וענית ואמרת, "And you shall answer and say, etc." Some commentators understand the word וענית as similar to Job 3,2: i.e. "he answered." It is also possible that the word is related to עני. When an undeserving individual has received a great favour from his king, he humbles himself before his king with a contrite heart. Similarly, the Jewish farmer who has seen the blessing God has showered on his field or orchard humbles himself before the Lord. He does so by recounting the lowly beginnings of the Jewish people whose ancestor Jacob was a hired hand working for Laban, who made every effort to destroy him. Up to this point the word וענית applies to the recital of the Jewish farmer. Once he recalls the Exodus and how God has elevated the Jewish people the Torah refers to his recital as ואמרת, "you will say (with a sense of great satisfaction)". This is what the sages had in mind in Pesachim 116 when they said that the order in which we recount the story of the Exodus on the night of the "Seder" is that one begins by reciting something shameful only to conclude with something representing praise and satisfaction.
After having had a good look at our paragraph I have also found in it an allusion to our inheriting the celestial regions. The words והיה כי תבא אל הארץ hint that a person has no right to rejoice until he arrives in the land of the higher regions of which Solomon says in Proverbs 31,25: "she looks forward to the יום אחרון, "the final day" with laughter." This means that even a woman of valour such as described by Solomon as the epitome of woman-hood does not permit herself joy in this life. Joy in this life is vanity and רעות רוח, "a vexation of the spirit." The Torah continues with אשר ה' אלוהיך נתן לך, "which the Lord your God will give to you," i.e. only that land (the hereafter) is called an enduring inheritance. The reason the Torah is careful to say נתן לך, "gives to you," is because all of the treasures of this world are as nothing compared to the gift of an inheritance in the "higher world." No matter how much wealth any one of us has acquired in this world, it would not suffice to acquire, i.e. to buy even the least bit of an inheritance in the hereafter. This is why the Torah can only describe such an inheritance as a gift from God not as something we could trade for our assets in this world.
וישבת בה "and you will dwell therein;" this is best understood in light of the description of what the righteous will be doing in the hereafter supplied by Berachot 35. The Talmud there describes the righteous as sitting in the hereafter with their crowns on their heads.
ולקחת מראשית, "and you will take from the first, etc." we can understand this according to the Zohar volume two page 59 that all the commandments a person performs in this life together with all the good deeds he does are collected and stored up in the celestial regions awaiting his arrival there at which time they will serve him as an entrance card to an audience with the King of Kings, the Almighty. This idea is based on Isaiah 58,8: "that your righteousness walks ahead of you when the Glory of God gathers you in." ולקחת מראשית כל, "and you will take from the first of all, etc." The Torah means that the word ראשית refers to the best, the choicest. When presenting an offering to God you will only take the choicest of the products this world has to offer. Another meaning which the Torah alludes to when choosing the word ראשית is the Torah itself. We have it on the authority of Bereshit Rabbah 1 that the Torah itself is called ראשית.
אשר ה' אלוהיך נתן לך, "which the Lord your God gives to you;" this may be understood in terms of what our sages in Berachot 35 said about an apparent contradiction between two verses in Psalms. In Psalms 24,1 the Psalmist says: "the earth and all which is in it belongs to God," whereas in Psalms 115,16 the same Psalmist proclaims: "the heavens are God's heavens, whereas He has given the earth to man." The Talmud resolves the apparent dilemma by saying that the first verse is true when man has failed to thank the Lord by reciting a benediction before he enjoys the pleasures this earth provides. The second verse is true after man has obtained permission from God to treat the earth as his by means of reciting the appropriate benedictions. In other words, once man has complied with God's commandments, whatever he has accomplished on earth is considered as something he has accomplished in his own domain, albeit one that God has given to him as a gift. Were it not so, none of man's actions would be of the slightest value since he would constantly toil within a domain to which he has no claim and upon which he could not therefore make a lasting impact. When the Torah wrote: "which the Lord your God gives to you," it referred to the gift of the entire earth to man provided he had first complied with God's wishes.
ושמת בטנא, "and you will place it in a basket, etc." This is a hint that all the good deeds a person does have to correspond to the guidelines set by our sages as we read in Deut. 17,11: "in accordance with the Torah which they (the sages) will teach you and in accordance with the judgments they will say to you." These sages are the ones who have expounded the Torah in 60 tractates of the Talmud, the numerical value of the letters in the word טנא, "basket" symbolising these 60 tractates of the Talmud. Unless the performance of all these good deeds is based on the authority of the sages and the framework which they have provided both the do-gooder and his good works will be burned.
