Category: Beraishis Ch. 12

Avraham is told to go; to remove himself from his homeland, his birthplace and family.

Judaism places great value on Family, Community and Nationhood.

Family, the home, is the private sphere in which a person thrives.

A homeland grants a person civic status and independence.

The community should represent exalted values. On this premise Judaism attaches importance to the community and forbids the individual from detaching himself from the community.

However if it becomes necessary, if the principle adopted by the majority is untrue – then go it alone and serve God!

This was the attitude demanded of Avraham as the starting point from his own mission and that of the nation that was to descend from him. True, strong ties bind a person to his homeland and to his family. Nevertheless, the bond that attaches us to God must be stronger than the bond that attaches us to homeland and family.

(Note the order that Avraham was commanded. First the homeland, then the community and lastly the home. This was in the order of difficulty.)

Yaakov’s Isolation: See Beraishis 28:10, page 598:
… We see Yaakov, like Avraham, carrying out his own “Lech Lecha”; we see him too – our last patriarch… going forth into isolation. But his departure differs from that of Avraham. True Avraham left his homeland to go into isolation, but he did so as head of his household, with relatives and with wealth. Yaakov, however, took nothing with him at all. Yaakov goes forth in order to establish a Jewish home. To achieve this he needs only the resources inherent in his personality. (see more there)

 

Beraishis 12:1
pages 286-290

STAGE ONE

“I will make of you a great nation, …”

The fulfillment of these words cover the period of time from the days of Yitzchak until the Exodus from Egypt.

Avraham was commanded to leave his place of security. Where all other nations develop out of their place of birth and are attached to their homeland, Avraham is to begin building his nation without a birthplace or land.

All the external conditions and natural circumstances will be against the formation of this nation, so it will be plain for all to see that God Himself is the Creator of Israel. (among the many indicators will be that Avraham and Sara were old and childless and Sara conceived miraculously.)

All other nations have their shared lands to form their common bond. In the case of Avraham it is his spirit that will be the uniting element that forms the nation.  That is the meaning of the expression referring to God as The God of Avraham – אלקי אברהם. The spirit of Avraham’s relationship with God and faith in God will be the base of the formation of this nation.

(Of course, God is the God of the whole universe as Malki Tzedek later says that God is the Master of all Heaven and Earth – קונה שמים וארץ (14:19). However the emphasis here on Avraham is about how Avraham perceived God and began to set the world straight on the correct understanding of God.)

Beraishis 12:2
pages 290-291

 

 

STAGE TWO

ואברכך – And I will Bless You

The nation will be planted in a land flowing with milk & honey.

This second stage of Jewish history, the creation of a nation out of Avraham, was to have become a reality in Eretz Yisrael. There, Israel would live apart from the nations. Not only would Israel be blessed, but blessing would spring from Israel. Israel would become a source of blessing.

Had we been worthy, all the promises to us that are to be fulfilled at the End of Days would have been fulfilled thousands of years ago, and the whole course of human history would have been radically different.

 

Beraishis 12:2
pages 291-292

ואגדלה שמך והיה ברכה
Choose to be a blessing to others and I will make your name great

The more correct translation of the phrase ואגדלה שמך is “And I wish to make your name great” (not “And I will make your name great”).

Also the next phrase “והיה ברכה” is correctly translated as “become a blessing” (not “and you will be a blessing).

God gives the Jewish people the free will to live up to the task He has set before them. He can only wish that they live up to the task. When the nation lives up to the task of 1) staying separate and then 2) being a blessing to others, then the fulfillment of Stage Two will occur. The nation will dwell prosperously and securely in their land.

The nation of Israel is to have no national politics and no national economics. The One who guaranteed its national welfare does not need to allocate funds, form coalitions, or conclude treaties. At His command are rain and sunshine, strength and life, power and victory.

While the rest of the world is concerned about “Let us make for ourselves a name”, with ambition to exert power and extend its domain – no matter what the cost (see above regarding Nimrod and his tower – GS) the nation of Avraham is to be devoted to the Divine aims of bringing harmony to mankind and to the world and restoring man to his former glory.

