alternate explanation for the word הגדול: seeing that Esau was such an important person at that time, replacing Nimrod, he is described as “the great.”
  
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  וצודה לי צידה, “and hunt some venison for me.” The word for venison, i.e. ציד, has been spelled here with the letter ה at the end, to remind us that there are five potential causes that invalidate a ritually acceptable slaughtering of animals from making them fit for consumption by Jews.
  
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  עלי קללתך בני, “may any curse your father curses you with strike me instead.” What Rivkah meant by these words was that: “your father would not curse you, but me.” It is something generally accepted that when children do not behave in the manner they should, it is their parents that are blamed for not bringing them up properly.
  
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  החמודות, “the choice ones;” these garments had pictures of all the animals and birds in the world painted outside in a manner that the viewer considered these creatures as being alive. Whenever the wearer walked in the field, the animals in that region were attracted by these pictures so that they were easy prey for the hunter. Esau had taken them from Nimrod, when he slew him (B’reshit Rabbah 65,16). According to this Midrash it is difficult to understand why Yaakov would dress up in those clothes. We must assume that Rivkah was anxious for Yaakov to appear as much as possible like his brother Esau.
  
  
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  כי הקרה ה' אלוקיך לפני, “because the Lord your G–d has so arranged it for my benefit on this day.” Esau used the same phraseology that Eliezer had used when on his way to find a wife for Yitzchok (Genesis 24,12) The ram which was entangled by its horns in Genesis 22,3 was also something that G–d had made happen just for that occasion, so that Avraham would not feel that he had come all the way without G–d accepting an offering from him. The root קרה occurs only in connection with things which occurred without visible preparation for use at a certain moment. (B’reshit Rabbah, 65,19) According to the Midrash there, the moment the person before him used the tetragram when referring to G–d, Yitzchok knew that that person could not be Esau.
  
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   הקול קול יעקב והידים ידי עשו, “the sound of the voice is that of Yaakov, whereas the feel of his hands is like that of the hands of Esau.” According to Midrash Rabbah, 69,20 the deeper meaning of these words is that Yitzchok knew that Esau could cause harm only with his hands, when near the victim, whereas Yaakov, whose weapon was prayer, could use that weapon over vast distances.
  
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  ויבא לו יין וישת, “he brought him (his father) wine and he drank.” Where did Yaakov suddenly get the wine from? We have not heard a word about his mother having given him wine to take along. Our sages assume that the angel Michael brought that wine from the celestial regions. This occasion, and the one when Malki Tzedek brought wine to Avraham when the latter had miraculously defeated the greatest army of its time, (Genesis 14,18) are the only two instances in the Torah when wine is described as a source of blessing. In both instances the people drinking the wine pronounced a blessing.
  
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  ויתן לך אלוקים, “and may G–d give you, etc.;” Yitzchok, -remarkably- addresses the attribute of Justice of G–d when we might have expected him to address the attribute of mercy. By doing so he implied that this blessing was conditional on the person on whom it had been bestowed being worthy of it. Nonetheless, when it comes to Esau, we see that Yitzchok does not include such a condition in his blessing, as in verse 39 in our chapter he reassures him by saying: “your dwelling will be in the fat parts of the earth and you will enjoy the dew from above. You will live by the sword, although you will serve your brother.” He adds that on the contrary, the blessing given to his brother Yaakov is conditional on his not making your life intolerable.” [my choice of words. Ed.] It is noteworthy that in his lengthy prayer after consecrating the Temple he has built, King Solomon attaches the condition of worthiness when speaking of how G–d shall respond to the prayers of the Israelites, whereas when speaking of gentiles coming to Jerusalem to pray there, he does not attach such a condition but asks G–d to grant the wishes of such gentiles, regardless. (Kings I 8,32-43) Solomon is concerned that the gentiles should not get the impressions that our G–d is someone with Whom one needs to bargain. Yitzchok was concerned about the same when realising that Esau, if he insisted on his blessing surely credited G–d in heaven with being the One Who would provide its becoming reality. If he did not think so, why would he demand it? [When G–d fulfills the requests of a gentile, without regard to his worthiness, if the gentile as a result does not become G–d fearing and grateful, he will find that the very fulfillment of his request will eventually boomerang and he will more than lose its benefit. Ed.] You will also find that there are ten different categories of blessings, corresponding to the ten utterances used by G–d when He created His universe, and corresponding to the Ten Commandments. These blessings were pronounced on seven different occasions. 1) here; 2).Genesis 28,3: ואל שדי יברך אותך and the attribute of G–d known as shadday will bless you. 3) Genesis 28,13 (to Yaakov); 4) Genesis 32,27: “I will not let you depart (Yaakov to the angel he had wrestled) until you bless me;” 5) Genesis 35,9: “G–d appeared to Yaakov;” 6) Genesis 46,3; and Genesis 12,2, where G–d blessed Avraham for the first time. Avraham was blessed by G–d on seven different occasions. The Jewish people were given seven different (days) that are holy, most of them festivals: Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Sh’mini Atzeret. There are seven stars that serve the sun and the moon in their orbits. [The author adds some astronomical observation that have to do with the time to plant and harvest being related to sunset and sunrise which I have not understood. Ed.]
  
  
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  ויהי אך יצא יצא יעקב, “and it happened when Yaakov only just left, etc.”, Yaakov had actually seen Esau come in by the opposite door as it was lit up when opening it, whereas Esau, standing in the light, could not see Yaakov who stood in relative darkness across from him at the other door. (B’reshit Rabbah 66,5)
  
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  ויחרד יצחק חרדה גדולה עד מאד “Yitzchok was overcome by an exceedingly strong trembling;” Yitzchok actually experienced two separate fits of trembling; the first time had been when he lay bound on the altar of Moriah, expecting to have his throat slit. The second time occurred here. (B’reshit Rabbah 67,2). He asked himself what sin he had been guilty of, so that he had blessed the younger son before he had blessed the older son. He had caused Esau to groan, complaining (if I had no blessing left for him). Our author quotes a line in our version of Rashi, that did not appear in some later editions, such as the ones relied on by Luzzato.
  מי איפוא, “who and where?” Yitzchok questioned himself who was now destined to wind up in Gehinom, either he himself, or Yaakov for using deceit, or Esau for having used deceit for all these years? The words following are the ones provided from the Holy Spirit, stating clearly that he who had “hunted venison”, (metaphor for deceit, as animals must be lured to their death by deceit). Hearing this, Yitzchok continued
  
  
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  ולכה איפוא, what then can I do for you? the word ולכה here is spelled with the letter ה at the end, (numerical value of 5) something most unusual; Yitzchok hinted to Esau that after 5000 years of human history will have passed his descendants will achieve superiority on earth, but that seeing that he, Esau, will wind up in Gehinom, he, his father, cannot do anything in the meantime to interfere with G–d’s decree.
  
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  והיה כאשר תריד, “it will come to pass when you will break loose; (the most common translation, rejected by our author);” (the root רדה, meaning “to subdue) occurs again in Numbers 24,19, in Bileam’s blessings, when that prophet predicts that eventually a time will come when the descendants of Israel will subdue the descendants of Esau, and that at that time Esau’s descendants will accept Yaakov’s yoke willingly. 
  By doing so, Esau will, in effect, shake off the yoke of Yaakov as he will not feel it as subjugation.
  
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  יקרבו ימי אבל אבי, “the time of mourning for the passing of my father will come about soon, etc.” Esau means that if he were to bring about his father’s premature death by murdering Yaakov, he would have accomplished nothing, as his father would then die prematurely through grieving over the loss of his son Yaakov. This is why he will await his father’s death from natural causes before carrying out his plan to kill his brother.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ויצא יעקב, “Yaakov departed;” Yaakov is described as if he had been totally alone when leaving his father’s home, although no doubt he had taken along a dowry for his future wife (as had Eliezer at the time). The Torah avoided mentioning this as he was fleeing from the hatred of his brother and did not wish to make his departure public. [I have reconstructed the commentary, as the way it stands, the author claiming that this paragraph had not been written separately from the previous one, does not make sense, as in none of our versions of the Chumash is it not written in the normal manner, leaving space for several words both before and after this paragraph. Ed.]
  
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  ויפגע במקום, “he prepared to pray intensely at a certain location (known to him as a suitable location for prayer);” according to our author, these words mean that he prepared to offer a prayer, and that we find this expression for preparing to pray also in Jeremiah 7,16: i.e. ואל תפגע בי, “and do not pray to Me (on behalf of your people)” According to the Talmud tractate B’rachot, folio 26, Yaakov “invented” the daily evening prayer preparing himself shortly before sunset before doing so. The recital of the k’riyat shma is to await the visibility of three stars in the sky before it may be recited.
  
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  והנה סלם, “and here there was a ladder;” the numerical value of the letters in the word סלם=130, the same numerical value as the letters in the word סיני, “Sinai;” This was a hint that the Jewish people would receive the Torah at Mount Sinai. (B’reshit Rabbah, 68,12)
   והנה סולם מוצב ארצה , “and (in his dream) he saw a ladder planted on the earth;” at the burning bush, where Moses had his first communication from G–d, the fire from that bush rose to the heart of the heavens. At that time Moses was told specifically that the Israelites, Yaakov’s descendants shall worship G–d there.
  והנה מלאכי אלוקים, “and lo, prophets of G–d,” i.e. Moses and Aaron, would climb up and down there.
  והנה ה' נצב עליו, and lo, the Lord was standing on top of it. This is what is meant when in Exodus 19,20, the Torah writes that the Lord descended to Mount Sinai.
  'ויאמר אני ה, “He said: I am the Lord, etc.;” this parallels what Hashem said at the beginning of the Decalogue in Exodus, 20,2. An alternate interpretation; the word סולם is to be understood literally, as “ladder;” the words: והנה מלאכי אלוקים, describe G–d as showing Yaakov the spiritual representative of Egypt in the celestial spheres, (as also stated in the commentary by Nachmanides) and how that empire after first rising to great heights was brought down completely. A third interpretation: these angels were the angels that had come to Sodom to rescue Lot, and had been demoted by G–d after describing themselves to Lot as initiating the destruction of Sodom, by telling Lot that they had come to destroy Sodom, as if they had the power to do this instead of simply carrying out G–d’s command. (Genesis 19,14,) They had also revealed some of G–d’s secrets without having permission to do so. According to tradition, their punishment had been to be banned from the celestial regions. Now, 138 years later, they had been allowed to return to their places in the celestial regions.
  
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  והנה ה' נצב עליו; we do not find that either Avraham or Yitzchok had been granted such a vision of Hashem. On this verse Rabbi Simmon comments that it is not the custom for a king to personally supervise the plowing of his field or its being sowed with seed. He does not do so until the corn has been harvested. Avraham had been told by G–d to move to the land of Canaan (Genesis 12,1); of Yitzchok we have been told that he sowed seed in the land of the Philistines (Genesis 26,12). Now that the time had arrived for G–d to “harvest” what He had planted, Yaakov was made aware of this. Compare: Jeremiah, 2,3: קרש ישראל לה', ראשית תבואתה, “Israel was holy for the Lord, the first of His harvest.” (Tanchuma, parshat Miketz, section 5)
  הארץ אשר אתה שוכב עליה, “the earth that you are lying on, etc.;” “I shall give you this particular piece of earth; you will spread out through your own efforts in all directions and conquer vastly more land. This is just like when a king allocates a parcel of land to one of his knights, and the knight proceeds to conquer more land adjacent to his.
  
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  אין זה כי אם בית אלהים. “this must surely be the house of G–d.” Seeing that I observe the angels first ascending and then descending and then remaining down on earth this spot on earth and the region in the heavens above must belong to one entity. The angels ascend within this “house” and descend, just as human beings ascend to the upper floors in their houses when the occasion demands it, and then come down again remaining there.
  
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  אם יהיה אלוקים עמדי, “as surely as G–d will be with me;” the plain meaning of this verse is not that Yaakov spelled out a condition, but that he swore an oath to G–d.
  
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  'וכל אשר תתן לי וגו, “and all that You will give to me, etc.;” Yaakov promised to tithe all the money (material goods) that he would acquire with the help of G–d. (B’reshit Rabbah, 70,7) A heretic once asked Rabbi Yoshua son of Levi, where the Torah reported that Yaakov kept this promise. He was answered that Yaakov declared this tithe “sacred,” i.e. he gave it to the treasury of religious institutions. Thereupon the heretic wanted to know what this tithe consisted as precisely seeing that Yaakov was not a wealthy man. He was told that Yaakov made all his newly born animals pass under a gate, and every tenth animal he declared as holy, i.e. not to be used for secular needs. In the Talmud this procedure is called: מעשר בהמה, “tithe from livestock.” [Since Yaakov did not plant crops, not owning any arable land in the land of Canaan (except one small field near Sh’chem from which he moved away before it could produce a crop), he could not tithe his crops. The version in my edition of B’reshit Rabbah is slightly different but the point is made that Yaakov certainly did not default on his vow. Ed.]
  
  
  
  
  
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  ועיני לאה רכות, “Leah’s eyes were soft, so that due to her beautiful eyes she appeared beautiful all over,”[the expression רך appears next to טוב, “good, when” the calf served by Avraham to the angels in Genesis 18,7 is described) in contrast to Rachel, whose body was beautiful, but whose eyes detracted from this as she cried a lot, fearing that her lot would be to be married to Esau after Yaakov would divorce her due to her barrenness. (No source quoted for this unusual interpretation)
  
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  כי מלאו ימי, “for my days have been completed;” Yaakov means that the number of years since he came to live with him have been completed. Fourteen years have elapsed since he received his father’s blessing when he had been sixty three years old, during which he had been hiding, so that he had been 77 years old when he came to Lavan. The numerical value of the letters in the word מלאו totals 76. [If I understand the author correctly, he means that Yaakov was not telling Lavan the obvious, as he knew that Lavan could count seven years. He hinted to Lavan that seeing he was by now 84 years old it was high time that he married and started a family. Ed.]
  
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  ויאסוף לבן....ויעש משתה, Lavan assembled the people from Charan and arranged a feast. Lavan was a swindler, and that is why he is always referred to by our sages as “Lavan the swindler.” He planned to make Yaakov drunk in order to deceive him so that he could not tell the difference between Rachel and Leah. If we needed proof for this interpretation, we only need to look at when he gave Rachel to Yaakov a week later, when he did not spend a penny on making a celebration.
  
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  את זלפה שפחתו, “his servant-maid Zilpah.” Why is Lavan’s daughter called his “servant maid” here? It was customary in those days to refer to the offspring of one’s concubines as “servants,” to distinguish their status from the offspring of one’s wives. (Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 36)
  
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  ויהי בבוקר, “when it had become morning, etc.” during the entire night Leah had pretended to be Rachel, using three different items to identify herself as her sister, which Rachel had received from Yaakov, one had to do with the laws of menstruation, the second one with the laws of challah, and the third one with the lighting of candles on Friday night. We are told the following in B’reshit Rabbah 70,19: all night long people were singing what sounded like the praises of Leah, sort of hinting to Yaakov that he was being swindled. Yaakov, who had no reason to fear that the town’s people wished him ill, did not suspect being tricked when Leah always answered when he addressed her as Rachel. In the morning when he found out that he had been tricked by Leah, and he complained to her, she responded that she had learned from him to do this, as when Yitzchok had asked him if he was his firstborn son Esau, he had answered in the affirmative. This is when Yaakov began to hate her as is reported in verse 31, where G–d is reported as taking note of that. Yitzchok himself had told Esau that his brother had tricked him.
  
  
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  'הפעם אודה לה, “this time I give thanks to the Lord;” she foresaw that her son Yehudah would admit having wronged Tamar and embarrassing himself greatly in the process. (Genesis 38,26) She therefore decided to admit that she had been very wrong in deceiving Yaakov by posing as Rachel.
  
  
  
  
  
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  נפתולי אלוקים נפתלתי עם אחותי, “I have wrestled mightily with my sister;” Rachel meant that she had managed to put up with a great deal of pain in her struggle with her sister but had managed thus far to hold her own. An alternate explanation: the expression נפתל is similar its meaning to the line in Deuteronomy 32, ,5: דור עקש ופתלתול, “a crooked and perverse generation.” She had to behave in a perverse manner through making allowance for her sister’s fertility. Nonetheless, she felt that she had prevailed seeing that she now had also two children to her credit. A third approach to this statement by Rachel: the word is related to the word פתיל as in צמיד פתיל in Numbers 19,15, where it means “a close connection,” She hinted that whereas Betzalel, the chief artisan that would build the Tabernacle in the future of whom the Torah stated that he was endowed with a great deal of wisdom, (Exodus 31,3) would be descended from Leah, her sister, at least his chief assistant Oholiov, would be descended from the tribe of Dan, one of her descendants through Bilhah. (Exodus 31,6) She would enjoy the vicarious satisfaction of having a share in that undertaking. She would also prevail, יכולתי, when it would come to the building of Solomon’s Temple when Chirom from the tribe of Naftali helped Solomon greatly. (Kings I, 7,14).
  