והלכת אל המקום, "and you will go to the place, etc." According to the Zohar volume one page 81 man does not normally proceed directly to be received by God in His palace, but he has to prepare himself in a place called the ante-chamber. Sometimes the period such a soul has to stay in the ante-chamber preparing itself for the fateful interview may be quite lengthy. Our verse alludes to the period needed for man's soul to prepare itself for entering the palace where it will come face to face with God, i.e. "the place which He chooses for His name to reside in."
ובאת אל הכהן, "and you will come to the priest, etc." We may look at this in light of Chagigah 12 where the archangel Michael is described as standing ready to sacrifice the souls of the righteous on a celestial altar in honour of God Almighty. The words which the Torah here tells the person offering his בכורים to recite are to be understood as the words which the soul is to recite to the arch-angel Michael, who is the High Priest in the celestial regions, before he proceeds to offer this soul as a sacrifice.
The words אשר יהיה בימים ההם, "who will officiate at that time," may be understood in light of the Zohar who says that the "priests" (angels) officiating in the celestial spheres are subject to rotation. We have a statement to this effect in the Zohar Chadash Parshat Lech Lecha concerning the status of the archangel Michael. This is the reason the Torah wrote אשר יהיה בימים ההם. We are told there that this angel only attained the position of "High Priest" after he had offered the soul of King David thus enabling it to enter the celestial regions. This occurred after Solomon had built the Temple on earth. [According to the text in the Zohar Chadash, although God had forgiven David the sin with Bat Sheva, David had not yet secured entry to the hereafter until that day. Ed.] The recital of the abbreviated history of the Jewish people including the words אשר נשבע ה'… לתת לנו, "which the Lord had sworn an oath …to give to us," refers to the land of Israel which is the means through which Torah observance and performance of good deeds will continue.
The Torah goes on with ולקח הכהן הטנא מידך, "and the priest will accept the basket from your hand," to indicate that the only thing the celestial High Priest will accept from you as a suitable gift for God are offerings based on Torah values as taught to us by the oral Torah, i.e. as per the number 60 represented by the word טנא and referring to the 60 tractates of the Talmud.
וענית ואמרת, "and you will say in your (spiritual) poverty," the Torah refers to the fact no matter how much a person tries to do good in this life it is not enough to please the Lord. Our sages in
Eyruvin 17 said that when Abraham, Isaac and Jacob face God to be judged, neither one of them is able to hold his own seeing that it is not possible for man born of woman to meet the standards demanded of him by God. Job referred to this when he said (
Job 4,
17) "can mortals be aquitted by God, can man be cleared by his Maker?" The recital the Torah prescribes for the farmer bringing the first fruit is nothing but a list of the excuses cited by man for his failure to live up to God's expectations of him. First he refers to the adverse circumstances under which he laboured at Laban the swindler. This is a simile for the temptations of the evil urge who is a great swindler having tricked Eve into eating from the tree of knowledge. The Torah itself had described the tempter, the serpent, as very wily (
Genesis 3,
1). The words
אבד אבי are a reference to Adam. Isaiah 43,27 quotes God as saying "your original father (Adam) has sinned, and your spokesmen (priests and prophets) trangressed against Me." The word
אבד is a reference to the mortality this sin introduced to the human race, something which affected all subsequent generations who became infected with an evil pollutant. This is the mystical dimension of the foreskin which is part of the embryo from its very earliest gestation. Another meaning of the words
אבד אבי "who denies my Father," is similar to Psalms 14,1: "the withered man has said in his heart 'there is no God.'"
The word אבי, "my father," may also be a reference to the soul seeing all the efforts of Satan are aimed at corrupting and destroying the holy soul in man. The soul is called "father" in the Zohar volume one page 76. It is Satan who tries to prevent man from carrying out his duty to serve his Maker. This is not all Satan was responsible for, but וירד מצרים, "he descended to Egypt," i.e. to the place where the evil urge is at home, the epitome of physicality, the place where the soul is under the greatest amount of pressure to yield to Satan. This is the mystical dimension of Isaiah 65,25: ונחש עפר לחמו, "and the serpent feeds on dust." This is a simile for Satan subsisting on all the material pleasures of this world, enjoying them for their own sakes, something which is an abomination to God. Literally, the very fact that man's body is narrow, מצר (same as מצרים) accounts for the fact that the evil urge within us is so close to our soul that we can hardly avoid touching. The four basic raw materials which God employed to create this physical universe have all become predominantly secular and even defiled through man's original sin so that God had to decree mortality on His creatures. [The author, in common with all other Kabbalists, has explained that death is part of the rehabilitative process for the spirit which will ultimately redeem man. Ed.]. This perversion of the basic raw materials man is made of is the reason people respond so readily to the seductive tactics of Satan. The body itself is called מצרים, "Egypt," (confined), because it exerts constant pressure on man through the pleasures man lusts after.
