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Iyunim - Weekly insights on the Parasha with commentaries by
Nehama Leibovitz, za"l
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The Commandment to Settle (in) Eretz Israel
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And the lord spoke unto Moses in the plains
of Moab by the Jordan at Jericho, saying:
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say
unto them:
When ye pass over the Jordan into the land
of Canaan, Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land
from before you, And destroy all their figured stones, And destroy
all their molten images, And demolish all their high places.
And ye shall drive out the inhabitants of
the land, And dwell therein; For unto you have I given the land
to possess it. (33, 50-53)
The passage beginning with the phrase: “When
ye pass over the Jordan…” belongs to a class of Biblical statements
which occurs quite frequently elsewhere, particularly, in the book
of Deuteronomy. They are all distinguished by making the observance
of the precept enunciated therein dependent on the children of Israel
entering the Holy Land. Thus we have: “When thou art come unto the
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee…” (Deuteronomy 17, 14; 26,
1); “And it shall come to pass, when the Lord thy God shall bring
thee into the land wither thou goest to possess it” (ibid. 11, 29).
In Leviticus too (19,23) we have: “And when ye shall come into the
land”.
In cases such as these it is not always
clear where the conditional clause “when ye come…” ends, and where
the main clause, setting forth the commandment which applies on
entering the land, begins. The reason for this is a grammatical
ambiguity peculiar to the Hebrew language in the use of vav
joining the clauses together. It may mark merely a continuation
of the conditional clause; “If or when this happens and also this,
then…” or the beginning of the main or operational clause implying:
”If or when this happens, then observe such and such a command”.
In our context it will become clear, after closer study, that the
conditional clause finishes with verse 51 (with the words: “to the
land of Canaan”) and the command which the Israelites are called
upon to observe begins with the phrase: “then ye shall drive out
all the inhabitants of the land from before you”.
Twice in the verse with which we introduced
the chapter the expression: ve-horashtem “And thou shalt
possess them” occurs. From a superficial glance, it would seem that
verse 53 is merely a repetition of verse 52. But as several commentators
have pointed out this is not so. In 52 it is stated: “thou shalt
dispossess the inhabitants of the land”. Whereas in 53, it is stated:
“Ye shall possess the land and dwell therein”. Rashi takes the second
vehorashtem to imply a precondition for their subsequent
settlement rather than an outright command:
“Ye shall possess the land” – take possession
of it from its inhabitants, then “ye may dwell therein” – safely
exist there. Otherwise ye shall not be able to exist there.
The two verse do not then duplicate each
other, repeating the order to inherit or occupy the land by dispossessing
the inhabitants. The second verse adds the warning that if the Israelites
do not dispossess the inhabitants first, they will never succeed
in maintaining themselves in the country safely. Nahmanides interprets
the verse differently:
In my opinion, this constitutes a positive
command of the Torah wherein He commanded them to settle in the
land, and inherit it; for He gave it them; and they should not reject
the heritage of the Lord! Should it enter their mind, for instance,
to go and conquer the land of Shinar (Babylon) or Assyria or any
other country and settle therein, then they would have transgressed
a commandment of the Lord.
Ve-horashtem does not imply, therefore,
“dispossession” of the indigent inhabitants, as Rashi explains,
but rather the “inheritance” of one’s patrimony. The emphasis is
not on securing themselves in the country but rather on the taking
up of the Divinely granted heritage of the Lord”. Just the same
as a Jew is not morally free to do what he likes with his own life
but has a duty to preserve it, so he cannot live where he likes.
But the place where he should spend his divinely granted gift of
life is prescribed for him. Should a Jew say, “Shinar” or “Assyria”
and not the Land promised and destined for his people he is violating
the Divine will.
Nahmanides outlines the duty of settling
Eretz Israel at greater length in his strictures on Maimonides’
Sefer Ha-mizvot (Book of Divine precepts) which are devoted
to explaining the points on which he differs from the latter in
his method of numbering the 613 precepts of Judaism. In this case,
Nahmanides takes Maimonides to task for his not including the duty
to settle Erez Israel as a separate mizvah. Maimonides dwells
at length in many parts of his works on the paramount and indispensable
importance of Eretz Yisrael, in the perspective of Judaism, but
does not specify its settlement as one of the 613 precepts referred
to in the Torah.
But here are the words of Nahmanides:
We have been commanded in the Torah to take
possession of the land which the Lord, Blessed be He granted to
our forefathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and not to leave it in
the hands of others or allow it to remain desolate, as it is stated,
“Thou shalt possess the land and dwell therein, for to you have
I given the land and you shall inherit the land which I swore to
your fathers”. The exact boundaries of the territory covered by
this religious obligation are delineated for us in the Torah (Deuteronomy
1, 7). A proof that this is a special mizvah can be adduced
from the Almighty’s order to the spies, “Go up and possess it, as
the Lord hath spoken to you, fear not and be not dismayed” (Ibid.
1, 21)…And when they refused to go up, it is written, “And you rebelled
against the word of the Lord…” This indicates that we are dealing
with a specific precept and not merely a promise.
I consider that the hyperbolic statements
of our Sages regarding the greatness of the mizvah of residing
in the Holy Land proceeded from their concern to carry out this
explicit command of the Torah. They stated, for instance, that he
who leaves Eretz Yisrael for the Diaspora shall be in thine eyes
as him that committed idolatry as it is written” “For they have
driven me out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord,
saying: Go, serve other gods” (1 Samuel 26,19).
The mizvah applies for all time,
even during exile, as it is evident from many places in the Talmud.