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  יששכר, this name (word) has two successive letters ש, one in order to express Leah’s gratitude to G–d for having been paid her reward, שכר, for having given Rachel her son’s mandrakes in order to help her to conceive more easily, and the second for allowing her an extra night with her husband, i.e. hiring him, שכר, so as to become pregnant from him again. (verse 16), [Normally, this arrangement is viewed with distaste by the Torah; but the Torah reported the whole sequence in order to show the reader that Leah’s intentions had not been to satisfy her libido, but to become the mother of another one of the twelve tribes making up the Jewish nation. Ed.] This is also the reason why when reading the Torah in public, the second letter ש is not read, i.e. cannot be heard by the audience. An alternate approach: the reason this letter in the name of יששכר here is not read aloud was that it was “stolen:” from Yissochor’s son יוב which was really ישוב, as we know from Numbers 46,24. When the latter had first been called יוב, he protested against this name so that the letter ש was added to his name by his father.
  
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  ותקרא את שמה דינה, “she called her name Dinah.” According to Rashi, the word is reminiscent of דנה,”she judged;” When Leah had become pregnant with Joseph, she prayed that the next baby should be a female, as a result G–d heard her prayer and Leah’s next birth was Dinah. When the Torah writes uncharacteristically: ואחר ילדה בת, “and subsequently she gave birth to a daughter,” this is a hint that during most of her pregnancy the fetus had been a male fetus.
  
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  ויקח לו יעקב מקל לבנה לח, “Yaakov took for himself rods of fresh poplar;” if you were to ask how a righteous person such as Yaakov could play such a trick, the answer this that according to the agreement between him and Lavan the answer is that when the agreement was made Yaakov had told his father-in-law to remove all the sheep of his that had speckled and spotted skin patterns, etc., meaning the young animals, so that he could not be accused later on as these having been stolen by him. This did not include mature animals with those skin patters. Lavan removed all such animals regardless of their age, making it almost impossible for animals that had never shown such skin patterns to bear young ones that did. He was therefore perfectly fair in looking after his own interests, seeing Lavan had made it almost impossible for him to own flocks of his own without resorting to ingenuity; as a matter of fact he did so, with the help of advice from an angel in a dream, as we read in 31,10. In addition, the sage Rabbi Chayim added that careful reading of the text will show that Lavan changed unilaterally the terms of their contract, which had referred only to animals with the skin pattern known as נקודים, whereas he now had added those with skin patterns known as עקודים. This is why Yaakov on his part saw free to do what he did, fulfilling what is written in Samuel II 22,27: עם עקש תתפל, (David speaking) “and with the deceitful people You will find ways to make them cause their own downfall.”
  
  
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  המקושרות, “the sturdier ones;” According to Rashi the meaning of the word is: מבכירות, “the ones liable to give birth early in the season because they conceived without difficulties.” Although he attributes this interpretation to Targum Onkelos, he was unable to quote proof, and neither did Onkelos quote proof. I believe that the word is connected to the root: קשר, “knot.” It was the custom in those days to tie a knot to the firstborn animal of each mother, in order to be able to identify these animals later on as they were presumed to be stronger, or at any rate preferred by their owners to those born later. This would prevent them from being confused with animals born by the same mother animal in subsequent years. We know from Genesis 38,28, that the midwife of Tamar also tied a knot to the twin that appeared to be born first from its mother’s womb. The author quotes the Maharam from Rotenburg as saying that in his time fathers also displayed preferences for firstborn sons.
  
  
  
  
  
  
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   עשרת מנים, “ten times a minyan”, i.e. ten times ten,=100 times.
  
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  ותגנוב רחל את התרפים, “Rachel stole the teraphim; what precisely are “teraphim”? According to Pirke de rabbi Eliezer chapter 36, they were deities that people like Lavan worshipped. How did they originate? A firstborn male human being was slaughtered; they cut off his head, salted it (to preserve it from decomposing) using both salt and oil. They inscribed on the forehead of that slain person the name of a deity such as a demon, hung it up under the tongue of the slain person on the wall, lit candles in its honour, prostrated themselves before it, and it would start speaking to the worshipper. (presumably answering questions addressed to it, like to an oracle.) These teraphim are referred to as doing this in the Book of Zecharyah 10,2: כי התרפים דברו און, “for the teraphim spoke delusions.” Rachel stole them so that they could not speak to their father and tell him that Yaakov had fled and where he was going. Not only this; she may have used the opportunity to destroy all idols in her father’s home.
  
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  עד הגל הזה, “this stone heap (plus the monument mentioned in the same verse) is to serve as two witnesses;” they fastened a sword to this monument as a symbol; this is why Bileam was struck both by a sword as well as by becoming lame, when his leg was squeezed against a stonewall by his she-ass, Numbers 22,25. Bileam is identified as Lavan, same as kushan rishatayim (according to the Zohar on Chayey Sarah page 126.) We find something similar in the case of a young man who became betrothed to a young lady and swore an oath to her not to marry another woman in addition to her. As proof of his sincerity he gave her a polecat and a cistern After a year, he married another woman who bore him two children. One of his children was fatally injured by a polecat, the other drowned in a cistern. In other words, each one of his children was killed by one of his witnesses to the oath he had broken. (Compare Talmud, tractate Taanit, folio 8, and Rashi’s commentary on that paragraph.) We can also find an allusion to this in the wording of Deuteronomy 17,7: יד העדים תהיה בו בראשונה, “the hand of the witnesses shall be the first upon him, etc.”
  
  
  
  
  
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  וישלח יעקב...כה תאמרון לאדוני לעשו, Yaakov sent......thus you shall say to my lord, to Esau: Yaakov was punished for referring to Esau as “my lord.” G–d said to him: “I have said to your mother that the older of her sons will serve the younger” (Genesis 25,23) and you have taken it upon yourself to address your elder brother as “my lord” eight times? This is why in this portion we will read that eight kings ruled over the kingdom of Esau (Edom) before the first king ruled over Israel. This is why this very point has been recorded in this portion at the end of this portion (Genesis 36,31-43)
  
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  ויירא יעקב, “Yaakov was greatly afraid;” seeing that Yaakov had had many assurances from G–d, why would he be afraid of the encounter with his brother Esau? He realised –belatedly-that he had erred in staying with Lavan after having completed his 14 years of service, in order to marry. During the years when he had worked to amass material wealth, his brother Esau had performed the commandment of honouring father and mother. He was afraid that he did not have sufficient merits to overcome Esau’s lead in that department. (B’reshit Rabbah 76,2) According to the Midrash, G–d’s promise to protect him, was limited to while he was outside the borders of the Holy Land.
  ויצר לו, “he was distressed;” his distress was over his inability to overcome his fear of Esau in spite of the assurances he had received from G–d. (attributed to Harav Eliav hacohen) An alternate interpretation. The commentator agrees with the meaning of the words: ויירא. However, he interprets the word ויצר as referring to his fear when hearing that Esau was on the way with an armed escort planning to kill him. He knew from his mother that although Esau had sworn to await the death of his father before killing Yaakov (Genesis 27,41) he had changed his mind; when he is quoted as referring to G–d as “the G–d of my father Yitzchok,” instead of “the G–d of my father,” that Yitzchok had died in the meantime, (during the 36 years he had been away from home) as G–d does not associate His name with a living person. (Compare B’reshit Rabbah on that verse.)
  
  
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  כי ירא אנכי אותו, “for I am afraid of him.” How could Yaakov still be afraid of Esau after all the assurances of support he had received from G–d? One sage answered that the answer to this question is found immediately in the words uttered by Yaakov himself. He refers to how he had set out on his journey to Lavan with nothing but his walking stick, whereas in the interval he had become very wealthy. When G–d had given him His assurances they had applied to himself alone. He had never included the people who now comprised his two camps, his family and the servants. As a result, while he did not fear for his person, he did fear for the lives of his wives and children, who had become an integral part of him.
  
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  ויותר יעקב לבדו, “Yaakov remained behind all alone;” according to Rashi, Yaakov remained behind on the far bank of the Yabbok, to check if any insignificant item had been overlooked when they took all their belongings across. (Talmud, tractate Chulin, folio 91.) The letter ב in the word לבדו is supposed to be exchanged for the letter כ so that the word is to be read as לכדו. (small cans.) An alternate interpretation: it refers to בית הבד, a container in which small quantities of olive oil would be stored and which could be hidden easily.
  
  
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  על כן לא יאכלו בני ישראל, “therefore the Children of Israel to this day do not eat the thigh muscle, etc.” the words על כן here mean: ”as a permanent reminder of” the miracle that had saved their founding father in his contest with the angel who had only been able to inflict a minor injury on him, instead of killing him as he had intended. The undertaking is similar to a person who after suffering for long periods from headaches or and pains in the region of his heart, vows not to eat the head or the heart of an animal forthwith, as a sign of gratitude for having been healed. An alternate interpretation. The words על כן, mean: “as a result of this,” i.e. as a result of having narrowly escaped death as a result of having remained exposed to danger alone during the night, the Israelites learned that this is not the correct way to behave at night and alone. Abstaining from eating the thigh muscle is the visible reminder of the fact that this lesson had been internalised by the people as an inadmissible way to behave. Yaakov’s wives and children accepted part of the responsibility for their leader’s injury by having allowed him to cross the river alone at night and thus having exposed him to danger. This is why G–d forbade them (his descendants the Jewish people) to eat this part of the animal. They should be meticulous in observing the commandment to give people safe conduct. This is why already Yaakov was commanded to give Joseph safe conduct on his fateful mission. (Genesis 37,14) [where he accompanied him part of the way where he might be exposed to danger by the Canaanites. Ed.]
  
  
  
  
  
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  ותגשן השפחות....ותשתחון, “the servant maids drew near and prostrated themselves (before Esau);” the emphasis in this verse is on the servant maids, to tell us that their children did not prostrate themselves. They considered their respective mothers as socially inferior to themselves. On the other hand, when the children of Leah observed that their mother prostrated herself they followed their mother’s example and did likewise.
  
  
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  וכי יש לי כל, “seeing that I have everything;” he meant that he possessed everything in order to confront Esau if the need would arise to do so. This was because Joseph had already been born, so that he was in possession of fire and flame to burn Esau who has been compared by the prophet to mere straw. (Ovadiah I,18)
  
  
  
  
  
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  כי נבלה עשה בישראל, “that a vile deed had been committed against Israel;” it would have been a vile deed against anyone, all the more so against the daughter of a man of the stature of Israel.
  
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  ויהי ביום השלישי בהייותם כואבים, “it was on the third day (after circumcision) when they were all in pain, etc.” it is difficult to understand why the brothers had insisted that all these people circumcise themselves when they had meant to kill them anyways. Why did they have to resort to such deceit? Our verse may provide the answer by reporting that on that day the men of Sh’chem regretted having circumcised themselves. It was on account of that Shimon and Levi killed them. There had been no intent to kill them when they demanded that they circumcise themselves if they wanted to become members of the clan of Semites. Their act of circumcision was perceived by them as an initiation rite. Also, there is no reason to assume that they should have been in greater pain on the third day than on the previous two days. In fact, it is likely that they had not been able to circumcise themselves all on a single day, and the third day that the Torah speaks of was the day when these circumcisions were completed. This is why Shimon and Levi did not take their swords until the third day.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ויטמון אותם יעקב תחת האלה אשר עם שכם, “Yaakov hid them (the alien deities and jewelry) beneath the oak tree near Sh’chem.” According to B’reshit Rabbah 81,3, the deities were images or three-dimensional replicas of pigeons which were found later on Mount Gerizim where people worshipped them. [Seeing that that mountain is near Sh’chem, it sounds very plausible. Ed.]
  
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  ותמת דבורה, Deborah, Rivkah’s nursemaid died (near there) the reason why we are told about this at this point may be on account of the prophetess Deborah sitting and holding court near this tree, by the grave of Deborah (Judges, 4.5.)
  
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  בן אוני, “son of my sorrow;” she foresaw the tragedy involving the tribe of Benjamin in a civil war described in Judges chapters 19-21.
  
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  וישכב את בלהה פלגש אביו, “he lay with Bilhah, the concubine of his father.” According to some commentators (Talmud tractate Shabbat folio 55,) all he did was that he removed her couch from his father’s tent. This occurred before Yaakov had returned to his father’s house. The Torah treats the deed as if Reuben had committed incest with his aunt. Our author points to Job 31,12, [he could have used the entire sequence from verse 1 to there Ed.] as proof that harbouring incestuous thoughts may be considered as if one had carried out what one had fantasized about. Ed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
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  כתונת פסים, “an embroidered garment;” extending down to the palms of his hands.
  
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  והנה אנחנו מאלמים אלומים, “and here we were busy binding sheaves;” when Joseph rose to greatness, the Torah uses a similar expression when describing him as ויצבר יוסף בר, “Joseph bundled together (piled up) corn.” (Genesis 41,49.)
  
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  על חלומותיו, “on account of his dreams.” If you were to ask that thus far Joseph has been reported as telling his brothers the content of only a single dream, so why does the Torah speak of “dreams” in the plural mode? We must answer that the Torah already referred also to events in the future. Alternately, Joseph had been in the habit of telling his brothers about his dreams, but it was only the ones in which he appeared as placing himself above his brothers that they hated him for.
  
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  'והנה השמש והירח וגו, “and behold, the sun and the moon, etc.” we read in B’reshit Rabbah 84,11, that when Joshua commanded the sun to stand still in Joshua 10,12, the sun refused to accept his command until he added: “did you not bow down to my forefather already?” (Joshua was descended from Ephrayim, son of Joseph) Upon hearing this, the sun complied with Joshua’s command.
  
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  וימצאהו איש והנה תעה בשדה, “a man found him while he was lost in the field;” this (the three letters in the word תעה) is where the Angel Gavriel gave Joseph a hint of three exiles the Jewish people would endure. ת=400 years of exile in Egypt; ע=70 years of exile in Babylon; ה=5, till the end of the exile commonly known as the Roman exile, till the coming of the Messiah. [The author attributes this to his father of blessed memory. Ed.] He adds that he had heard something along the same lines in the name of Rabbi Binyamin Gozel, but from Genesis 32,5, using the letters of word עתה as the hint.
  
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  נסעו מזה, “they have moved away from here; they have said that they are no longer interested as being 12 tribes”. The numerical value of the letters in the word זה is 12.
  
  
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  והבור רק אי בו מים, “the pit was empty, not containing any water.” Rashi comments that this is to tell us that while there was no water in the pit in which he could have drowned, there were other hazardous inhabitants in that pit such as snakes and scorpions. (based on B’reshit Rabbah 84,16.) This interpretation is based on the principle that when two negatives follow one another this indicates that we are being told something positive, even if not beneficial. It would have sufficed to describe the pit as simply: “empty.” If you were to ask why did it have to refer to the presence of scorpions? What hint is there of that? Maybe there were merely stones inside the pit? The expression רק for empty, instead of ריק means that it was empty on occasion but filled with water at other times. Scorpions take refuge there when it has been emptied from water.
  