ויגר שם, "it sojourned there," i.e. intitially the presence of Israel's soul in Egypt, Satans' home, was only comparable to the presence of a stranger. [compare the parable the prophet Nathan told David to illustrate to him how wrong he had been in taking Bat Sheva as his wife. Ed.] We read in Samuel II 12,4: "the traveller went" (and seduced David). Compare the treatment of these verses in Sukkah 52.
במתי מעט, "few in numbers." This is a reference to the relatively weak forces of Satan at that time. Afterwards these forces increased manifold due to the active co-operation of man himself. This is why the Torah continues:
ויהי שם לגוי גדול ועצום "and while there it became a powerful nation." This is the mystical dimension of Psalms 25,11:
וסלחת לעוני כי רב הוא "and pardon my iniquity though it is great." Rabbi Yitzchak Luria explained that the word
רב, "great," refers to the evil urge whose powers are great. The fact that God commanded us to perform the rites of the scape-goat on the Day of Atonement is proof that Satan's power must not be discounted. God commanded that we present one scape-goat each to Him and to the Azzazel (
Leviticus 16,
8).
וירעו אותנו המצרים ויענונו, "The Egyptians mistreated us and afflicted us, etc." The Torah means that by means of the transformation which had taken place in the four basic raw materials from which God had created the physical universe we ourselves became evil. You have to translate the words וירעו אותנו "they made us evil". Once the composition of the raw materials had become redefined, the willpower of the life-force, נפש, within man was bound to reflect the nature of the material his body is made of.
ויענונו, "they afflicted us;" this describes the utter inability of the victim to resist his attacker anymore, in this case the attack by the evil urge. The Talmud relates an interesting story involving this point in Kidushin 81 involving Rabbi Amram who was well known as "Rabbi Amram the pious." Some female prisoners had been rescued from their captors by men of his town Nehardea who entrusted their care to Rabbi Amram. The Rabbi provided accommodations for them in the second floor of his house and removed the staircase leading to the upper floor as a precaution to protect the chastity of these girls or women. It happened that when one of the girls passed the space near where the ladder used to stand, Rabbi Amram experienced a sudden shaft of light which he considered as due to the physical beauty of that girl. This caused the evil spirit within him to be aroused to the point where he tried to put the ladder back in place. Although the ladder was far too heavy for one man to carry, his urge was so strong that he managed it. At the last moment before completing the climbing of the ladder, he was able to shout for help exclaiming that there was a fire in the house which needed to be extinguished. Naturally, the townspeople including the local scholars came to help, and when they became aware of the true state of affairs they chided Rabbi Amram for embarrassing them in such a way. Rabbi Amram retorted that it was better both for them and himself to be embarrassed before their peers on earth rather than to be embarrassed after his departure from earth in the celestial regions in front of all the righteous souls keeping company with God. The Rabbi implored the evil urge to leave him, whereupon the latter departed in a column of fire. Thereupon Rabbi Amram said to the evil urge: "although you are a column of fire and I am only flesh and blood, I am superior to you."
ויתנו עלינו עבודה קשה, "and they made us perform hard labour." This is hyperbole describing that instead of the evil urge bothering them only from time to time, the attempts by the evil urge to pervert the Israelites became something ongoing. This is why the Torah describes it as עבודה קשה. Another meaning of the expression is along the lines of the statement in Kidushin 30 that the evil urge appears anew every single day in a stronger form. All the words the Torah has written here are what the servant Israel argues before God Almighty after his death in order to explain why his offering to God is so insignificant.