 

Beraishis 12:2
pages 292-293

 

 

ואברכה מברכיך ומקללך אאר ונברכו בך כל משפחת האדמה
I wish to bless those who bless you, and whoever brings a curse upon you, I will curse, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you.

This verse appears to allude to a third stage in which Avraham’s people are dependant on man. This is a stage in which man has the power to bless or to curse them.

This stage refers to Exile which would be decreed to befall this people if they would forget their mission and seek, like all other nations, to receive blessing, not to be a source of blessing.

(The nation will still retain the same mission, but exile will serve as an education to learn that their goal is to be blessed and not to place receiving blessing as their goal. – GS – culled from other places and implicit between the lines here.)

While living among the nations, those who value your principles and submit to the service of your God – those I will bless. (In other words God is wishing that we learn the lessons of exile and thus conduct ourselves in such a manner that furthering the Jewish nation will be a furthering of the well being of the nations).

God tells Avraham: I will go with you into exile. No nation will be able to deprive your descendants of their inner vitality, but the nations will be able to oppress your descendants and restrict the conditions of their existence and deprive them of the means for their development. Those nations – I will deprive them of the inner vitality necessary for their own development.

(See the original text for how all the above is lying in the wording of the text- GS)

 

Beraishis 12:3
pages 293-295

“.. They set out for the land of Canaan, and came to the land of Canaan.”

In 12:1 God never said He would direct Avraham where to go. God said “Go to the land I will show you”. Meaning, Avraham would only know that he went to the right place once God appeared to him at that place.

This begs the question, how did Avraham know in which direction to head out? Why did he choose to head to the land of Canaan?

Even though the land was inhabited by the descendants of Canaan, the most corrupt of Noach’s sons, there was still much potential for good in this land. Malki Tzedek (according to our tradition the same person as Shem, the son of Noach) was still alive and lived in this land. There were some others who learned from Shem there as well, and so this was a place where one could still find some inhabitants who had an awareness of God.

In addition, our tradition teaches that on Mount Moriah, Hevel the son of Adam brought his offering, as did Noach when he left the ark. Later it was on this same mountain that Avraham’s greatest test would take place, the Akeida. And later the Temple stood there, the place where man is constantly reborn spiritually and morally – at the same place where God gathered the dust to form Adam.

 

Beraishis 12:5
pages 295-298

Avram passed through the land until the place of Shchem, until the grove of Moreh, and the Canaanite was already there in the land. God appeared there to Avram and said: To your seed I will give this land. Avram then built an altar there to God Who had appeared to him.

Avraham entered the land and kept on traveling until God appeared to him, indicating that he had come to the right land.

PROPHECY: RSRH points out that while we don’t know the nature of the vision, we do see from the wording that God appeared “to” Avraham. This was not some sort of human imagination or inspiration. God directed his message by means of this vision to Avraham.

While God spoke to Avraham before, He only appeared to Avraham in this land. This is the beginning of the process of the Shechina (Divine Presence) returning to the lower realms – that being the goal and purpose of all human history. As we have noted before – עיקר שכינה בתחתונים.

The specific location where God chose to appear is called:
– Shechem – A place later known to produce hot-blooded men who are prone to murder. Even parallel Shechem across the Jordan in Gilaad, the same was true.
– Elon Moreh – This is where two mountains stood. One is green and flourishing and the other is barren.
– In this land the Canaanites had sunk to a low, degenerate level.

What was God telling Avraham by choosing this place to appear to him?

God linked the return of his Divine Presence to a place, the land of Canaan, which could corrupt man to teach that despite this, the Divine quality in man, the ability to attain closeness to God, are within the reach of every nation. In Avraham’s place, murderers can dwell next to a prophet. The Jewish people are known to be a stiff-necked people (see Exodus 32:9). Even so, the אשדת, the Divine fire of the Torah, would succeed in refining this people in this land! This would show that there is no nation, no matter where it dwells, that cannot be won over by the אשדת. (This is also why the Torah was given in the desert, a place where nothing thrives.)

On one side a mountain flourished. On the other side it is barren. These teaches us that blessing in not the condition but rather the result of building one’s life according to God’s will. The altar of God can be built on desolate ground just as it can be built where the conditions are already flourishing.