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  וימשכו ויעלו, “they pulled and raised;” first they struck a deal to sell him for twenty pieces of silver. Then in order to deliver him to the purchaser they had to haul him out of the pit. While Joseph had been in the pit, wondering how he would ever escape, he had lost his good looks and was not presentable to people who wished to buy a young and able bodied slave. As soon as he was hauled out of the pit he regained his former looks. The sellers were now not prepared to sell him for so little money and they were about to throw him back into the pit. In order to prevent this, the Ishmaelites added shoes of their own free will in order to satisfy the Midianite merchants. This is what the prophet Amos referred to (Amos 2,6) when he said: על מכרם בכסף צדיק ואביון בעבור נעלים, “because they have sold for silver those whose cause was just and the needy for a pair of sandals.” As soon as the Ishmaelites offered more than originally, the Midianites raised Joseph from the pit again.
  וימכרו את יוסף לישמעלים, “they sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites. According to Rashi, the subject here are the brothers, who sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites, whereupon the latter sold him to the Midianites who in turn sold him to the Egyptians. If so, we must understand the whole paragraph as follows: They (the brothers who had sat down to eat but had not eaten yet) raised their eyes (verse 25) and they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites approaching, (from the east travelling south) while at the same time Midianite merchants arrived at the pit from a different direction who (eventually) hauled Joseph out of the pit. (verse 28) [Remember the brothers had sat down for lunch some distance from the pit so that they would not hear Joseph’s cries. Ed.] These Midianites sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites for 20 pieces of silver. The reason why the Torah mentions this at this stage is that we should not wonder when the Torah in verse 36 reports that the Medanim had sold Joseph already some time previously to the Egyptians. The individual Egyptian who purchased Joseph was Potiphar. Most of this had taken place while the brothers had still argued among themselves if to sell him to the Ishmaelites. They had been pre-empted in the meantime by the Midianites. The Midianites in the meantime had become witnesses to the discussions among Joseph’s brothers and had bought Joseph subsequently from the Ishmaelites. They were certain that Joseph had been hauled up from the pit in order that he could be sold to them. There were two separate groups of people, some called Medanim, and the others Midianim. The Ishmaelites who were traveling in the direction of Egypt, were the ones who sold Joseph to Potiphar once they had arrived in Egypt. If you were to say why does the Torah write in verse 36 the Medanim had sold him to Egypt, so that eventually he was sold to Potiphar, etc.? We would have expected the subject in that verse to have been the Midianites! Rash’bam in his commentary on the Chumash claims that the three people mentioned in this story, i.e. the Ishmaelites, Midianites, and Medonites, were all members of the same people though not of the same tribe. Their founder fathers were all brothers from the same mother and father Avraham-Keturah (Hagar), as we know (assuming that Keturah was identical with Hagar) (Compare Genesis 25,2) The query mentioned above was already raised by Rashi, (verse 3) we quote him (the Midrash which he quotes) literally: the word פסים in the garment described as כתונת פסים, contains a hint of future problems, being sold four times, Joseph would endure. The letter פ refers to Potiphar to whom he had been sold. The letter ס refers to the סוחרים, the merchants (verse 28) the letter י to the Ishmaelites, and the letter ם to the Medonites. The problem with the Midrash is that only three sales have been reported in the Torah. In view of this difficulty I suggest the following: concerning the line (verse 25) ‘they raised their eyes and here there was approaching a caravan of Ishmaelites, etc.;” this happened while the brothers were discussing among themselves how to proceed from there. They hit on the idea of selling Joseph to the members of that caravan. Before the caravan of |shmaelites had even reached them, another group of Midianite merchants had passed the pit from the opposite direction and hearing his cries, sold Joseph to the Ishmaelites before even having raised him from the pit, for the measly amount of 20 pieces of silver. They then hauled Joseph from the pit alive. The Ishmaelites sold him to the Medonites, and these in turn sold him to Potiphar. So we do have four separate sales. When the Torah wrote in Genesis 39,1 that Potiphar acquired him from the Ishmaelites, this is quite correct as when Potiphar set eyes on him he looked very handsome, and he reasoned that “negroes do not sell whites, whereas whites sell negroes;” in other words, he considered it unlikely that the Medonites had come by Joseph legally, and he wanted reassurance that he did not buy someone who had been kidnapped. The |shmaelites who had sold him to the Medonites gave Potiphar a guarantee that everything was completely legal. (B’reshit Rabbah 86,3)
  בעשרים כסף, “for twenty pieces of silver.” If you were to ask how it is possible that a young man as physically fit and handsome could have been sold for so little, [according to the Torah the going price for people such as Joseph was a minimum of 50 shekel, Ed] perhaps the Torah meant that each brother received 20 pieces of silver as his share of the sale. This question had been raised in Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 38. One of the answers given there is that he had become so upset as a result of his experiences that he had not only lost his good looks but had also become physically completely weakened; [my edition of Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer only quotes the verse from Amos 2,6, from which he derives that each brother bought himself a pair of sandals for the 2 pieces of silver he had received from that sale. Ed.]
  
  
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  וישב ראובן אל הבור, “when Reuven returned to the pit, etc.” Rashi, in answer to the question we should have asked about where Reuven was in the interval, answers that he had been preoccupied with trying through fasting and wearing sackcloth, to obtain forgiveness for his indiscretion in removing evidence of Bilhah sleeping with his father. [one of two explanations which Rashi suggests, the more likely correct one. Ed.] This explanation is difficult, seeing that the Talmud in tractate Makkot folio 11, arrives at the conclusion that Yehudah had been the first person ever to have done real penance by admitting his sin publicly, so that his brother learned from him when admitting being the father of the fetus his daughter-in-law Tamar was carrying in her womb. (Genesis 38,26) From that statement it is clear that at this stage Reuven had not felt the need to do penance. He did so only after Yehudah had set the example, which clearly had been some time after the sale of Joseph. Possibly, in order to solve this problem, perhaps the Talmud meant that until Yehudah had confessed publicly, Reuven had only done penance in the privacy his own house. He had been wearing sackcloth in his house already at this point.
  
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  וישלחו את כתונת הפסים, “they sent Joseph’s special garment,” (suitably torn and drenched in blood). The correct interpretation of this verse which on the face of it contains a contradiction, when it continues with: ”they brought it to their father,” claiming that they had found it, is that the carriers of Joseph’s garment brought it to the brothers’ father, Yaakov. Another interpretation of the word וישלחו, is “they dragged it.” The expression “שלח” is also used for a weapon, a kind of sword or dagger, used in personal combat. It appears in that sense in Job 33,18: מעבור בשלח, “from perishing by the sword,” or in Song of Songs 4,13: שלחתיך פרדס, “your offshoot will be pomegranate;” if understood as in Song of Songs, the brothers themselves brought Joseph’s blood drenched and ripped up garment to their father. They did so in order to have an excuse for getting their father to exclaim that Joseph had become the victim of a ferocious beast, (as he did).
  !הכר, “know!” Yehudah was the brother who said this to his father; this is why he was the one charged with causing his father this anguish (losing a son, so that he lost two sons) This interpretation may be understood more literally, i.e. why Tamar when about to be burned at the stake for supposedly having committed adultery used the same wording when asking her father-in-law and judge: הכר נא למי החותמת, “please identify whom this signet ring belongs!” (Genesis 38,25) (Based on B’reshit Rabbah, 84,19)
  
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  Verse 35
  
  וכל בנותיו, “and all of his daughters;” according to Rabbi Yehudah, twin sisters had been born for Yaakov with the birth of all of his sons. These had been married by their respective half-brothers, sons of different mothers. According to the opinion of Rabbi Nechemyah, all the sons married wives of Canaanite origin. If he were correct, why does the Torah in our verse not speak of “all his daughter-in-law?“ Rabbi Nechemyah, aware of this, would reply, that in the whole world daughters-in-law are referred to as daughters. (B‘reshit Rabbah 84,21) [Naomi, in the Book of Ruth, certainly is not described as calling her daughters-in-law, “daughters.” Ed.] It is difficult to understand Rabbi Nechemyah, as we all know to what length Avraham had gone to prevent Yitzchok from marrying a wife of Canaanite descent. Yitzchok too had commanded Yaakov not to marry a woman of Canaanite descent and had sent him all the way to Charan to avoid such a union. (Genesis 28,1) Nonetheless, Yehudah married a woman of Canaanite descent. (Genesis 38,2 ברת גבר תגרא, (daughter of a business man, according to Onkelos איש כנעני means business man, traveling salesman) Onkelos therefore accepts the view of Rabbi Yehudah, who said that twin daughters were born with all of Yaakov’s sons.) This is also how we have to understand Genesis 46,10: ושאול בן הכנענית, “and Sha-ul, son of a female merchant.” According to Rabbi Nechemyah’s approach to the subject, there is no need for what sound like far fetched solutions to our problem. The word כנעני or כנענית in either of the verses that bothered us, are simply understood as elsewhere in the Bible, as people of Canaanite descent. We do have a problem if we accept Rabbi Yehudah’s interpretation, an interpretation lacking specific sources in the written text. The Talmud, tractate Yumah folio 28, states that Avaraham had voluntarily observed all the commandments in the written and oral Torah, even including the rabbinic commandment known as eyruv tavshilin, a method of how to prepare food when the day after a festival is a Sabbath, and preparation of food on the festival for the Sabbath is not admissible. He is also supposed to have observed the law of yibbum, marrying the widow of a brother who died without having ever had any children. (Compare Genesis 38,8) where Yehudah, Er’s father, gave Er’s widow Tamar to Onan, his brother, as a wife, in order for him to become posthumously and vicariously a father. If these laws were operative prior to the Torah having been revealed at Mount Sinai to the Jewish people, how could Yaakov have married two sisters while the first sister had still been alive? Also, how could any of the sons of Yaakov have married their sisters? We could answer that although these laws were already known by tradition since Avraham’s time, they had not become obligatory until after revealed at Mount Sinai. Our forefathers were free to choose the parts of the commandments they wished to observe voluntarily even they had been privy to them through the Holy Spirit. When the Talmud in Pessachim, folio 119, tells us that in the future (afterlife) at the meal prepared by G–d for the righteous, that when Yaakov was being honoured presiding over the grace after the meal, he declined the honour, saying that seeing he had wed two sisters while both were alive, he was not worthy of that honour. Clearly he considered what he had done as having been improper. It is possible to argue that having been aware that what he had done would qualify for a penalty if he would do so after the revelation at Mount Sinai, he felt that he deserved at least a minor penalty. If he decided in favour of committing an act deserving of a minor penalty, he did so because he wished to marry only wives who were personally righteous, and these were hard to find, especially considering the age at which he had a chance to get married. As it turned out, even one of these two sisters who was a righteous woman did not by herself bore for him all the twelve tribes.
  ויבך אותו אביו, “his father wept for him (losing him).” According to Rashi, the word: “his father,” in this verse refers to Yitzchok, Yaakov’s father. He was however, not mourning him as he knew that Joseph was still alive. He did not want to reveal this to Yaakov out of respect for G–d, who had not seen fit to reveal this to his son. (B‘reshit Rabbah 84,21) Rashi had already explained that the brothers had sworn a solemn oath one to another not to reveal what they had done Joseph to anyone, and they had included G–d in that oath of theirs. When, after 22 years they came to Egypt and found Joseph alive, they cancelled this oath. This released G–d also, and that is why the Torah wrote that upon hearing that Joseph was alive and well, the bothers’ father Yaakov “revived,” i.e. again was blessed with Holy Spirit. (Genesis 45,27). From this verse it is clear that ever since Joseph’s disappearance he had not enjoyed the presence of the Holy Spirit. From this entire chapter we learn and can prove that when an entire congregation unanimously declares something or someone as “banished,” and a single member of that congregation demurs by not accepting that decision, he is bound by the decision of the congregation, nonetheless. After all, Joseph had not been a party to the brothers’ oath, and it had remained in force nonetheless. If Joseph had been part of that oath, the other brothers would not have had to include in their oath. They had been lacking Reuven and Binyamin to make up the necessary quorum by themselves. Although Joseph was aware of this, he did not wish to interfere with that oath by revealing his whereabouts to his father. The author promises to also provide an alternate reason why Joseph did not let his father know during all these years that he had been alive and well. If you were to argue that the ban into which the brothers had put the subject of the sale of Joseph was more stringent than an ordinary such ban where G–d had not been co-opted as a partner, this is not a valid argument, as even nowadays whenever we make such a ban, we add the words: “with the consent of the Lord.” We also find this approach to oaths in the Book of Samuel 14,24, where King Sha-ul had sworn that any man eating food before evening (the day of the battle) and the army had defeated their enemy, would be cursed, i.e. executed, that his own son Jonathan, who had tasted some honey, not having been aware that his father had pronounced such an oath, had become aware of someone having violated that oath, as one of the jewels in the breastplate of the High priest had suddenly lost part of its luster. Whenever a tribe performed a commandment, the jewel representing that tribe would shine more forcefully. When a tribe, or member of it, committed a trespass, its jewel would lose its luster. When King Sha-ul found out that the jewel representing his own tribe, that of Binyamin, suddenly did not shine anymore, he realised that the fault must lie with someone of his own tribe and family. He determined who that member of his tribe was by casting lots, as had done Joshua in Joshua 7, when he found out that the jewel representing the tribe of Yehudah had lost its luster. He had cast lots to determine which member of the tribe of Yehudah had been the guilty party. Achan, son of Karmi, was the one who had illegally pocketed some of the loot from the city of Jericho, and he was duly executed after having confessed.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  וירד יהודה, “Yehudah descended;” our sages explained that this choice of words by the Torah means that Yehudah’s brothers, who up until then had considered him as their leader and spokesman, demoted him on account of the sale of their brother Joseph and the anguish this had caused their father. (B’reshit Rabbah, 85,1) Ibn Ezra questioned this, seeing that only twenty two years elapsed between the sale of Joseph and the reunification of the brothers with him and the family’s moving to Egypt. We know that Joseph had been seventeen years old when he had been sold; we also know that he was thirty years old when he interpreted Pharaoh’s dream; we further know that the family descended to Egypt in the second year of the famine, i.e. nine years after Joseph had been appointed viceroy of Egypt. If you count the years from the time Yehudah got married to the daughter of the man described earlier until the descent of the whole family with Yehudah at their head more than twenty two years must have passed. If we count a year each for the time Yehudah’s wife was pregnant with each of her three sons, and add the years after Onan’s death during which Shelah grew to maturity, i.e. was old enough to get married, you already have accounted for 16 years. Add a year till Peretz could have been born and you have accounted for already 17 years. Even if you were to assume that Peretz was no more than 7 years old when he became the father of Chetzron and another year for the birth of his brother Chamul, all of whom are listed in Genesis chapter 46 as having come to Egypt with Yaakov and Yehudah, you already have accounted for 25 years not 22. One would have to say that when Shelah was described as having “grown” up, the Torah refers to his having become 9 years old, at which age it is possible to produce semen fit to sire a child. We can find support for this from the Talmud, tractate Niddah, folio 45, where the Mishnah discusses a nine year old who performed the levirate marriage ceremony on his sister-in-law whose husband had died without having had any children, that he cannot give such a sister-in-law a decree of divorce until he reaches the age of 13, as a minor cannot divorce his wife. Moreover, the original marriage of his deceased brother had been a marriage in the full sense of the word, and what he did was only to substitute for his deceased brother, so that any divorce cannot be less complete than that. According to an opinion quoted in the Talmud tractate Sanhedrin, folio 69, there were periods in former eras when seven year old males were able to impregnate females with their semen.
  
  
  Verse 2
  
  
  
  Verse 3
  
  
  
  Verse 4
  
  
  
  Verse 5
  
  ותקרא את שמו שלה והיה בכזיב בלדתה אותו, “she called his name Shelah, as he (her husband) was in a place called Keziv at the time when she gave birth to him.” (standard explanation) The expression “shelah” and “keziv,” are identical in meaning. They appear in connection with inability to give birth, such as in Kings II 4,16 when the woman from Shunem being promised by the prophet Elisha that she would give birth to a son tells him not raise false hopes as she knew she was past the age when this was possible. The words she used were אל תכזב. When she upbraided the prophet after the son she did bear had died before growing up, she reminded him of what she had said then and used the verb שלה. (verse 28 in the same chapter) The word כזב meaning interruption in the sense of termination, also occurs in Isaiah 58,11: וכמוצא מים אשר לא יכזבו, “like a spring whose waters do not fail.” According to this, the name shelah indicated that his mother knew she would not bear any more children. [This leaves the question of why the masculine והיה, “he was,” is used in our verse Ed.] My teacher told me that כזיב is the place of a town or village. It was customary in those days that mother and father named their children alternately. The father would name the firstborn, so that it would have been Yehudah’s turn to name the son born third. Seeing that he was not at home when this son was born, the mother decided to name him instead. This is why the Torah explains why Yehudah had not named Shelah.
  
  
  Verse 6
  
  
  
  Verse 7
  
  
  
  Verse 8
  
  
  
  Verse 9
  
  
  
  Verse 10
  
  
  
  Verse 11
  
  
  
  Verse 12
  
  
  
  Verse 13
  
  
  
  Verse 14
  
  בפתח עינים, this expression may be understood as we know from the Talmud, tractate Sotah folio,10, where Rabbi Shmuel bar Nachmeni understands it as giving a reason for her apparently inappropriate behaviour, when Yehudah first asked her about her personal status; she said that she was not married, was a widow, that she was ritually pure, and quite unattached to any other man when she had married, and that even then she was not anyone’s daughter-in-law. [The marriage had not been consummated. Ed.]
  