ונצעק אל ה' אלוהינו, "We cried out to the Lord our God, etc." Here the Torah provides a hint that it is necessary for man to pray to God daily to save him from the wiles of the evil urge. וישמע ה' את קולנו, "and God listened to our voice, etc." Although God Himself created the evil urge in order to examine if man truly serves Him, nonetheless when man cries out to God to be saved from these temptations He responds when He sees how the evil urge has made a deep imprint on us, one described here as ענינו, עמלנו לחצנו. The word עני refers to the complete collapse of our spiritual resources to fight the temptation of the evil urge; the word עמלנו refers to the burdensome task of fighting off the evil urge; the word לחצנו refers to the evil urge imposing his will upon us against our better judgment. God listened to our appeal because we suffered from all these three pressures. Another way of looking at this verse is to understand the word ענינו as a reference to the fact that most Torah scholars suffer from personal poverty. In fact Midrash Tehillim 5 quotes the Torah as wanting to know from God why the scholars devoting themselves to its study are poor. Although one must not generalise, as there have always been some Torah scholars who enjoyed great material wealth, we are taught in Avot 6,4 that the normative approach to the path of Torah is when its scholars eat bread and salt, drink water sparingly (as opposed to wine), sleep on the floor and generally practice a life of asceticism. The word עמלנו should be understood as in Berachot 17 "hail to those who labour hard in order to acquire Torah." In our day and age when a tremendous amount of toil is required to extract even a single halachah or new Torah insight, we can appreciate what the sages meant with their statement. Finally, the word לחצנו refers to the fact that all the people who make their lives dependent on Torah study, etc. experience that they are being opposed from many quarters so that ועיני כל אליו ישברו, "and the eyes of all the Torah scholars have to be trained upon Him (for help)."
ויוציאנו ה' ממצרים, "And the Lord took us out of Egypt, etc." This is a reference to God saving us from the onslaught of the evil urge which squeezed us i.e. מצרים. Our sages in Kidushin 30 state that without God's help it would be impossible to withstand the temptations of the evil urge. They base this on Psalms 37,32: "the 'wicked one' watches for the righteous and attempts to kill him. The Lord will not abandon him to his power."
ביד חזקה, "with a strong hand, etc." Here the Torah alludes to the means God employs in order to save man from the attacks of the evil urge. The Talmud in Kidushin which we cited previously quotes God as saying that He has created antidotes to every potential hazard in His universe. The antidote to the evil urge is Torah study, for instance. יד חזקה is a reference to Torah based on Deut. 33,2: "from His right hand He presented the fiery Torah to them."
ובזרע נטויה, "and with an outstretched arm." The Torah refers to three separate means employed by God to save man from being victimised by the evil urge. Menachot 43 states that anyone wearing phylacteries on his arm, fringes on his garments, and who affixes a mezzuzah on the doorpost of his house, will not easily succumb to sin. In our verse we may understand the words בזרע נטויה as an allusion to the effect of phylacteries worn on the arm against the temptation by the evil urge. The Torah continues ובמורא גדול "and with great fearsomeness;" this may be viewed as an allusion to the power of the phylacteries worn on the head to combat attempts by the evil urge to corrupt us. Concerning the power of fringes worn on our garments to fight off the evil urge, the Torah writes ובאותות. The reason is that the commandments to wear ציצית is a sign demonstrating that we are not idolators but are servants of the Lord. Nachmanides in his commentary on Parshat Shelach Lecha claims that these fringes allude to an all-embracing known as Ottot. The word ובמופתים corresponds to the law to affix mezzuzot to the door-posts of our houses. This practice originated in Egypt prior to the killing of the firstborn when the sign of the blood of the passover lamb protected its inhabitants against the angel of death, Satan incarnate. According to Zohar volume three page 265 just looking at a mezzuzah has such a powerful effect on the forces of the קליפה that many of them are frightened by merely seeing the name שדי on the outside of the capsule.
It is entirely possible that the entire verse contains a hint at the power of the Torah which saves man from the evil urge and the various cravings for satisfying one's urges in this life. The verse contains 5 separate items each one representing one of the five Books of Moses. The expression ביד חזקה, "with a strong hand," corresponds to the Book of Genesis in which the deeds of God the Creator who has fashioned the whole universe are described. The expression בזרע נטויה, "with an outstretched arm," corresponds to the Book of Exodus in which God is described as displaying His might against the Egyptians both in Egypt and at the sea, and where we learned about His manifesting Himself to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. The expression ובמורא גדול, "and with great awesomeness," reflects the Book of Leviticus in which we are commanded to perform the various acts of service to the Lord in the Tabernacle, where God taught us to fear the holy sites, and where He sanctified the Tabernacle when He killed the two sons of Aaron who had made unauthorised use of a holy site. The expression ובאותות, "and with signs," corresponds to the Book of Numbers, where the Israelites were reported counted איש על דגלו באותות. The expression ובמופתים, "and with miracles," corresponds to the Book of Deuteronomy, during the course of which Moses admonished the Jewish people pointing to all the miracles God had performed on their behalf and which alone accounted for their surviving up until then. Moses warned the people that God had not paid them back for their evil deeds as He would have been entitled to do, but had instead made them the recipients of all His love and kindness. This Book also contains information about the institution of prophecy and the miracles such prophets would be authorised to perform under certain conditions and how the performance of such miracles may serve to establish the prophet's credibility.