Compare the Sifrei: “It happened that Rabbi Judah be Batira and
R. Matya ben Harash and R. Hanina the nephew of R. Joshua and R.
Yohanan were journeying to the Diaspora. On reaching Palatium (a
place outside Eretz Israel) they recalled Eretz Israel and their
eyes filled with tears and they rent their garments and applied
to themselves the following verse: “Thou shalt possess them and
dwell in their land”, whereupon they retraced their steps and went
back home, saying: The residence in Eretz Israel is equal in weight
to all the mizvot in the Torah”.
We may appreciate the force of the last
mentioned rabbinic statement as well as the other sentiments, if
we bear in mind that there can be no complete observance, in all
spheres of life, of the precepts of the Torah, except in Eretz Israel.
That is why King David is held to have implied that his expulsion
from the Holy Land by Saul was tantamount to telling him to go and
worship idols:
At all times should a man reside in
Eretz Israel, even in a city inhabited mostly by heathens. Let
him not reside outside the Land, even in a city inhabited by
Jews. Since whoever resides in Eretz Israel is like to him who
has a god, whilst whoever resides outside it is like him who
has no god, as it is stated (Leviticus 25, 38): “To give you
the land of Canaan, to be your God. “Do you mean to say that
whoever does not reside in the land of Israel has no god?! But
what is meant is—Whoever resides outside the land is as if he
worships idols. David said so too: “For they have driven me
out this day from abiding in the inheritance of the Lord (i.e.
in Eretz Israel, from where he fled from the anger of Saul),
saying go, serve other gods” (1 Samuel 26, 19). But whoever
told David to go serve other gods? But this teacyou that whoever
resides outside the Land of Israel is as if he served idols. (Ketubot
110b)
In other words, the Torah cannot be
observed in its entirety except in a society wholly governed
by its precepts and not in an alien framework ruled by other
ideals. Admittedly there are personal religious obligations
that can be observed anywhere, even by a Jewish Robinson Crusoe
on his desert isle, but the Torah, as a whole, implies a complete
social order, a judiciary, national economic and political life.
That can only be achieved in the Holy Land and not outside it.
The precept enjoining us to occupy Eretz
Israel and make it our permanent home: “Ye shall possess the
land and dwell therein”, is motivated by one good reason –
For
unto you have I given the land to possess it.
(35,
53)
It is above assumption which Rashi utilizes
in his celebrated first comment to the Pentateuch, in explaining
why it begins with the story of Genesis:
Should the nations of the world
say: Ye are robbers in occupying the land belonging to the
seven nations, Israel replies: The whole world belongs to
the holy One Blessed be He; He created it and gave it to
whomsoever he desired. In accordance with His will He gave
it to them (the seven nations), originally, and in accordance
with His will He took it from them and gave it to us.
This was the sole reason for our title
to the Land. The Almighty ordered us to take possession of it.
In the whole book of Genesis no mention is made of the good
properties of the land, that it flowed with milk or honey. On
the contrary, we are told, on many occasions, that there was
a famine in the land. The Patriarchs’ loyalty to it was tested.
Abraham returned to it after leaving it in time of famine and
Isaac was not permitted to forsake it, even in time of famine.
The reason that is given is simply:
For unto thee, and not thy seed, I will
give all these lands.
It is the Almighty who determines the
boundaries of nations. He allotted Israel its place in the world
just the same as He did for other peoples:
Have
not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt,
And
the Philistines from Caphtor,
And
Aram from Kir?
(Amos
9, 7)
What then is the difference between
Israel’s relationship to its homeland and that of other nations
to theirs? The difference is just this. Israel is aware that
this land was granted it by the Almighty. This is not just a
matter of history but involves for Israel a moral obligation,
the responsibility to observe a particular way of life in that
land. According to Nahmanides, the Israelites were specifically
commanded to take possession of Eretz Israel and live there
to fulfill their religious mission.
This perhaps is the implication of that
strange statement in the Midrash regarding the Almighty’s words
to Jacob, ordering the Patriarch to return to his homeland,
after twenty years of exile and servitude in Laban’s house:
“Return unto the land of thy fathers,
and to thy kindred; and I will be with thee” (Genesis 31, 3)
– Your father is waiting for you, your mother is waiting for
you – I myself am waiting for you.
(Bereshit
Rabba 77)
Nahmanides also emphasises that just
as it is obligatory to wrest the land from the peoples who defiled
it with their evil deeds and not to emigrate therefrom, so it
is equally important not to leave the land desolate.
We should not leave it in the hands
of others or allow it to remain desolate.
This task of conquering and taming the
desert on God’s earth had already been implied in the first
command given to man “Fill the earth and conquer it” (Genesis
1, 22) on which Nahmanides comments:
He granted man power and government
in the land to do as he wished…to build, uproot, plant and mine
metal from its hills.
The picture is however not complete
without referring to its other side. Just as the former inhabitants
of the land had been expelled for their misdeeds so would “God’s
own country” vomit the Israelites, should they contaminate it
with their practices. The divine gift of the land was not unconditional
but, as stated at the end of our sidra (35, 33-34):
So shall ye not pollute the land wherein
ye are, defile not therefore the land which ye shall inhabit,
wherein I dwell; for I, the Lord dwell among the children
of Israel.
Questions for Further Study:
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- What is the syntactical structure of verse 53 according
to the explanation of
Rashi and Nahmanides cited above?
- What prompted Rashi to add at the end this comment: “Otherwise,
you will not be able to exist there”, though there is no hint
in the text for this statement?
3. Then shall those that remain be
as thorns in your eyes, and as pricks in your sides.
(Numbers
33, 55)
On this phrase “then shall those that
remain”, Rashi adds the words, “they shall be to your hurt”.
What prompted Rashi to add this comment? What do they add to
the meaning of the text?
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