  Verse 15
  
  ויחשביה לזונה, “he considered her as a harlot.” Why should Yehudah have cared? He turned around to resume on his way to the shearing. However, Tamar raised her face to heaven to pray and ask G–d why she should not be able to give birth to a worthwhile and intelligent son from the semen of such a righteous man as Yehudah. Upon hearing her prayer, G–d immediately dispatched the angel Michael who made Yehudah have second thoughts and turn around. The Torah here wrote: ויט אליה, “he turned to her,” and we find the same expression in Numbers 22,33 where it is written of Bileam’s she-ass: ותט לפני, “she turned around before me;” (the angel speaking to Bileam) in both instances the angel Michael was the subject. (subject discussed in B’reshit Rabbah 85,8)
  
  Verse 16
  
  
  
  Verse 17
  
  ותאמר אם תתן לי ערבון, “she said: ‘if you will give me a pledge;’” some commentators claim that Yehudah did not sleep with Tamar until after he had given her a token to serve as a marriage betrothal. They interpret her question above as her asking for such a token. It was meant to mean: “what kind of token of your intention to wed me are you going to give me?” Yehudah’s answer was that he would send her a young goat. Thereupon she asked for a guarantee that he would indeed send that goat. By insisting that he would give her his signet ring she meant that this would be her wedding ring. According to Rabbi Moshe, this whole interpretation is difficult to accept as the handing over of such a token requires the presence and confirmation by two witnesses in good standing as spelled out in the Talmud, tractate Kiddushin folio 65. Some people claim that an important person such as Yehudah would never travel except in the company of at least two people who could qualify as witnesses, just as a Torah scholar in our time does not travel alone and that therefore the betrothal of Tamar had been duly witnessed. If you were to counter that the betrothal was still invalid as she had never received the promised goat from him, and the Talmud in Kiddushin folio 8 states that even if the suitor gave the bride a token worth a p’rutah (smallest copper coin) as a pledge to cover the remainder, such a betrothal is not legally valid. We would therefore have to say that he gave her his signet ring not as a pledge, but as an outright gift at that time. After having done so, he told her that when he would send her the goat he expected her to return his ring. This is how, in my opinion, the author of the above interpretation must have meant it.
  
  
  Verse 18
  
  
  
  Verse 19
  
  
  
  Verse 20
  
  
  
  Verse 21
  
  
  
  Verse 22
  
  
  
  Verse 23
  
  
  
  Verse 24
  
  זנתה תמר כלתך, “your daughter-in-law Tamar has committed an act of adultery.” Why did the informant have to add that Tamar had also become pregnant as a result of her act of adultery? Perhaps we can answer that in that era when acts of adultery did not result in the woman becoming pregnant as a result, no legal proceedings were instituted against her. Alternately, proceedings used to be instituted after such a woman had committed adulterous acts with more than one individual.
  הוציאהו ותשרף, “take her outside so that she may be burned.” Ephrayim from Kahse, (location) says that Tamar was the daughter of Shem who we heard was the priest of Shalem, and as such if she had committed adultery while still in her father’s house, if sentenced to death for harlotry would die by burning; (Leviticus 21,9) (compare also B’reshit Rabbah 85,10). Yehudah’s judgment is hard to understand as there had been no witnesses to the adultery Tamar had been accused of. Neither had she been warned not to commit such an act and been advised of the potential penalty, as is required by Jewish law. Rabbi Joseph, a resident of the land of Israel, answered this by saying that the generation in which Yehudah lived was morally deprived, and in such circumstances warnings and witnesses are dispensed with when her pregnancy was proof enough of how it had come about. In times like that, the Torah applies additional measures to counteract serious crimes as no one would commit such acts in the presence of acceptable witnesses and after being warned. Rabbi Joseph based himself on the Talmud in tractate Sanhedrin folio 46, where we read as follows: “Rabbi Eliezer son of Yaakov said that the Jewish Court is authorized to decree death penalties not according to the legislation of the Torah when the circumstances demand it, in order to be deterrents to potential sinners.” The Talmud quotes several historical instances when this occurred, including the carrying out of a death penalty against 80 witches on a single day, in spite of the generally accepted rule not to carry out more than one such sentence per day. This happened already during the first hundred years of the period of the second Temple. Joshua’s executing Achan ben Karmi for stealing from the loot of Jericho, obviously without witnesses, why else had lots to be cast to find the guilty party, (Joshua chapter 7) is further proof of the authority of the leader appointed by G–d in circumstances that are not normal. We are still left with the problem that if Tamar was indeed the daughter of Shem, and according to the historical data given to us by the Torah for the time when her father died, this occurred long before the sons of Yehudah were born, how could Yehudah have told her to return to the house of her father and spend there the years of her widowhood there? (Genesis 38,11) [According to the chronology of the Torah, Shem was born about 1557 after Adam was created, and died at the age of 500, i.e. in .2007 after the creation of Adam. Avraham was born in the year 1949 after the creation of Adam, he sired Yitzchak 100 years later. Yitzchok was 60 years old when he fathered Yaakov and Esau, and Yaakov was at least 88 years old when he fathered Yehudah, Tamar’s father in law. You, the reader do not need a calculator to understand the problem created by Rabbi Joseph quoted by our author. Ed.] He must have meant that “her father’s house,” was not to be understood literally, but he meant the family from which she stemmed.
  
  
  Verse 25
  
  
  
  Verse 26
  
  ויאמר צדקה ממני, he (Yehudah) said: “she is more righteous than I am. ”G–d’s methods when sitting in judgment cannot be compared to the way a human judge deals with offenders. When a human judge tries a case, and the accused party admits his guilt, the judge proceeds to carry out the penalty for the offence in question, having proven that he did not act arbitrarily. In other words, if the offence carries the death penalty, it is carried out forthwith. According to Proverbs 28,13, this is not G–d’s way of dealing with the guilty party Solomon describes it as: ומודה ועוזב ירוחם, “if he confesses and abandons sin, he will experience mercy.” As soon as Yehudah’s brother Reuven heard about how he had publicly acknowledged being the father of Tamar’s unborn children, he himself acknowledged his guilt in defiling his father’ couch. (Yaakov’s words in Genesis 49,4) This is also what Eliphas said to Job (Job 15,18) אשר חכמים יגידו ולא כחדו מאבותם, “that which the wise men have transmitted from their fathers and have not withheld it.” The wise men that Job referred to are none other than Yehudah and Reuven. This is why the descendants of those two sons of Yaakov were the only ones whose territory was never invaded by aliens [prior to the building of Solomon’s Temple? Ed.] (compare Moses’ blessing in Deuteronomy 33, 6-7)
   צדקה ממנו, the meaning is as per Targum, i.e. “she has become pregnant from me.” We are puzzled by this commentary, as if true, the sin of sleeping with one’s father-in-law is far greater than that of sleeping with a total stranger. We must assume therefore, that prior to the giving of the Torah, the way the system of the Levirate marriage was practiced was that in the absence of the deceased husband of the widow having any siblings, another close family member would perform that rite with the widow in order to ensure that the name of the deceased would be preserved thereby. Yehudah’s statement at the time when Tamar explained her complaint that she had not been given as a wife to Shelah, must therefore be explained as follows: “actually, seeing that at the time Onan died Shelah was not yet old enough to perform these rites it was my duty to have done so, especially as I could not be sure he would do so even when he would grow up.” At the time when Yehudah, through sleeping with Tamar had actually fulfilled the required rite though not having been aware of it, G–d said to him: “by doing so you saved four lives from death. One was saved from dying in a pit and three were saved from dying by being burned to death. This is based on Daniel 1,6: ויהי  בהם מבני יהודה דניאל, חנניה, מישאל, ועזריה, there were among them from the descendants of Yehudah: ‘Daniel, Chananyah, Mishael and Azaryah.’ The verse does not trace their ancestry to Chizkiyah, but to Yehudah. Daniel was saved from a pit, the other three from a fiery furnace. An alternate explanation of the words: צדקה ממנו, “she became pregnant from me.” Yehudah claimed that he had married her legally by betrothing her with his ring, as mentioned earlier in my commentary. Rabbi Moshe queries this interpretation claiming that such a betrothal is invalid when performed by the father-in-law. He bases himself on the Talmud, tractate Sotah folio 10, the Talmud, quoting the dialogue between Yehudah and Tamar there claims that when Yehudah asked her about her marital status, including asking her whether perhaps her father had accepted a token of betrothal on her behalf, she responded by saying that this was impossible as she was an orphan. Rashi on the Talmud there explains that even if she had been betrothed by her father, had he lived, such a betrothal would have been invalid as she would have had to be a minor for such a betrothal to have any legal significance. She is quoted as having told Yehudah that she was completely and legally available and was not ritually impure either. At any rate, when the Torah subsequent to the revelations after the trial writes that Yehudah ולא יסף עוד לדעתה, this line has to be understood that he did not stop to have marital relations with her, as he had now found out that everything had been legal to begin with. (verse 26) According to our author this latest interpretation follows the view expressed in the Talmud tractate Yevamot folio 100, that even a woman with an infant on her shoulder is believed when she claims that her betrothal at the time had been illegal. 
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  ויוסף הורד מצרים, “and in the meantime, Joseph had been brought down to Egypt;” the Torah does not describe Joseph as descending to Egypt, i.e. ירד, but in the passive mode הורד. This is a reminder to the reader that the decree revealed to Avraham at the time that his descendants would have to be both strangers and at least part of the time, even slaves, in a foreign country, had now begun to be fulfilled. (Compare Genesis chapter 15)
  If we view the history of the Jewish people by comparing it to a parable, it is comparable to a cow which its owner wanted to proceed to a slaughterhouse and the cow objected strenuously; what did the owner do to overcome that objection? He brought her calf to the slaughterhouse first. As soon as the cow saw that, it became anxious to join her calf. When Yaakov found out where Joseph had been taken, he immediately voiced the wish to join him there. (Compare B’reshit Rabbah, 86,2)
  
  
  Verse 2
  
  ויהי ה' את יוסף , “and the Lord was with Joseph;” the Midrash sees in this line a lesson for us to compare G–d’s method of befriending us to how human beings befriend their masters or superiors. As long as their superiors are successful and amass glory the underlings surround the king and flatter him nonstop. As soon however, as the king or master falls on hard times, his former “friends,” and flatterers abandon him as they would a ship about to sink. The reverse is true of Hashem. As soon as Joseph fell on hard times, G–d went out of His way to show him that far from having abandoned him, on the contrary, He now went out of His way to make life easier for him. He supported him when he became viceroy of Egypt for 80 years, as well as when he was still a slave in the house of Potiphar, and even when jailed for supposedly having tried to rape his wife. It is remarkable that also Joseph’s way of responding to the way the brothers had treated him were quite different from the way ordinary people would have reacted to this given the chance. Normally, poor people display some fear of G–d, as He is the only one from whom they can expect help. Joseph, even when in a position of power, repeatedly refused to do something that G–d would not approve of (Compare Genesis 42,18 as well as 39,9) An alternate interpretation of the line: ויהי ה' את יוסף. Imagine someone blessed with ten children, each one of whom lives in a different country. Instead of visiting them all in rotation, he concentrated on spending time with the youngest, as he was less well endowed than his brothers, and depended more on advice and assistance from his father. Take another parable illustrating our subject. A wine merchant had loaded ten donkeys with barrels of wine and began to lead them on the public highway. Suddenly one donkey veered and entered the house of a pagan. Right away the owner abandoned all the other nine donkeys out of concern that a pagan might touch the wine on the back of the last mentioned animal and make it unfit for Jews to drink from. Similarly, as soon as G–d saw that Joseph had been brought to the house of an Egyptian who was now his master, He hurried to supervise his fate to protect him from harm. He was afraid that unless He did so, Joseph might learn to copy the lifestyle of his master.
  
  
  Verse 3
  
  
  
  Verse 4
  
  
  
  Verse 5
  
  בכל אשר יש לו בבית ובשדה, “on everything that he owned, be it inside the house or out on the field.” He made all his efforts inside the house successful during the winter when people are more or less housebound, and in the summer when most of their activities take place outdoors. Actually, Joseph worked in the house of Potiphar for only one year, after which he was put in jail as a result of the accusation against him by Potiphar’s wife. (Seder Olam, chapter 2 Joseph spent a total of twelve years in jail. (B’reshit Rabbah 86,6)
  
  
  Verse 6
  
  כי אם הלחם אשר הוא אוכל, (literally) “except for the food that he ate.” We find two more references in the Torah describing that the Egyptians and Hebrews had a mutual distaste for each other’s eating habits and menus. (Compare Genesis 43,32, and verse 9 in this chapter, where Potiphar’s wife is described as out of bounds to Joseph [similar to his bread. Joseph was not afraid to make this comparison. Ed.]
  
  Verse 7
  
  
  
  Verse 8
  
  
  
  Verse 9
  
  
  
  Verse 10
  
  
  
  Verse 11
  
  
  
  Verse 12
  
  ותתפשהו בבגדו, “she grabbed him by his outer garment.” According to Kohelet Rabbah on Kohelet 7,26, where the author describes a woman’s hands as having been artificially restrained, אסורים, the kind of woman described by Solomon there would grab men in the street and try and seduce them. Even the relatively chaste women are described there as aggressive in that respect. During the 12 months that Joseph was in Potiphar’s house, he was exposed to those tactics by Potiphar’s wife on a daily basis. When the Torah speaks of these ongoing attempts at seduction (verse 10) as occurring יום יום, “every day,” this must be considered as if Joseph had withstood a year’s temptation. The word is used as meaning “year” as in Esther 3,7. He would literally have to take evasive action, such as covering his face, practically shrinking to the ground. She would use instruments in order to force him to resume his normal posture. She would use the argument that she was not really married to Potiphar; he was a homosexual and had never consummated the “marriage.” He had to explain to her that the Hebrews were not allowed to have sexual relations with Egyptian women even if the latter were unmarried. She would threaten him with having him consigned to jail. Joseph would reply that his G–d had means of freeing him from jail. She would threaten to have him blinded, to which he replied that his G–d could make the blind see. Eventually, if it had not been for the priests who testified hat the drops of semen she produced as evidence that he had tried to rape her were in fact not from a human being, he might have been sentenced to death. This eventually became the reason why he dealt so extraordinarily generously with the Egyptian priests during the years of the famine. (Tanchuma, section 8)
  וינס ויוצא החוצה, “he fled, leaving the house.” As a reward for Joseph’s fleeing the presence of his master’s wife on that occasion, G–d told him that He would reward him when the sea of reeds fled at the approach of Joseph’s coffin when the Israelites were facing the sea with the Egyptians threatening them from behind. (Tanchuma on parshat Nasso, section 30, interprets Psalms: 114,3: הים ראה וינוס, “the sea saw and fled” as meaning just that.)
  
  Verse 13
  
  
  
  Verse 14
  
  
  
  Verse 15
  
  וינס ויוצא החוצה, “he fled, leaving the house.” As a reward for Joseph’s fleeing the presence of his master’s wife on that occasion, G–d told him that He would reward him when the sea of reeds fled at the approach of Joseph’s coffin when the Israelites were facing the sea with the Egyptians threatening them from behind. (Tanchuma on parshat Nasso, section 30, interprets Psalms: 114,3: הים ראה וינוס, “the sea saw and fled” as meaning just that.)
  