ויביאנו אל המקום הזה, He has brought us to this place, etc. The Torah refers to the higher world, the world inhabited by the נשמה, the superior soul. This soul is unable to make all these statements until after it has left the body it had inhabited and has reached the regions known as Gan Eden of the celestial regions. This occurs after it has had its fill of the Gan Eden to be found on earth. This is why these words about the soul having been brought back to this place have been said at this stage. The very fact that the soul has managed to reach these regions and face God and to tell Him all the aforegoing is already a delight for it, especially when compared to its former location in what was merely an earthly Paradise. The Torah goes on to describe this earthly Paradise as ארץ זבת חלב ודבש, "a land flowing with milk and honey". We have a similar description of an idyllic country in the terrestrial regions in Song of Songs 4,11 when Solomon says דבש וחלב תחת לשונך, "honey and milk lie under Your tongue."
ועתה הנה הבאתי, "And now, here I have brought, etc." We have mentioned repeatedly that whenever the Torah uses the word עתה it has a connotation of תשובה, repentance. The person whom the Torah describes as reciting this prayer is a penitent. Although we have described him as having already been a resident in the terrestrial Gan Eden which certainly places him amongst the select group of the righteous, this is not enough when one desires entry to the celestial Gan Eden. Here we deal with the mystical dimension of the judgment God subjects the souls to in the future, something referred to as עמק יהושפט, [compare Yoel 4,2 where this location is described as where God judges the survivors of the war of Gog and Magog Ed.]. Even the prophet Samuel dreaded to face this final judgment and this is why he was so upset when the necromancer brought him back at the behest of King Saul (compare Midrash Tehillim 8 and Chagigah 4). This Midrash claims that there never was nor ever will be a valley named "the valley of Yehoshophat," i.e. that the name Yehoshaphat is a combination of the Hebrew for "God will judge."
והשתחוית לפני ה' אלוהיך, "and you will prostrate yourself before the Lord your God." Here the Torah pays a tremendous compliment to the souls who will enjoy this privilege, i.e. that they may face the Lord without a dividing curtain between them and Him. Hail to the soul which achieves such stature.
ושמחת בכל הטוב, "And you will rejoice with all the goodness, etc." The word טוב may be understood as in Psalms 145,9: "God is good to all." In order that we should so understand the verse, the Torah wrote בכל הטוב, i.e. "you will rejoice with the One who is the only One representing all goodness." He is the source of all goodness. אשר נתן לך, "which He has given to you." This goodness is a free gift, it is not value for services rendered.
The reason the Torah writes the additional word לך is to exclude anyone else including angels from becoming recipients of all this goodness God has at His disposal. This is in line with Berachot 5 that when the Torah mentions טוב, it refers to the Torah. The angels were not given the Torah. If mankind at large were only aware of the goodness represented by the Torah there would be an endless queue of people offering all their material possessions in order to receive the Torah.
ולביתך, "and to your house." The Torah emphasizes that the goodness of God will not only be experiences by the soul but also within the soul's house, i.e. the body it inhabits. Each one will experience it in accordance with his capacity to do so.
והלוי, "as well as the Levite." This may be understood on the basis of an assurance in the Zohar volume two page 94 that certain people who deserve it are assigned a soul from a higher spiritual domain, from the עולם האצילות. The word הלוי in our verse is an allusion to this soul which accompanies some people.
והגר אשר בקרבך, "and the proselyte within your midst." This too may be understood according to what is written in the Zohar volume three page 217. It is stated there that when a person has an opportunity to perform one of the commandments which are not usually capable of being performed, God enables the souls who have already departed from earth without having had the opportunity to perform this commandment to join a soul in the body of the Jew who is about to perform this commandment. In this way these souls can claim their share in its performance. This is the גר אשר בקרבך "the stranger within your midst" which the Torah alludes to in our verse.
וירשתה וישבת בה – מגיד שלא נתחייבו בביכורים עד שכיבשו וחילקו.א