Perhaps this grove is called Elon “Moreh” because it is a grove (flourishing) that teaches this lesson.

(GS – Just as the Torah begins with the lesson of free will, so too the reentry of the Shechina into the realm of man beginning with Avraham and the creation of the Jewish people, begins with the lesson of free will. God asks of us to choose to submit to His Torah which can purify and uplift us. The conditions don’t have to lend to this. We choose, and the conditions will flourish in response.)

 

Beraishis 12: 6-7
pages 298-301

Avraham gave order to move on from there toward the mountain … Beis El to the west and Ai to the east…

Avraham had to urge the people traveling with him to move on. They would be happy settling where they were. Avraham sought more isolation by traveling toward the mountains.

Even there, he pitched tent between the places that were inhabited. Beis El to the west and Ai to the east.

Beraishis 12:8
pages 301-302

אברהם קראו הר, יצחק שדה, יעקב בית –   פסחים דף פ”ח עמוד ב

For Avraham the mountainside was where God revealed Himself. Avraham was a lone and solitary figure, singular among men; he could not find God in the sphere of human society. To seek God and uncover the traces of His deeds, he went out to the wilds of nature in the mountains, where the traces of men’s doing had not yet reached.

As the story of the patriarchs unfolded, they increasingly saw the “finger of God” revealed in the course of their lives. Yitzchak called his place of Divine revelation “field”; that is no longer the wild open mountainside, but nature that is harnessed by man for his nourishment. This sphere already pertains to man’s existence, though still only in a material manner (see below 26:12).

Ya’akov did not have to leave his home in order to find God; he found Him in the place where God always wants us to find Him: he was the father of children. Not in the hills and mountain, not in the fields and forests, but in his own home he found God; his own family life was where God revealed Himself to him. The stone on which a man lays down his weary head became to him “the house of God” (see below 28:22).

(GS- RSRH wrote above about the central importance of family as the sphere where morals and godliness develop, ultimately influencing society. See above 1:28.)

Beraishis 12:8
pages 302-303

Avraham built an altar there and proclaimed in the name of God.

RSRH points out that this was in opposition to Nimrod and his contemporaries whose sole aim was “let us make a name for ourselves”.

See commentary above 11:1-4

Beraishis 12:8
page 303

The south of the land of Canaan is dry and desolate. The entire region of the south is called “Arava” “wilderness”.

Just as the Torah was given in the wilderness, so too Avraham sought the wilderness. Just as the Torah was given to a stiff necked people, not easily inclined to change. This highlights the fact that the creation and birth of the nation and the power of the Torah to influence the world is not dependent on physical conditions.

Later, when the Jewish nation entered Israel, the altar was built of Mount Eival, the mountain that was barren, to bring out the same point.

The command of Lech Lecha is what drew Avraham to the inhospitable south.

Beraishis 12:9
page 304

Avraham leaves the land of Canaan due to a famine. He seemingly places his wife Sarah in great moral peril by lying and having her say that she is his sister. Avraham seemingly asked Sarah to do this for his own gain when he said “so that they will deal well with me to get you through me…”. Could his fear of dying have led him to such sins?

Indeed the Ramban writes on these verses אברהם אבינו חטא חטא גדול בשגגה “Avraham inadvertently committed a grave sin by placing his virtuous wife before a stumbling block of iniquity because of his fear of being killed. …. His leaving the Land, about which he was commanded, because of the famine was another sin he committed – עון אשר חטא.”

RSRH offers an explanation for Avraham’s behavior. (See the following post – Beraishis 12M.)

Even so, RSRH writes an important preface stating that the notion that one of the forefathers could have sinned or made a grave error wouldn’t be perplexing.

The following words are an exact quote from RSRH:
The Torah does not seek to portray our great men as perfectly ideal figures; it deifies no man. It says of no one: “Here you have the ideal: in this man the Divine assumes human form!” It does not set before us the life of any one person as the model from which we might learn what is good and right, what we must do and what we must refrain from doing. When the Torah wishes to put before us a model to emulate, it does not present a man, who is born of dust. Rather, God presents Himself as the model, saying” “Look upon Me! Emulate Me! Walk in My ways! We are never to say: “This must be good and right, because so and so did it.” The Torah is not an “anthology of good deeds.” It relates events not because they are necessarily worthy of emulation, but because they took place.