  Verse 16
  
  
  
  Verse 17
  
  
  
  Verse 18
  
  
  
  Verse 19
  
  כדברים האלה, “things like this;” according to Rashi, Potiphar’s wife showed him how Joseph had tried to arouse her while she was in bed with her husband. This appears difficult, as Rabbi Moshe, quoting the Talmud in tractate Sotah, folio 13 pointed out that the name Potiphar is spelled in the Torah once as פוטיפר, (39,1) without the letter ע at the end, and on another occasion with that letter ע missing (37,36) The Talmud concludes that once he had become a eunuch, as a close servant of Pharaoh, he could not indulge in sexual activity, so that Rashi’s commentary seems forced, to say the least. In fact, it is suggested that he bought Joseph in order to indulge in homosexual relations with him. Alternately, his castration had only been a partial one. Ibn Ezra explains that there are indeed two types of castration. One is called a hot castration, the other a cold castration. [The term occurs in the Talmud Yevamot repeatedly, but I have not found it mentioned here by Ibn Ezra. Ed.] Medically speaking, someone who underwent the “cold castration” requires a great deal of heat before he can ejaculate any semen. Potiphar, according to this opinion, was afflicted with that type of castration.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  
  
  Verse 2
  
  
  
  Verse 3
  
  
  
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  כי אם זכרתני אתך....והזכרתני אל פרעה, “so that when you remember me when you are well off, and bring my problem to the attention to Pharaoh, etc;” I heard from my late father of blessed memory that the wording here with the causative mode in the word: והזכרתני, meant that while the cup bearer would personally remember Joseph and his favourable interpretation of his dream; Joseph only asked him to bring him to Pharaoh’s attention through an intermediary.
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
   ויהי מקץ, “it was at the end;” according to Rashi, the word מקץ means: at the end.” The reason why Rashi was forced to give this interpretation-which to most of us is quite clear, is that there are occasions when this expression means: “at the beginning.” One such example occurs in Jeremiah 34,14: מקץ שבע שנים תשלחו חפשי, “at the beginning of the seventh year you must release him to freedom” (the Jewish slave) [Seeing that his term or servitude is for six years, (Exodus 21,2) it cannot mean that he is to be released only at the end of the seventh year. Ed.] There is another verse involving this expression in Deuteronomy 15,1: מקץ שבע שנים תעשה שמטה, but this is inconclusive for our purpose, as the release of the debtor from overdue loans becomes effective only at the end of the seventh year.
  ופרעה חולם, “and Pharaoh was dreaming;” G–d’s method of applying reward and punishment cannot be compared to any human system of doing so. Human beings inflict wounds with a chisel, a metal and pain causing instrument, while they apply only a flimsy plaster to heal the wound. G–d inflicts a wound that is superficial, like the application of a plaster, but when it comes to healing it, He uses immediately effective means. Joseph had been thrown into a pit on account of a mere dream he had dreamt concerning his brothers; he was healed by a dream dreamt by the then most powerful ruler on earth, the King of Egypt. In other words, G–d employed “the heavyweight” on earth in order to heal his wounds. One of our liturgists pointed this out already in a s’lichah recited on the third day of the “s’Iichot” recited before Rosh Hashanah. He points out there that the remedy G–d used to heal Joseph consists of parts of the weapon used to harm him.
  
  Verse 2
  
  והנה מן היאור, “and lo, out of the River (Nile)” seeing that famine and satiation have their origin in water, (irrigation or lack thereof of the earth) this was the symbol shown Pharaoh in his dream. (B’reshit Rabbah 89,4)
  
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   ותבלענה השבלים, “the ears swallowed;” the text is not to be understood literally; the meaning appears to be that each successively growing ear of corn completely covered the one that had grown before it, so that it could not be seen by the beholder, but it had not vanished as does the food one swallows. The expression בלע in the sense of “covering” occurs in Numbers 4,20, when the holy vessels being packed before the Israelites broke camp is discussed. According to the Talmud, tractate B’rachot, folio 55, where dreams are discussed at length, the Talmud states that G–d does not send a dream to a person in which he is shown something that does not make any sense, such as an elephant passing through the eye of a needle. This statement is to be understood as an aggadah. The plain meaning of our verse is that Pharaoh believed he had seen the ears of corns being swallowed by their hollowed out counterparts. This is why the Torah had to add that when he awoke he realised that he had not seen something real, but that it was a dream in which one does see such things. Pharaoh could understand that cows eat each other, but he was baffled by ears of corn consuming one another. Hence he was convinced that he had only dreamt, although the dream was very vivid.
  
  Verse 8
  
   ותפעם רוחו, “his mind was disturbed.” Rashi draws our attention to the fact that when the reaction of King Nebuchadnezzar to his dream is described in the Book of Daniel 2,1, the author uses a different conjugation, i.e. ותתפעם which is a combination of the passive and reflexive mode. [The latter could not even remember what he had seen that disturbed him so much. Ed.] His interpreters were required to tell him what he had dreamt as well as what it meant. Pharaoh, on the other hand, had only forgotten the interpretation of what he had seen in the dream. (B‘reshit Rabbah, 89,5.) Even though when relating his dream to potential interpreters he did not let on how deeply he was troubled and he used the same words for his reaction as are reported of Pharaoh, חלום חלמתי ותפעם רוחי, “I have dreamt a dream and my mind is disturbed,” (Daniel 2,3) the difference was that the inability of his interpreters to offer any interpretation was due to the fact that they had not been told what he had dreamt. One of the differences between the two dreams was that Nebuchadnezzar dreamt something that would occur in the distant future, whereas Pharaoh dreamt something that would occur almost immediately. If Daniel had not been able to tell Nebuchadnezar what he had dreamt, he would never have believed the interpretation that Daniel offered him. Seeing that Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream as predicting matters that would occur in the immediate future, he believed him, as otherwise he could have called him a liar within a short time and have dealt with him as a false prophet. As to Nebuchadnezzar having meted out the death penalty to all the interpreters that had failed to interpret his dream, (compare Daniel 2,12) this was partly due to their having said that no human being could interpret his dream, only angels (verse 11). Prophets had been rare already in the time of Samuel; (compare Samuel 3,1) The word ואחרון לא איתי, in Daniel 2,11, should be read as ואהרן לא נמצא, “there is no Aaron nowadays who by means of the urim and tumim in the folds of his breastplate could have secured an answer from G–d to his query.” Nebuchadnezzar, when hearing these words of Daniel, told him that he now remembered about the significance of that breastplate and the urim and tumim. He added that the Jewish people had lost their world because their priests had made unlawful use of that breastplate. This is why he decreed a similar fate for his own priests. (Tanchuma section 2 on our portion)
  
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   ויתן אותי במשמר....ואת שר האופים, “and he placed me in jail, together with chief of the bakers.” Why did the chief of the cup-bearers repeat the word: אותי, “me,” in this verse? I have heard from Rabbi Yehudah the priest, that he said so to Pharaoh in order that he should not think that in his foolishness he had believed that he deserved to be reinstated in his position anymore than did the chief of the bakers who had been hanged. He and the chief of the bakers had always been good friends, they had been together, and he did not feel superior or more deserving. He realised that only due to Pharaoh’s magnanimity had his life been spared at the time.
  
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  ויחלף שמלותיו, “he changed his clothing.” Our sages saw a hint in these two words that Joseph was brought before Pharaoh on Rosh Hashanah, as stated by the Talmud, tractate Rosh Hashanah folio 11. The numerical value of the letters in these two words is the same as in the words: בחד בתשרי on the first day of the month of Tishrey (Rosh Hashanah) Our author questions this as the word שמלותיו has the letter ו missing in the middle of the word.
  
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   ורקות בשר, “of poor quality flesh.” The descriptions of these cows/ears of corn as either רקות or דקות are nuances of רעות, how poorly they appeared to Pharaoh in his dream. [Personally, I have always thought that by varying the adjectives applicable, Pharaoh wanted to test Joseph to see if he had really been shown his dream by G–d. Ed.]
  
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  יהיו שבע שני רעב, “will be seven consecutive years of famine.” The word יהיו should be understood as a prayer by Joseph, who was aware that actually 42 years of famine had been decreed for Egypt. How did Joseph know this? You will note that the number שבע appeared in Pharaoh’s dream 6 times. Twice seven when Pharaoh had the dream, once with the cows, once with the ears of corn. The same was repeated when he related his dream to his interpreters. It was repeated again when he related the dream to Joseph. Joseph’s prayer achieved that the 42 years which had been decreed were shrunk to only seven years. The arrival of Joseph’s father Yaakov in Egypt and his blessing to Pharaoh reduced the famine further so that it lasted only two years. The 40 years that were chopped off the decree did not disappear but were “paid back” to Egypt in later years as we know from Jeremiah that Egypt experienced 40 years of total drought predicted by that prophet. (Ezekiel 29,9 and 12)
  
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   וחמש את ארץ מצרים, “and impose a tax of one fifth of the harvest to be given to those in charge for storage under safe conditions.” It is from this stored grain that distribution started to be made as we read in Genesis 46,24.
  
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   וילבש אותו בגדי שש, “he dressed him in fine linen garments.” According to Rashi, this kind of linen was considered as extremely valuable in Egypt. Some people query Rashi’s comment on Genesis 2,11, where the river Pishon is mentioned which Rashi identifies with the river Nile, pointing out that flax, פשתן, from which linen is made, grows in Egypt, the country that is home to that river. The author believes that linen was indeed grown in Egypt in larger quantities than elsewhere and that it was considered very valuable. Furthermore, it is most likely that the fabric mentioned here as שש, was hemp, a fiber, פשתי העץ, grown on trees as we know from Joshua 2,6, where the spies are described as hiding among accumulated piles of such fibers. Rashi calls it קנבוס. The fabric שש mentioned here was no doubt cotton, which at that time did not grow in Egypt, hence its being described as an expensive imported material.
  
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  צפנת פענח, this name is an acronym, describing a person who is steadfast in the presence of strong urges to satisfy his libido through sleeping with partners legally forbidden to him. Potiphar had had no reason to believe that Joseph could not withstand such temptation. [Pharaoh wanted the world to know that Joseph had been completely innocent of any accusation. Ed.]
  ויתן לו את אסנת, “he (Pharaoh) gave him Ossnat (as a wife) If you were to ask why Joseph who was Royalty would marry the daughter of a commoner, remember that Joseph had previously been a slave in the household of Potiphar. He therefore reasoned that if he were to refuse to marry Ossnat, the daughter of his former master, the latter would spread the word that Joseph was really a slave and that he had no business to have risen to such an exalted position. On the other hand, if he would agree and marry this woman, his former master would honour him henceforth, being proud that through this marriage he himself now had connections to the highest social circles in Egypt. There is an additional reason why he agreed to marry this woman, as she was actually a descendant of Yaakov, as Rashi has explained on Genesis, portion Vayishlach, quoting Pirke de rabbi Eliezer, chapter 38, according to which she was the daughter of Dinah from her rape by Sh’chem. According to that chapter, the angel Michael had transported that infant to Egypt where she had been adopted by Potiphar. This is why the Torah calls her the daughter of Potiphar. We find that Moses similarly was adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, and that in Chronicles I 4,18 Calev is reported as marrying (also) Bityah-the daughter of Pharaoh, who had at the time adopted Moses. When Joseph was paraded throughout Egypt (Genesis 49,23,) and according to the Torah, all the young ladies threw flowers or jewelry at him, when Ossnat, did not have anything to throw, she threw her amulet, which she had worn around her neck at all times, at him. When Joseph looked at the inscription on it, he realised that the girl wearing it was descended from Yaakov, and he went ahead and married her.
  
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  לקמצים, “in fistfuls.” Joseph’s overseers took a fifth of a fistful, even of the last fistful remaining in the farmer’s barn, as part of the grain to be stored for the future.
  
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  בטרם תבוא שנת הרעב, “before the year of famine arrived.” The Talmud in tractate Taanit folio 11 teaches that from this verse we learn that during a famine man and his wife are not to cohabit [so as not to add more hungry mouths at that time. Ed.] In light of this it is difficult to understand how Levi could have sired Yocheved during those years as we have been told that she was born when her mother entered Egypt on her way there with Yaakov’s family. (Compare Genesis 45,6) Rabbi Yehudah hachassid, opined that the prohibition of cohabiting with one’s wife during periods of famine is valid only for a prophet who has been told by G–d directly that there was going to be such a famine. Joseph was such a prophet who had been inspired by G–d to advise Pharaoh of future events. Levi who did not have any direct knowledge concerning the origin of this famine, and who had caused it, was therefore not obliged to abstain from the commandment to be fruitful and to multiply. According to a different interpretation, the brothers Levi and Joseph took different sides in an argument aired in the Talmud, tractate Yevamot folio 61 concerning that if the commandment to be fruitful has already been fulfilled if one has fathered two sons. A second opinion holds that until one has sired both a son and a daughter, one cannot claim to have fulfilled the commandment. Since Levi at this time had not yet sired a daughter, he had felt entitled to maintain normal family relations with his wife. Joseph had already sired two sons, and he held that thereby he had fulfilled the commandment.
  
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   קרא אפרים, “he called Ephrayim.” This was a reminder of the two founding fathers of the Jewish people, Avraham and Yitzchok, both of whom had described themselves as ashes, אפר. Compare Genesis 18,27 and Yitzchok, who when bound on the altar on Mount Moriah, considered himself as soon being burned to ashes. This is why the entire Jewish nation is on occasion called אפרים, compare Jeremiah 31,19: הבן יקיר לי אפרים, “truly, Ephrayim is a dear son to Me.”(G–d speaking)
  
  Verse 53
  
   ותכילנה, “they came to an end;” according to B’reshit Rabbah, 90,6 the word is to be understood as derived from כלולות as in כלולותיך in Jeremiah 2,2, a reference to physical beauty, i.e. the seven years of plenty had resulted in the whole Egyptian population having a more pleasing and healthy appearance.
  
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   ותחילנה, “they commenced;” our author, following his interpretation of the expression ותכילנה, understands this word as derived from חולי, sickly, meaning that during the years of famine, the Egyptians began to look very sickly. (B’reshit Rabbah 90,6)
  
  
  
  
  
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  וירא יעקב כי יש שר ב מצרים, “Yaakov ‘saw’ that there was grain-trading in Egypt;” this is what Solomon had in mind when he said in Proverbs 20,12: אוזן שומעת ועין רואה ה' עשה גם שניהם, “the ear that hears, and the eye that sees, the Lord has made them both.” What prompted Solomon to make such a banal sounding statement? Did G–d not make the whole body? Why did he single out the ear and the eye? The answer is that all parts of the body, in due course, will have to give an accounting for their activities while they were alive on earth, except the ear and the eye. What is the reason for this? The eye sees things which are not good for it to see, and so does the ear hear things which are not good for it to hear. [involuntary perceptions. Ed.] This is not true of the other organs or limbs. You choose what the mouth eats, etc., you choose where your legs are to take you, etc. Rabbi said that the words: וירא יעקב, “Yaakov saw,” although he was an old man sitting hundreds of miles away, what his ten sons who were going in and out and meeting all kinds of people, did not see. All this was although both Yaakov and Joseph had been blessed with the spirit of prophecy. Joseph was only a distance of 4 or 5 days travel away from them, and when they searched for him they did not find him. Furthermore, why did Joseph not communicate with his father during all these years which would have spared his father a great deal of grief? The answer is that they all had sworn a sacred oath not to reveal to their father that he was in Egypt. They had made G–d a partner to their oath, so that He too could not reveal their secret to him. All this can be proved from Scripture, when before revealing himself to his brothers (Genesis 45,1) he commanded that all the people around him remove themselves before he would have that conversation with his brothers. He did not want that anyone would ever hear about that oath which had now expired. Other commentators offer a different reason for why Joseph had not communicated with his father for 22 years. As long as he had been a slave (13 years) he did not want to increase his father’s grief by informing him of his sorry condition. If he were to end a message that in the meantime he had become a king, his father would not believe him; he was right as his father did not even believe this when all his sons told that they had seen it with their own eyes. (Genesis 45,26) In addition, he was afraid that if his father were to leak his new found knowledge to someone, the brothers would each flee in all directions out of fear of his vengeance. As a result, his father would experience additional grief. This is why he waited until the time would be ripe for him to reveal himself, so that he would first reveal himself to his brothers before informing his father of his survival and the good fortune which had befallen him.
  
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   כולנו בני איש אחד, “we are all the sons of the same father.” How was this revelation an appropriate answer to the accusation that they were spies? Presumably they meant to say that if indeed they had been spies the spies that were sent were people that did not know one another. (Attributed to Rav Meir.)
  
  
  
  
  
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  ואל שדי יתן לכם רחמים לפני האיש, “and may G–d Almighty give you mercy before the man what prompted Yaakov to single out the attribute of G–d known as shadday when blessing his sons before they commenced this journey? It teaches you that Yaakov had already endured many trials in his life. These had commenced already when he was still in his mother’s womb and Esau fought with him to become the firstborn. (Compare Genesis 25,22, when his mother was distraught and asked G–d what was going on inside her womb.) The sages concluded that the two as yet unborn children had already struggled for possession of two worlds. Esau tried to kill Yaakov already as soon as he was born as is evident from Amos 1,11, על רדפו בחרב אחיו, “when he pursued his brother with the sword (simile for trying to kill him). He had to flee to Lavan to save his life, and had endured many problems while with his “uncle” for 20 years. As soon as he left there Lavan pursued him. He lists them during the encounter with Lavan. (Genesis 31,40) Esau then came towards him in order to attack him, As a result he lost a great deal of the wealth he had acquired by buying him off with a gift. Next his best loved wife died on the way and he could not even bury her in the ancestral gravesite. Next his daughter Dinah was raped, and then his beloved son Joseph was lost. When he felt that finally he could settle down to a normal life in one place, (Genesis 37,1) the problems with Joseph began. During the brothers’ first trip to Egypt Shimon, his second oldest son was incarcerated and he now had to Shimon being incarcerated and his sons forced him to allow Binyamin to travel to Egypt in order to secure the release of Shimon. He could have said, as did Job in Job 3,26: “I had no repose, no quiet no rest; trouble came.” (Based on Tanchuma on our portion, section 10.) In light of all this, Yaakov now called on that attribute of G–d to signal that he felt he had undergone sufficient tribulations, i.e. די, to warrant a favourite response to his blessing/prayer.
  
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   ויעש האיש כאשר אמר יוסף, “the man did as Joseph had said. According to our sages, the “man” was his older son Menashe, [who could not have been more than nine years old at the time. Ed.] This is difficult in light of Rashi’s commentary in the Talmud Avot chapter 5, that the rule that men have to observe the Torah’s commandments from the age of 13, is derived from Shimon and Levi, Joseph’s brothers when we calculate their ages at the time when they took their swords and killed the male population of the town of Sh’chem. (Genesis 34,25) If they were 13 at the time, it is clear that Menashe at this time could not have been older than nine years old. The Torah had spelled out that Joseph’s sons had been born before the onset of the famine. Seven years had elapsed since Joseph had married, seven good years and 2 years of famine. How could the Torah refer to Menashe as a “man” then? (Attributed to Rav Chayim who quoted Rabbi Eliezer avi ha-ezri.) The problem deserves further study.
  
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  ?השלום אביכם הזקן אשר אצרתם, העודנו חי “is your aged father of whom you have spoken well, is he still alive?” From the order in which Joseph asked, it is clear that the “old father” whom he spoke of was a reference to his grandfather, to Yitzchok. The brothers, answering about their father being alive did not want to mention the negative event of their grandfather having died. We find something similar in the Talmud, tractate Pessachim, folio 4, where when Rav was asked if his father was still alive he responded by saying that his mother was alive. He avoided having to spell out that the person he had been asked about had actually died.
  
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   ויתמהו האנשים, “the men (Joseph’s brothers) were astounded;” their amazement did not concern the order in which they had been seated- as might be understood- but it concerned the separation of Egyptians, themselves and Joseph, the Torah indicating this to us when stating that the separation had to do with the different eating habits of the Egyptians on the one hand and the Hebrews on the other. They wondered which race Joseph belonged to, seeing that he appeared to be neither Hebrew nor Egyptian.
  
  
  
  
  
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  הם יצאו את העיר, “when they had barely left the gates of the city,” not having covered any distance as yet. Joseph had reasoned that once they had reached beyond a certain distance it would be impossible to exercise any control over them [without violence. Ed.] as they had been compared to wild beasts. (Compare Yaakov’s blessing of Yehudah in Genesis 49 9 where he compared Yehudah alone to a ferocious lion.) In verse 21 in that chapter the tribe of Naftali is described by Yaakov as a hind let loose, suggesting again that militarily the sons of Yaakov were feared by their contemporaries. They would inspire fear in their adversaries.
  
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   הלא זה אשר ישתה, “is not this that which he (my lord) drinks out of?” Joseph’s messenger expresses utter amazement how of all things worth stealing, the thief should have concentrated on this highly individual property of his master? Surely the thief must have been aware that this goblet would be missed immediately and every effort would be made to find the thief? The owner would employ his supernatural powers immediately in order to divine where it was presently. He had demonstrated already that he possessed such powers. Alternately, he would instruct others to use their powers of divination to locate this goblet for him.
  
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  'גם עתה כדבריכם כן הוא וגו, “also now I accept what you have said;” this appears very difficult, as the brothers had suggested that the thief if found among them should be given the death penalty, whereas they as relatives of the thief would become slaves were prepared to become slaves. Joseph’s messenger had only been concerned with punishing the thief himself, and even at that not to execute him. We must therefore interpret the messenger’s words as meaning that he accepted the brothers’ suggested punishment for themselves, if and when one of them were to be found guilty. Joseph’s messenger said that he would be more generous with them than they would be with themselves if it turned out that they were not guilty. An alternate interpretation of the line quoted: “I accept what you said concerning that you had already proved your innocence, and that you are not thieves. However, this applies only to nine of you. Neither Binyamin nor Shimon had brought back any money.” Binyamin had not been in Egypt, ad Shimon had not returned to the land of Canaan, having been in jail during your absence. He must therefore search the sacks of these two.
  יהיה לי עבד, “shall be a slave for me.” This is very strange, as the man saying these words was only a servant of Joseph himself. He should have said: “will be a servant to my master.” Perhaps we can understand this wording as the servant (messenger) said that seeing he is the messenger, he is responsible to his master for anything that he has not carried out correctly in his mission. Therefore, in the first instance, the brothers are his responsibility to deal with. Legally, therefore, the guilty brother becomes his slave initially.
  
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   כי נחש ינחש איד אשר כמוני, “for a man of my stature surely is able to divine things?!” He meant that seeing that he was a man in an exalted position, he would investigate thoroughly if someone accused was indeed guilty of the crime he has been accused of.
  
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  ויגש אליו וגו'...בי אדוני, “he came near to him;....oh my lord.” Yehudah”s logic in challenging Joseph’s punishment for Binyamin was as follows: normally when a slave owner buys additional slaves and finds out that they steal from him, he demands his money back from the seller and returns such slaves to him. Why, do you do the opposite, by preferring to have a thief as your slave?
  כי כמוך כפרעה, “for you are just like Pharaoh;” just as an earlier Pharaoh lusted after the founding mother of the Hebrews, because of her physical beauty, our matriarch Sarah, you lust after our brother because you are attracted by the fact that he is so handsome.” An alternate interpretation: “just as you are great and mighty in your country, so we are great and mighty in the region which we call our home.” (Compare B’reshit Rabbah 93,6 and Tanchuma on this portion section 5)
  
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  ואשימה עיני עליו, “so that I can see him personally.” Rashi understands this line as a metaphor, as if Yehudah challenges Joseph: ”is this what you call meeting him personally?” We must therefore explain the reason for Joseph having expressed the wish to meet Binyamin personally as a promise to protect him from harm. We certainly did not understand you to mean that you plan to cause him harm.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ולא יכלו אחיו לענות אותו, “and his brothers were unable to answer him;” Rabbi Joseph Kara, explains this line as follows: the brothers on the one hand believed him when he said that his name was Joseph; however they could not believe that he was the Joseph whom they had sold into slavery, and that in the interval he had risen to such an exalted position, ruler over mighty Egypt. (Compare how Joseph is described in Psalms 105,17-18)
  
  Verse 4
  
  גשו נא אלי, ויגשו, “please come physically closer to me; they did so.” Seeing that prior to this Joseph had ordered everybody in the hall with them to leave the hall, (45,1) and the Egyptians outside now trying very hard to listen to what went on inside, Joseph now tried to put more physical distance between them and himself and the brothers. He did not mind them to hear him ask the brothers: “is my father still alive?” He did not want them to hear the words: “you have sold me,” however, in order not to embarrass them publicly, and because he intended to settle Yaakov’s whole family in Egypt. If his employees had heard him refer to this, they would have objected to such wicked people settling in Egypt. They would conclude that if these people had been capable of selling their own brother, how much worse would they deal with Egyptian neighbours that were not related to them by blood? This is why he asked them to step closer so that the balance of the conversation could be conducted in whispers. An alternate interpretation: first Joseph told his brothers that he was their brother; next he asked if his father was still alive; He did not want to raise the subject of their having sold him in the presence of his brother Binyamin who had been unaware of that. He knew that this would greatly embarrass his brothers, and that Binyamin upon hearing of this would surely report it to their father. He therefore motioned the brothers to move over so that he could continue the conversation where Binyamin could not overhear it. [This editor cannot believe that Binyamin was in the same hall, as surely he had been taken into custody after the goblet had been found in his sack. He only released him in verse 13 when he instructed the brothers to return forthwith to the land of Canaan. Ed.]
  
  
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  קחו לכם מארץ מצרים עגלות, “take along for yourselves carriages from the land of Egypt;” these were meant to transport their wives and children, ונשאתם את אביכם, “and carry your father on your shoulders, and proceed to come here.” The fact that they did so is attested to by what we read in Genesis 46,3: וישאו בני ישראל את יעקב אביהם, ואת טפם ונשיהם בעגלות, “the Children of Israel carried their father; and their children and wives they transported in carriages.”
  
  
  Verse 20
  
  ועיניכם אל תחוס על כליכם, “and do not concern yourselves with your chattels;” Joseph knew that his father had been reluctant to abandon any chattels, from the time he crossed the river Yabok at night to retrieve anything he had left behind. (Genesis 32,23-25) Attributed to Rabbi Yaakov.
  
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  Verse 24
  
  אל תרגזו בדרך, “do not fear any danger on the way,” as I have complete control of the region. The root רגז is used here in the same sense as in Psalms 4,5: רגזו ואל תחטאו, “tremble and do not sin anymore.” We also encounter it in this sense in Deuteronomy 28,65: לב רגז which the Targum renders as “a fearful heart.”
  
  Verse 25
  
  
  
  Verse 26
  
  
  
  Verse 27
  
  וידברו אליו את כל דברי יוסף, “they said to him all the words Joseph had spoken. According to Rashi, Joseph conveyed to his father a code word that would convince him that only he could have known this. It concerned the subject matter that his father and he had been discussing when he accompanied him part of the way on his fateful journey. It dealt with someone being found dead on the road, someone whom no one knew and who had nothing on him that could identify him. This subject is discussed in chapter 21.of the Book of Deuteronomy. The hint was contained in the translation of the word וישלחהו, “he sent him off,” which the Targum renders in Genesis 12,20 when Pharaoh sent Avraham home as ואלויאו, “he gave him safe conduct.” Joseph had at the time told his father to go home, to which Yaakov had replied that it was a virtuous act to accompany someone departing some distance. He acquainted him at the time with the paragraph quoted from Deuteronomy chapter 21. He even pointed out the fact that failing to accompany a departing guest some distance, could make such a person liable to have to swear a sacred oath that he had not been negligent in this respect. The subject is discussed in the Talmud tractate Sotah chapter nine at length, where it is presumed that the word עגלות was supposed to refer to the heifer that would be the animal offered as atonement for this sin of negligence by the townspeople closest to the murdered person. Other commentators believe that what Yaakov and Joseph had been discussing was the subject of a carriage being pulled by a heifer (compare Sotah, folio 46.) In either event, it seems very forced to see in the carriages Joseph had sent to carry Yaakov’s family a reference to the word עגלה, heifer. It is more plausible that the hint had to do with the carriages used by the Jewish people to transport the parts of the Tabernacle that could not be carried on the shoulders of the Levites. (Compare Numbers 7,3)
  וירא את העגלות....ותחי רוח יעקב אביהם, “when he saw the carriages, their father Yaakov’s spirits revived.” He was aware that previously the Egyptian ruler had absolutely forbidden that any carriages leave the boundaries of Egypt [in order not to enable horses to be exported from Egypt. Ed.] Now Pharaoh had relented and instructed Joseph to bring his family to Egypt by means of carriages. This turnaround convinced Yaakov that he and his family would be welcome in Egypt. He realised that such a command could only have been given by Pharaoh himself. [He had attributed antisemitic feeling in Egypt as dating back to when his grandmother had almost been raped there, had G–d not interfered. (Compare Genesis chapter 12 and the derogatory term used by Potiphar’s wife about the ‘Hebrew’ slave in Genesis 39,18. Ed.]
  
  
  Verse 28
  
  רב, עוד יוסף בני חי, he addressed the driver of the carriages asking if his son Joseph is indeed still alive? (The word רב meaning “captain, driver” appears in this sense in Jonah, 1,6.) An alternate interpretation: Yaakov’s children kept on telling their father about Joseph’s position in Egypt, until their father got tired of listening to this and tried to stop them by saying: רב, “enough,” I now know that my son Joseph is still alive. He added that if this was really true, he would make the journey to Egypt in order to see him once more before he would die.
  
  
  
  
  
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  אנכי ארד עמך מצרימה, ואנכי אעלך גם עלה, “I (G–d speaking) will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also go back up with you (for you to be buried in the land of Canaan).” The wording when examined closely, implies that whereas G–d personally will accompany him on the way down to Egypt, an agent of His will supervise the return to the land of Canaan of his body when the time came. Proof for this interpretation is the fact that although 70 of his descendants have been mentioned as coming to Egypt, only sixty nine names have been listed, i.e. G–d Himself is considered as making up the seventieth. (Compare Deuteronomy 10,22) When the Israelites eventually would leave Egypt there was also one missing to make up the number 600000, this ‘one’ being G–d.” [This is why no precise number was quoted in Exodus 12,37 for the number of males that left Egypt, although on several counts in the desert, each time a precise number of the adult males is given. Ed.] Another interpretation: the words: אנכי אעלך גם עלה, are a correction by G–d for what Yaakov had thought of as a “descent” to Egypt. G–d tells him that far from being a “descent,” it will be seen as an ascent, by the time his descendants will leave Egypt.
  
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  בנותיו ובנות בניו, “his daughters and the daughters of his sons;” Rashi explains this line as referring to Serach, daughter of Asher, and Yocheved, daughter of Levi. This sounds peculiar as it does not explain who Yaakov’s “daughters (pl)” were. We have been told only about one daughter Dinah, born for him by Leah. She was the only daughter listed as descending to Egypt. The twin daughters born to him had all died before that time. Leah’s descendants numbered 33 as stated explicitly. (verse 15) It is possible to include daughters-in-law, but those were not included in the count. My personal problem with this verse are the words (author writing) כל נפש בניו ובנותיו שלושים ושלש, “the total number of souls his sons and daughters were thirty three.” (verse 15) It is not possible to understand this number as including any daughters-in-law, as these were not counted, seeing that they are specifically excluded in verse 26 as not having been included in the count. Maybe that what Rashi had in mind was to teach us that granddaughters were considered like daughters.
  
  
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  הבאה מצרימה שבעים, “the ones who had arrived in Egypt numbered seventy.” The Torah, in this verse, meant to include Yaakov himself. The beginning of the subject proves that this is so, as in verse 8 we have been told: “the following are the names of the Children of Israel who came to Egypt, ‘Yaakov’ and his sons, his first born son being Reuven. The word “Yaakov” in this verse is superfluous unless it was meant to include him in the count. The reason why Yaakov was included in the count with Leah’s children was that only 32 names were mentioned and he was needed to make up the number 33 at the end of that paragraph. Not only that, it was certainly fitting that the founding father should be included in the first of the four groups of people counted. If you wanted to know the precise number of Yaakov’s family in Egypt i.e. seventy, counting Joseph and his family, [assuming Joseph’s wife was Dinah’s offspring Ed.] this is how it was composed. If you wish to accept my interpretation that G–d made up the missing umber, you do not have to include Yaakov himself in the number.
  
  
  Verse 28
  
  
  
  Verse 29
  
  ויעל לקראת ישראל, “he (Joseph) went up to meet Israel.” The reason that the expression עלה is used here is to tell the reader that for Joseph it was tantamount to a spiritual ascent to go and greet his father and to pay him this honour. Alternately, the reason why he is described as ascending, is that the province of Goshen is situated on a higher plateau than the Nile delta in which most of the Egyptians dwelt. Goshen borders on the land of Israel which is a land of many hills and mountains. This is also clear from Joshua 15,49-51. Seeing that Yehudah had been sent ahead by his father to prepare his residence in Goshen, that region became part of the ancestral heritage of the tribe of Yehudah in due course. The Egyptians never challenged the Israelites having annexed that province.
  
  
  Verse 30
  
  
  
  Verse 31
  
  אעלה ואגידה לפרעה, “I will go up and tell Pharaoh;” was Egypt then a hilly country that the Torah describes Joseph as “going up” to Pharaoh? Up until now, when Joseph had been speaking with his father, he had first descended from his chariot in order to do so. Now he is quoted as again mounting his chariot in order to tell Pharaoh about his father’s having come to Egypt.
  
  
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  כי תועבת מצרים כל רעה צאן, “for the Egyptians despised people whose vocation was the rising and tending of sheep. The reason they did so was because they hated sheep meat, i.e. mutton, just as they hated goats’ meat. This was something not unique to the Egyptians. This is also why they could not sit at the same table as the Hebrews when the latter were being served lamb. They harboured a deep aversion for anyone stemming from the Euphrates-Tigris region. They considered the Sumerians as a lower class of human beings. (Exodus 8,9) The Hebrews claimed that they would insult the Egyptians if they slaughtered their animals as service to their G–d inside the boundaries of the land of Egypt. They would risk being stoned by them. It is interesting that they did not refer to being just killed, but they spelled out by which method they would be killed, a method which in Jewish law is the most severe kind of death penalty. Our author states that he has also heard a different interpretation of our verse. The Egyptians considered anyone slaughtering sheep or goats and eating their meat as guilty of the kind of perversion that would stamp such a person as a subhuman species. We find the word רועה, which we normally translate as “tending,” i.e. shepherding, also used by the Targum for “providing food” (transitive) on Genesis 48,15 by Yaakov in his blessings for his children when on his deathbed.
  