The Torah does not hide from us the faults, errors, and weaknesses of our great men, and this is precisely what gives its stories credibility. The knowledge given us of their faults and weaknesses does not detract from the stature of our great men; on the contrary, it adds to their stature and makes their life stories even more instructive. Had they been portrayed to us as shining models of perfection, flawless and unblemished, we would have assumed that they had been endowed with a higher nature, not given to us to attain. Had they been portrayed free of passions and inner conflicts, their virtues would have seemed to us as merely the consequences of their loftier nature, not acquired by personal merit, and certainly no model we could ever hope to emulate.

Take, for example, the humility of Moshe. Had we not known that he was capable also of flying into a rage, we would have assumed that his humility was an inborn trait not within our capacity to emulate. It is precisely his outburst שמעו נא המורים (Bemidbar 20:10) that lends his humility its true greatness: We thus infer that he acquired humility through hard work, self control and self refinement, and that we are obligated to emulate him since it is within our capacity to do so.

Let us learn from our great Teachers of Torah, among whom the Ramban is one of the most outstanding, that we must never attempt to whitewash the spiritual and moral heroes of our past. They do not need our apologetics, nor would they tolerate such attempts on our part. Truth is the seal of our Torah, and truthfulness is the guiding principle of the Torah’s great teachers and commentators.

Beraishis 12:10-13
pages 304-306

See post 12L where the question was raised as to Avraham’s reasons for leaving the Land of Canaan, in which God appeared to Avraham, indicating this was the Land he would be given. Why didn’t Avraham remain, putting his trust in God? Also, how could Avraham put his wife in peril, having her say that she was his sister? Wouldn’t that endanger her?

(Later, 14:22, we see that Avraham refuses payment for saving the people of Sedom. Surely this teaches us that he wasn’t concerned about personal gain.)

RSRH suggest the following explanation:

We of later generations have the fortune of hindsight. We can look back at Jewish survival and say God will help. But Avraham Avinu didn’t have someone who preceded him to see how Hashem takes care and ensures Jewish survival.

In addition, he adds, Avraham did not want to rely on miracles. We have a principal of אין סומכין על הנס. The first action when in danger of starvation is to find a way to get food.

As for his conduct in Egypt (and he repeats this again in chapter 20 as does Yitzchak in chapter 26), RSRH offers the following explanation:

If a woman was married, they might be quicker to take her than a single woman. They would just kill the husband. But in the case of a single woman, they might delay the process, offering the brother gifts, convincing him to agree to the marriage. While all of this takes place, there is a delay of time, and in the meantime, perhaps help will come from Heaven.

Avraham was concerned for Sarah. He states, they will keep you alive – meaning that will be a situation you would never want; living a life of shame.

Avraham then adds, to convince Sarah, if you won’t do it for yourself, do it for me!

At first the plan worked. But Avraham didn’t consider the king. A regular citizen would first go to her brother but the king could do otherwise and she was taken immediately. And still the king wanted to do things respectably and first presented Avraham with gifts.

Beraishis 12:10-20
pages 304-312

 

מעשה אבות סימן לבנים

• Avraham arrived in the land of Canaan and continues Elon Moreh (12:6).  As Hirsch explained (page 300), this is the same place where Mt. Grizim and Mt. Eval are located.At this same location, the children of Israel later first arrive to the land of Israel.Hirsch cites the Ramban (page 303) who teaches מעשה אבות סימן לבנים, Avraham’s first journey as well as his subsequent journeys, are analogous of the later history of Israel.
• At the end of this chapter (verses 12-20) Avraham goes down to Egypt (GS-unwillingly) and leaves by being told he must leave (see commentary on verse 20) and leaves with much wealth. This is analogous to what occurred later in history. (GS-The sale of Yosef, Yaakov was hesitant about going, Pharaoh  told them to leave, they left with much wealth)

Culled from:
Beraishis 12: pages 300 and 312