  
  
  
  
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  ומקצה אחיו לקח חמשה אנשים, “and from his weaker brothers he singled out five men, etc;” the word  מקצה is interpreted by Rashi here as the “weaker ones.” Rashi presumably took his cue from the spelling of the word חמשה here without the customary letter י after the letter מ.
  
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  כמה ימי שני חייך, “for how many years have you lived thus far?” Pharaoh was probably prompted to ask this unusual question of his guest as he looked as if he was exceedingly old. Yaakov, when replying, did not refer to his having “lived” at all, but described his sojourn on earth as something of a very temporary nature, ימי מגורי, “the days of my being a stranger,” as opposed to ימי שני חיי, “the days of the years the life,” the way the Torah had described the life of his grandmother Sarah at her death, reported in Genesis 23,1. He indicated that as opposed to his forefathers, he had had a very troubled life thus far. This resulted in his features reflecting this. An explanation by the Midrash of this strange sounding conversation between the ruler of the civilised world at the time and Joseph’s father: As soon as Yaakov had uttered the words that his life compared unfavourably with that of his father and grandfather, G–d told him “I have saved you from Esau and Lavan, I restored your daughter Dinah to you, as well as your son Joseph, and you have the nerve to describe your life on earth in negative terms when speaking to Pharaoh? I am now forced to make sure that you did not tell a lie, by shortening your lifespan when compared to that of your father and grandfather. He therefore deducted a year for each of the words in this reply by Yaakov, i.e. 33 words, so that he died at 147 years, 33 years younger than the lifespan of his father who had lived for 180 years. [This includes the opening blessing and the concluding blessing Yaakov gave to Pharaoh. Ed.]
  
  
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  ויחי יעקב, “Yaakov “lived;” Rashi explains why there is not even the space of a single letter between the last letter of the previous portion and the first letter of this portion. It is the only time this occurs in the Torah. He writes that as soon as the eyes of Yaakov closed for the last time, so did the spiritual eyes of the Jewish nation and their hearts, on account of the hardships experienced when they became enslaved. [He adds that an alternate explanation is that seeing he was about to reveal parts of the future to his children, G–d immediately deprived him of his prophetic insights, preventing him form carrying out his wish. Ed.] The difficulty with Rashi’s first explanation is that Joseph’s rule in Egypt continued for another 54 years, during which period the Jews enjoyed preferred social status. Also, how do we know that Yaakov had at all been privy to what would happen to his descendants after his death, and when? We would have to answer that in his dream of the ladder he watched the ascension of that ladder by the guardian angel of brother Esau, as Rashi had explained in his commentary of B’reshit Rabbah, 68,12, and as we know from Pirke de Rabbi Eliezer chapter 35.
  'ויחי יעקב בארץ מצרים וגו, “Why did the Torah mention the number of years that Yaakov lived in Egypt? We could have figured this out from the data the Torah already provided us with about how old Joseph was when he left the house of father, (Genesis 37,2) how old he was when he was appointed as viceroy by Pharaoh, and from the age of Yaakov (130) at the time of his death which is listed in the same verse. The point the Torah wished us to appreciate is that just as for the first seventeen years of his life Yaakov, his father, had provided for him, during the last seventeen years of his life, his son Joseph provided for his father.
  
  Verse 29
  
   ויקרבו ימי ישראל למות, “Israel’s days of living approached their end;” wherever the expression קריבה, “approach,” is used in the Torah in connection with death, it signals that the person concerned died prematurely, i.e. before the time originally allocated to him at birth, or younger than the lifespan of his father. We find the same type of wording in Kings I 1,2 ויקרבו ימי דוד למות, where the approach of death of King David is discussed, the reason being that he did not live as long as his paternal forefathers Boaz, Oved, and Yishai  Their combined lifetimes were over 400 years, whereas David died at the age of 70. (Compare B’reshit Rabbah 96,4)
  ועשית עמדי חסד ואמת, “and perform for me an act of true kindness;” the reason why Yaakov used both the adjectives “kind, and true,” was that Joseph, as his son, was obligated to bury his father, whereas he was not obligated to transport his remains to the cave of Machpelah in the land of Canaan. Yaakov is aware that what he is asking is more than he has a right to ask of a person of such a high rank.
  אל נא תקברני במצרים “please do not bury me in Egypt.” When Rashi explains Yaakov’s motivation as being that he foresaw that Egypt would be smitten with the plague of lice, etc., this does not sound plausible. He had no reason to fear that his remains would be affected by that plague, seeing that we have a tradition that even his son Binyamin was not affected by that plague; his father Yaakov surely would be even less affected by it. (Talmud tractate Baba Batra folio 17) In order for Rashi to be correct, we would have to assume that Yaakov was unaware that his son Binyamin and his descendants would not be afflicted by these lice, something that seems unlikely. One of Rashi’s grandsons, Rash’bam, claims that Yaakov wanted to prevent the Egyptians of being spared the ten plagues seeing that he had been buried in that soil. This would be due to his having been named Yisrael, which conferred a much higher spiritual status on him. (Compare Jeremiah 50,17 where he has been referred to as שה פזורה, “a scattered sheep,” as opposed to the Egyptians who are referred to by several of our prophets as donkeys, i.e. their flesh being described as similar to the flesh of donkeys. (Ezekiel 23,20) The Torah writes that the firstborn male donkey has to be redeemed by a שה, i.e. a sheep or lamb (Exodus 13,13) the implication being that only descendants of Yaakov can possibly serve as redemption for Egyptians. If that animal is not redeemed, it must be killed by its owner. (B’reshit Rabbah 96,5)
  
  Verse 30
  
  אנכי אעשה כדבריך, “I am going to do in accordance with your instructions.” According to the Midrash, Yaakov’s request to be buried in the land of Canaan inspired Joseph to make the same request of his brothers when the time came for him to die. We find that Joseph indeed made his brothers swear that his remains would be taken with the Israelites at the time of the redemption, and Moses personally, was involved in locating his coffin which was carried with the Israelites for 40 years until eventually being interred near Sh’chem in the tribal territory of Ephraim, one of his sons. He used the same formula when making his request as had his father at the time. (Compare Genesis 50,24-26) The choice of the Torah describing Joseph’s response as “the words of” instead of simply “his request,” or something similar, is why Rashi (in Exodus 3,18) says that before Moses came to Egypt and introduced himself as the redeemer, G–d told him that the elders would listen to him as he introduced himself with the words: פקוד יפקוד, that Joseph had used at the time when he stood at his father’s deathbed and they spoke about the eventual redemption, long before even the enslavement had commenced. This was also the reason why Yaakov had used this formula for describing the redemption.
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  ויאמר ליוסף, “he said to Joseph;” according to our sages, the subject in this verse was Ephrayim, who informed his father of Yaakov’s illness; (Tanchuma section 6 on this portion) Rabbi Moshe adds that there is an oblique hint of this in the text, seeing that the letters in the word ויאמר and the word אפרים when reading the alphabet backwards, starting with the letter ת, are in the relative same position as when read from the right to left, i.e. the letter ו in the word ויאמר is the sixth letter in the alphabet when read from right to left, whereas the letter פ is in the sixth place when the alphabet is read from left to right commencing with the latter ת. (the other letters are identical) What we learn from this is that whereas Joseph was not a frequent visitor in the province of Goshen where his father resided, his sons spent much more of their time with their grandfather, so that they were aware of any changes in the state of his health. The words ויקרא לבנו ליוסף, “he called for his son, for Joseph,” i.e. sent a messenger to ask for his presence, indicated that he did not want to wait for Joseph’s next visit. I have heard from Rabbi Sh’muel of blessed memory that the reason that Joseph did not frequently visit his father was that he was afraid that Yaakov would ask him how he had come to be in Egypt in the first place, in which case he would have had to tell him that his brothers had sold him, etc., as a result of which his father would have cursed the brothers. This in turn would have spelled the destruction of the civilised world, seeing that when he had cursed Rachel quite unintentionally, Rachel died prematurely as a result, although the teraphim of Lavan had never even been found. We cannot even imagine what the result of Yaakov cursing ten of his twelve sons would have meant.
  
  Verse 2
  
   ויתחזק ישראל, “Israel strengthened himself.” He did not wish to bless his sons while bedridden, as he said that the blessing of a person clearly on the brink of dying, would not be considered as having been given by someone in possession of all his faculties.
  
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   אפרים ומנשה כראובן ושמעון יהיו לי, “Ephrayim and Menashe shall be for me as possessing the same status as Reuven and Shimon.” It is notable that the numerical value of the words כראובן ושמעון יהיו לי, are identical to the numerical value of אפרים ומנשה [with a difference of only “1, the former amounting to “1” more.” Ed.]
  
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   ויוצא יוסף אותם מעם ברכיו, “and Joseph brought them out from between his knees.” He did so as they had cleaved to their grandfather physically and had kissed him and embraced him. Joseph now wished them to assume a dignified posture to enable Yaakov to place his hands on their heads. Each one should receive his blessing while Yaakov had one hand on the head of each one of them.
  
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  שכל את ידיו, seeing that Joseph had lined them up with Menashe on Yaakov’s right side, he was forced to cross his hand in order to give Ephrayim his blessing with his right hand. Although Menashe was Joseph’s firstborn son, Yaakov wished to place his right hand on the head of Ephrayim. We encounter a similar situation in the Book of Daniel,9,9 [where the author recalls G–d’s merciful attitude of forgiving before even having mentioned why that forgiveness was required. Ed.]
  
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   ויקרא בהם שמי ושם אבותי, “and let my name be known through them together with the name of my fathers;” He prayed that just as the 12 tribes who were physical sons of Yaakov were described as his sons, so these two grandsons should also be described as his sons.
  
  Verse 17
  
   וירע בעיניו, “it displeased him (Joseph).” I heard from Rabbi Levi Yitzchok that the reason that Joseph was displeased was that he thought that he, Joseph, was a fool not to have known in which order to position his sons for the blessing, whereas he had done so correctly.
  
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   וישם את אפרים לפני מנשה, “thus he placed Ephrayim ahead of Menashe.” When did this blessing and its order become fulfilled, historically? When you look at the consecration rites for the Tabernacle in the desert, in Numbers 7,48, you will find that the prince of Ephrayim presented his offering ahead of the tribe of Menashe, who did so only in verse 54 of that chapter. In this way the statement in Isaiah 44,26, that G–d fulfils the words of his servant, was fulfilled. (B’reshit Rabbah, 97,5)
  
  Verse 21
  
  
  
  Verse 22
  
  ואני נתתי לך, “I have given (allocated) to you;” Rabbi Moshe raises the point that Yaakov was directly responsible for fuelling jealousy between the brothers, commencing already with giving his son Joseph a garment that was visibly more expensive than those worn by his brothers. On account of this error in judgment, the whole family descended to Egypt, only to become enslaved for hundreds of years after initially having been welcomed there. (Compare Talmud, tractate Shabbat folio 10) We must also marvel that Joseph followed in his father’s footsteps by giving his full brother Binyamin far more valuable gifts than he gave to his other brothers (Genesis 45,22). In order to answer these questions we must remember that what Yaakov gave to Joseph was done while he was relatively young and immature, younger than 17 years old, an age at which Ishmael in Genesis 21,14 has still been described by the Torah as a ילד, “a child;” at that time the brothers who were jealous of him had reason to be so. What had he done to deserve preferential treatment by his father? Now that his dreams had come true, not only did they not feel jealous of him, but they were grateful and proud of his achievements. Moreover, they had become economically dependent upon him. Even if he had not treated them well, they were legally obligated to honour him on account of his position. If he gave Binyamin more gifts, that was easily explained by the fact that he was his only full brother. However, what bothers me is that at a time when he had not yet revealed to the brothers who he was, (Genesis 43,34) the brothers of Binyamin must have asked themselves for the reason that this ruler of Egypt who had –according to their assumption- never previously laid eyes on Binyamin, should have given him five times as much as he gave to them. Surely, this would have aroused the other brothers’ jealousy of Binyamin. However, the brothers found a reason for this also, as they considered it as Joseph compensating Binyamin for having insisted that he make the journey to Egypt just because he had not trusted the brothers’ statement that he even existed. Furthermore, I believe that Joseph, already at that point, had decided to reveal his true identity. He was certain that as soon as they would find out that he, Joseph, was a full brother of Binyamin, they would not begrudge him the additional gifts. Some commentators explain the words: שכם אחד, in our verse, the extra portion of ancestral parts of the land of Israel, allocated by Yaakov to Joseph, as referring to the grave in that city in which the remains of Joseph would be interred after the Israelites taking over that country. (Compare Joshua 24,32) The matter can be compared to a parable of thieves who had robbed the owner of a vineyard of a full casket of wine when they were found out by the owner. That owner asked the thieves to do him one favour; seeing that they had already emptied the casket of its contents he asked them to at least return the empty casket to him. Joseph had been sold in Sh’chem. The time had come to at least bring his remains back there. (Compare B’reshit Rabbah, 85,3).
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
   האספו ואגידה לכם, “gather around so that I can tell you, etc.;” in the next verse we read הקבצו ושמעו, “assemble and listen!” Here Yaakov is about to tell his sons that they will go into exile. On the other occasion he refers to the second exile. (B’reshit Rabbah 99,6)
   את אשר יקרה אתכם, “what will befall you.” Yaakov referred to what would occur at the end of the 430 years when the people of Israel would be redeemed from slavery and exile. The wording used by Yaakov forces us to give this interpretation to his words. If this is not what he referred to, the Torah should not have added: באחרית היםים, “at the end of the years (that had been predicted),” but באחרית ימים בסוף העולם, “at the end of the history of the present world. I have heard an explanation that understands Yaakov as having alluded to the end of the first 5000 years of human history. (B’reshit Rabbah 98,2 and 99,5) Yaakov therefore was prevented by G–d from revealing whatever he had foreseen concerning that era. Yaakov could not understand why the vision was suddenly concealed from him, and he asked what his sons could be guilty of seeing that the letters ח and ט, both letters of the word חט(א) in the word “sin,” do not appear as part of the names of a single one of them. He was told by the Holy Spirit that at the same time none of the names of his sons contains the letters ק orצ , the letters forming the word קץ, end, (and צדיק, righteous) which are a prerequisite for such “end” being revealed to the bearer of such a name. The Holy Spirit added that as far as his having called upon his sons to gather around him was concerned, how come that he invited only them, but failed to include the Holy Spirit in his invitation? (Compare Isaiah, 43,22) ולא אותי קראת יעקב, “but you have not called upon Me, Yaakov?!” He was told that it was not part of his particular task, (virtue) to go revealing G–d’s secrets. (Proverbs 11,13) When Yaakov heard this, he changed course and began to address each son individually, i.e. ראובן בכורי אתה, “Reuven, you are my firstborn;”
  
  Verse 2
  
  
  
  Verse 3
  
  ראובן בכורי אתה, Reuven you, who are my firstborn,” and who should have received a double share of my inheritance; and you who should also have shouldered the yoke of being the priest among your siblings, and from whom eventually the first King of the Israelites should have been crowned, (in accordance with Chronicles II 21,3) “and the title of Royalty he gave to Yehoram for he was the firstborn,” you will not enjoy all this as it has been transferred to Joseph, and the priesthood to Levi, and the Royalty to Yehudah, all because you have been as unstable as water, as a kettle that boils over and spills its contents.” (Compare Chronicles I 5,1) As a result, the only privilege a firstborn enjoys that you still possess is the hollow title of having been the firstborn of my sons. In this respect you are comparable to water, the first physical element in the universe. You are the original, (oldest) of the people that make up the Israelite nation, the 12 tribes.” Water is insubstantial; it cannot be poured out completely, as opposed to something dry which can be emptied without the loss of any part of it. In the Talmud, tractate Shabbat folio 55, where the meaning of the word פחז in our verse is discussed by different scholars, [there is a lengthy debate about what constituted the sin of a number of illustrious people such as Reuven, the sons of High Priest Eli, Solomon, Yoash, Pinchos, David, King Yoshia, and others Ed.] each offering a different opinion; the conclusion arrived at is that the scholars of the Mishnah agreed to disagree. The common denominator of their discussion is that the text describing their respective sins cannot be understood at its face value but is a metaphor describing a character weakness on the occasion. (B’reshit Rabbah 99,6)
  
  Verse 4
  
  כי עלית על משכבי אביך, “you went up to your father’s bed;” On which occasion did this take place? At the time when Leah traded Yaakov’s turn to spend the night with Rachel for the mandrakes her son Reuven had found. (Genesis 30,15). (Br’eshit Rabbah 96.4)
  חללת יצועי עלה, “you did defile Him Who used to ascend my couch. (The Holy Spirit)” Yaakov’s curse was to remain in force until Moses Deuteronomy 33,6 said: יחי ראובן ואל ימות, “may Reuven live and not die.” In the meantime it had been Moses who was allowed to ascend to G–d’s residence on the Mount; (Exodus ומשה עלה 19,3). An alternate interpretation of this phrase: “you have desecrated my couch which until that time had been on a higher level than that of my father and grandfather, each of whom had had a son that was not loyal to the Jewish tradition.” Yaakov, as if speaking about a third person, when he said משכבי אביך, “the couch of your father,” instead of: “my couch,” repeated this method when saying יצועי עלה, “he ascended my bed.”
  
  Verse 5
  
   שמעון ולוי אחים, כלי חמס מכרותיהם, “Shimon and Levi are brothers, their kinship is the use they make of weapons.” Yaakov implied that whereas they had displayed their being brothers when avenging the rape of innocent Dinah, their sister, they had failed to do so in their treatment of Joseph, their brother. (B’reshit Rabbah,98,5 and 99,7)
  
  Verse 6
  
  
  
  Verse 7
  
  
  
  Verse 8
  
  יהודה, אתה יודוך אחיך, “Yehudah your brothers will agree to your becoming king;” (your father’s sons will prostrate themselves before you [end of the sentence] (B’reshit Rabbah 99,8) We find this prediction having come true in the time of King David.. The numerical value of the letters in the word “Yehudah,” equals 30, corresponding to the 30 qualities required of a person who is fit to become Royalty. (Ethics of our fathers, 6,6) The thirty qualities (virtues, and privileges accorded) referred to have been enumerated in the Talmud tractate Sanhedrin, folio 18. An alternate interpretation of the words: יודוך אחיך: all the Israelites collectively, not only the members of his tribe will become known as יהודים, “Jews,” derived from his name Yehudah. (B’reshit Rabbah 98,6) Not only this, but the Messiah, the king of the Israelites after the final redemption will be descended from him.
  
  Verse 9
  
   גור אריה יהודה, all young free roaming animals are known as גור. Yehudah is distinguished as being described as a young lion, the king of the beasts. This was a hint that David, in due course, would be descended from him. The numerical value of the first letters in the three words:גור אריה יהודה, is the same as that of the three letters in the name דוד =14.
  מטרף בני עלית, “you removed yourself from the kill, my son;” [our author does not accept this as the appropriate translation. Ed] He interprets the line as a prophecy, i.e. David’s eventually becoming the King of all of Israel, will be based on the skills he will demonstrate in overcoming attacks upon him by a bear and a lion, and his having prevailed in those encounters. (Compare Samuel I 17,36) His performance when facing Goliath was witnessed by many, in addition.
  
  Verse 10
  
  לא יסור שבט מיהודה, according to a Midrash this line is to be understood as in Jeremiah 2,21: “it will not blossom;” the word appears in this sense there סורי הגפן נכריה, “the vine blossomed into an alien vine.” In other words: Yaakov cautions that the rod of Yehudah as a ruler will not blossom forth
  עד כי יבא שילה, “not until the Tabernacle in Shiloh will be ruined. The word יבא in this line does not mean “he will come,” but is an expression denoting ruin, just as in Isaiah 60,20: לא יבא עוד שמשך, “your sun will never set again;” An alternate interpretation of this verse: instead of referring to Yehudah’s ascent to the throne being still a long way off, Yaakov promises that once on the throne of the Kingdom of Yehudah, the rod symbolising the power of the holder of it will not be usurped per by another tribe, as it had been done after Saul’s dynasty collapsed until the coming of the Messiah, symbolised by the word שילה, in other words, not ever. G–d confirmed Yaakov’s promise to David in Samuel II 7,16: through the prophet Natan. A third possible interpretation of our verse; David will not lose the throne of all of Israel until after the fateful assembly in Sh’chem,- very close to Shiloh- when ten tribes crowned Jerobam as their king, and Rechavam, Solomon’s son retained the loyalty only of his own tribe and that of the tribe of Binyamin. Still another interpretation of our verse: in spite of many revolutions, exiles etc. that will occur after the first King from the tribe of Yehudah, David will ascend the throne, when the Messiah will arrive who will be from the tribe of Yehudah, and he will rule without anyone disputing his right to do so. (Attributed to Rav Rachmiel? Yitzchok)
  
  Verse 11
  
  
  
  Verse 12
  
  חכלילי עינים מיין, ‘he will be red-eyed from wine;” having drunk a great deal of wine, the colour of his face will reflect this. (Compare Samuel I 16,12). [The comment is complimentary in nature. Ed.]
  ולבן שנים מחלב, “and his teeth whiter than milk.” The phrase is a metaphor for wishing good health, even one’s teeth being free from white milk. We find a similar metaphor in Lamentations 4,7: צחו מחלב, “whiter than milk;”
  
  Verse 13
  
  והוא לחוף אניות, “and he shall be in ports for ships.” Having used the expression לחוף ימים in the beginning of this verse for Zevulun, Yaakov repeats the simile for the ports in which Zevulun’s ships will anchor. There are towns that are situated right next to the shores of the sea, as opposed to others which are further inland, making it more difficult for ships unloading their cargoes to transport them to their customers. They will therefore prefer to anchor further away from such shores, so that other towns will enjoy the trade generated by ships anchoring there. The shores in the territory of Zevulun will make landing and unloading there easy for these sailors.
  
  Verse 14
  
  יששכר חמור גרם, “Issachar is a bony donkey;” in the Talmud tractate Niddah, folio 31 this line is understood as Yaakov saying that a bony donkey was the cause of Issachar having been born. How so? When Yaakov came home from the field and Leah heard the donkey he was riding on braying, she went out of her tent to meet him and brought him to her tent. During that night she became pregnant with Issachar. (B’reshit Rabbah 99,10)
  
  Verse 15
  
  
  
  Verse 16
  
  
  
  Verse 17
  
  
  
  Verse 18
  
  'לישועתך קויתי ה, “I hope for Your salvation Hashem!” When Yaakov in his prophetic vision of future events saw Shimshon the mighty warrior and what he accomplished, he felt forced to exclaim that Israel’s future would not be in the hands of human warriors but would be secured only by Hashem. In the Book of Judges 15,16, where Shimshon is related as having killed one thousand Philistines with the bone of a donkey as his only weapon, that immediately afterwards he threw that bone to the ground and acknowledged G–d as the source of his success. (verse 18 there). This is also hinted at in his blessing of Dan where the point is made that though Dan will be successful in attacking his adversaries like a snake lying in ambush, he will do so confident of G–d’s salvation.
  
  Verse 19
  
   גד גדוד יגודנו, “Troops will be called up from Gad;” if you were to question how this tribe would secure its livelihood, seeing its men of military age will be conscripted as soldiers? The tribe would obviously have to be blessed with independent wealth in order to succeed. This is why in the next verse we hear about the fertile fields of the tribe of Asher which would supply also the needs of the neighbouring tribe of Gad. The soldiers’ physical needs would be supplied by that tribe, i.e. he would supply the King’s needs, the King having to pay the soldiers.There is an interesting story related in the Talmud, tractate Menachot folio 85, about the people of Laodicea being in need of oil. They appointed an agent and instructed him: “go and purchase for us one hundred measures of oil.” The agent first came to Jerusalem and was told “go to Tyre.” He came to Tyre, and was told: “go to Gush halab.” When he came to Gush Halab, he was told to go to a certain farmer on a certain field. He went there and found the farmer breaking up the earth around his olive trees. When he asked the farmer if he had a hundred measures of oil, he was told that the farmer did have it. He was asked, however, to wait until the farmer had completed the work he was engaged in. After the farmer had finished his work, he threw down his tools and went on his way, removing any stones that were in his way. The agent thought to himself: “has this man really the quantity of oil that I wish to purchase?” He thought that the Jews had tried to make a fool of him. As soon as he reached his hometown, that man’s maidservant brought out a bowl of hot water and he washed his hands and feet. She then brought out to him a golden bowl of oil, and he dipped in it his hands and feet, thus fulfilling the verse “and let him dip his feet in oil.” (Deuteronomy 33,24, Moses’ blessing of Asher) After they had eaten and drunk, the man measured out to the agent a hundred measures of oil, and he asked the agent, if per chance he could use more than that. The agent replied in the affirmative, but added that he had not brought enough money with him for the extra amount. The man said that he would give it to him and would accompany him to his home where he could pay him. He proceeded to measure out for the agent another eighteen thousand measures of oil. It is reported that he hired every horse, mule, camel and ass in the land of Israel. When he reached his hometown, all the people came out and applauded him.” Do not applaud me,” he said; applaud this man, my companion, who measured out for me a hundred measures worth of oil, and to whom I still owe for eighteen thousand measures of oil. This illustrates the meaning of the verse in Proverbs 13,7: “some make themselves rich, yet have nought; another impoverishes himself, but has great wealth.”
  
  Verse 20
  
  
  
  Verse 21
  
   נפתלי אילה שלוחה, “Naftali (its territory) is (like) a free running doe;” its territory produces fruit that ripens easily and quickly, as if it had been chased and tries to escape the net it has fallen into.(B‘reshit Rabbah 99,12)
  הנותן אמרי שפר, “he conveyed pleasant messages.” It thanked the Lord for having saved it from death after being hunted. Yaakov now refers to him in the masculine mode, perhaps because the doe is usually referred to in the masculine mode in other languages. Another interpretation: the subject here is Naftali himself, and refers to Naftali giving thanks to his Creator for having been given the chance to escape the net. Still another interpretation: the territory of Naftali can be compared to that of a doe after it had been skinned, its skin not having stuck to its flesh so that it could be put to good use while still intact. (Compare Leviticus 1,6) The word שלוחה, may refer what the Talmud describes as the reason why the land of Israel is known as ארץ צבי, “the land of the antelope,” namely produces fruit in such large quantities that it cannot be hidden. (Talmud tractate Ketuvot folio 112, i.e. “its flesh cannot be hidden completely once its skin had been flayed). The word שלוחה may be understood as in Song of Songs 4,14, “your arid areas”) i.e. even the relatively arid areas in its territory are extremely fruitful. The word אמרי in this verse may be understood as in Isaiah 17,6: שנים, שלושה גרגרים בראש אמיר , “two even three berries on the topmost branch.”
  
  Verse 22
  
   בן פורת יוסף, “the land allocated to the tribe of Joseph is fruitful as a tree planted near a well of water.”
  בנות צעדה עלי שור, (normal translation) “girls stepped atop the wall.” Our author prefers to understand the word בנות here as being derived from the root בנה, “to build,” i.e. the land of Joseph is so fruitful that it extends right up to the built up areas of the cities. (Compare Joshua15,45 עקרון, ובנותיה וחצריה, “Ekron with its dependencies and villages.”) [Yaakov used such flowery metaphors that it is easy to understand that our sages had difficulty in being certain of their meanings. Ed.] (Attributed to a Rabbi R. David.)
  
  Verse 23
  
  
  
  Verse 24
  
  
  
  Verse 25
  
  ברכות שדים, “blessings of the breast;” Joseph’s descendants were to be blessed with having ample supplies of milk to nurse their infants. Their wombs should also be blessed, so that they will have many children. The blessing also implies that none of his offspring should be bereft by the death of young children or by having children that are unable to conceive.
  
  Verse 26
  
   עד תאות גבעות עולם, “as far as the hills at the end of the world;” according to Rashi, Yaakov was able to extend such blessings as a reward for having fed his father with the delicacies that he used to enjoy. G–d had already enlarged the scope of his blessings to him when He told him that his descendants would spread in all directions of the globe. (Genesis 28,14)
  
  Verse 27
  
  
  
  Verse 28
  
  
  
  Verse 29
  
  
  
  Verse 30
  
  במערה, “in the cave;” according to the plain meaning of the word, Yaakov requested to be buried in the cave of Machpelah. [The question is why he had to repeat this, having just requested it in the previous verse. Ed.] If you were to answer that there were many caves and many fields, and he wanted to specify which one he had in mind, and his son might not know which one he referred to, he spelled out the name of the cave and the field, In the event that people would object to his being buried there, Yaakov gave him details of the transaction that had taken place between Avraham, Efron and the townspeople at the time, and he presumably handed him the document that testified to the sale of both the field and the cave at the time. (Genesis 23,16-18) He left out no detail that could be considered pertinent to ensure that there could be no legal impediment that Joseph would have to face.
  
  Verse 31
  
  
  
  Verse 32
  
  
  
  Verse 33
  
  ויאסוף רגליו אל המיטה, “he gathered his feet into the bed;” he had previously gotten up in bed in order to give a blessing to Joseph’s sons as we know from Genesis 48,2, where he was described as summoning his strength and sitting upright on his bed. As soon as he had completed his blessings he made ready to die.
  
  
  
  
  
  Verse 1
  
  
  
  Verse 2
  
   ויחנטו הרופאים, “the physicians embalmed, etc.” they made his bodily remains stench-proof, emptied his bowels, stomach, etc.; afterwards they inserted various spices into the orifices of his body so that it would not decompose. We have a similar expression in Song of Songs 2,13: התאנה חנטה פגיה, “the fruit of the fig tree were sweetened.”
  
  Verse 3
  
  
  
  Verse 4
  
  
  
  Verse 5
  
  
  
  Verse 6
  
  
  
  Verse 7
  
  
  
  Verse 8
  
  
  
  Verse 9
  
  
  
  Verse 10
  
  
  
  Verse 11
  
  
  
  Verse 12
  
  
  
  Verse 13
  
  
  
  Verse 14
  
   הוא ואחיו וכל העולים אתו, “he and his brothers and all those accompanying him. When the procession left Egypt the Egyptians were at the head of the procession (verses 7 and 8) It appears that after the Egyptians had witnessed the honour bestowed on the bier carrying Yaakov, many crowned heads participating in paying him tribute, the Egyptians were impressed by this so that on the return journey Joseph and his brothers were given the honour of leading the procession.
  
  Verse 15
  
  
  
  Verse 16
  
   ויצוו אל יוסף , “they sent a messenger to deliver an urgent message to Joseph;” why did they not do so during the lifetime of their father? During the lifetime of their father they had thought it best not to resurrect old hatreds, etc. they assumed that the past had been buried. When they had passed the pit into which they had thrown Joseph they observed how Joseph recited the blessing appropriate for people who had been the witness and beneficiaries of Divine miracles. When they saw this, they were afraid that he had not forgiven them for the past.
  
  Verse 17
  
  
  
  Verse 18
  
  
  
  Verse 19
  
   ?כי התחת אלהים אני, the word תחת here must be understood as in Deuteronomy, 1,21: אל תחת, “do not be afraid!” When Joseph realised the fear of the brothers that he would now take revenge on them he was broken hearted, telling them that he was far too G–d fearing, to act in such a manner.
  
  Verse 20
  
  
  
  Verse 21
  
  וידבר אל לבם, “he addressed their hearts trying to put them at ease.” According to Rashi, he used logic to convince them of his sincerity, by saying that if ten lamps had not been able to extinguish one lamp, how could he a single (lamp) individual, hope to extinguish ten lamps? He referred to the smoke emanating from the fire in each lamp.
  
  Verse 22
  
  
  
  Verse 23
  
  
  
  Verse 24
  
  
  
  Verse 25
  
  ויאמר יוסף אל אחיו....וישבע יוסף, “Joseph spoke to his brothers and he made them swear an oath;” It is difficult to understand why Joseph repeated the words פקוד יפקוד. We would have expected him to say: “when G–d will remember you and take you out of Egypt, take my remains with you.” This would have been parallel to Yaakov’s last request from his son Joseph.” (Compare Genesis 47,30) We may be correct in assuming that the first time he used the expression פקוד יפקוד, this was meant as a reference to how Yaakov his father had introduced a similar request.
  פקוד יפקוד אלהים, “G–d will most certainly remember you, etc.” The numerical value of the letters in the word פקוד is 190. It was meant as a hint that G–d would shorten the decree according to which the people would have to wait 400 years for their redemption by 190 years. As a result, they would have spent only 210 years in Egypt at the time of the Exodus. The root פקד has been used as meaning “to be absent” (in the passive mode נפקד) in Numbers 31,49 where the officers returning from the punitive campaign against Midian thanked G–d for having returned without having lost a single soldier in that campaign. Our author comments that the word spelled without the letter ו as it appears in our text invalidates the numerical values quoted. [His attempt at resolving this does not sound convincing to this Editor ]