Lech LechaBereshit (genesis)

God Blesses Abram
In the year 2023, GOD said to Abram, “You have already left your homeland and birthplace by moving to Charan. Now go even further away from your land and from your birthplace: go away from your father Terach’s house in Charan.” Since Terach was only a closet monotheist, outwardly still serving idols and taking no steps to reform his idolatrous society, God told Abram to leave the detrimental environment of his home – even though Abram himself was privy to Terach’s secret. God continued, “Follow My directions to the land that I will show you.” By keeping Abram in suspense over the exact destination, God (a) endeared the Land to him and (b) enabled him to receive reward for trusting Him implicitly.

God said, “I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you; I will make your name great; and you will become a source of blessing.

I will bless those who bless you, and, I will curse he who curses you. Your material success will be so great that all the families of the earth who esteem material prowess will be blessed using you as an example: when someone wants to bless someone else, he will say, ‘May you be like Abram.’”

Abram Goes to Canaan
Abram set out as GOD had directed him, and Lot went with him. Abram was in his 75th year when he left Charan.

Abram took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all their possessions that they had acquired, as well as the people they had acquired in Charan – both the followers they had persuaded to accept monotheism as well as the servants they had purchased. They set out. God had not told them where to go, so they continued on their original journey, heading toward Canaan, and as opposed to their first attempt, this time they actually entered Canaan.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the location of Shechem. He stopped there because he perceived prophetically that his great-grandchildren would wage war in the future against the inhabitants of this city, and he prayed for their success. He had come as far as Elon, the plain of Moreh, where Shechem was located. The Canaanites were then in the land, gradually conquering it from the descendants of Shem.

The Promise of the Land
GOD appeared to Abram and said, “Even though, as you see, I am allowing the Canaanites to possess this land for the time being, I will eventually give this land to your offspring, thus returning it to the descendants of Shem, its rightful owners.” God here announced to Abram that he had arrived in the land to which He had told him to travel. Hearing this, Abram built an altar there and offered up a sacrifice to GOD, who appeared to him there, as thanks for the promise of offspring and of the repossession of the land.

From there he moved on to the mountains east of Bethel and pitched his tent. Bethel was to the west and Ai to the east. He built a second altar there, offered up a sacrifice on it, and invoked GOD.

Abram in Egypt
In that same year, there was a famine in the land of Canaan. God wanted to see if Abram would complain about having to leave the land after having exerted so much effort to reach it in the first place, and after God had promised it to him. Abram did not complain; he went down to Egypt to sojourn there for a time, since the famine in the land of Canaan had grown severe. Abram was so impoverished by the famine that he had to pay for food and lodgings on credit. Lot accompanied Abram and Sarai.

The Egyptians are not used to beholding such beauty. Their women are all swarthy, and you are fair-skinned. When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife,’ and they will kill me, since they will not expect me to surrender you to them, and allow you to live.

I will try to smuggle you into Egypt in a crate. But if they discover you anyway, if you would, say that you are my sister, that it may go well with me because of you. They will try to curry my favor by giving me gifts in order to bribe me into letting one of them marry you. In this way, through you my life will be spared.”

When Abram came to Egypt, the customs officials demanded that he open the crate in which he had hidden Sarai, in order to inspect its contents. The Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful.

Pharaoh’s ministers saw her and spoke highly of her, agreeing among themselves that she was beautiful enough to be a wife for Pharaoh, so the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s palace.

When questioned, Sarai told Pharaoh that Abram was her brother. Lot did not divulge the truth, either. As Abram had predicted, Pharaoh treated Abram well because of her; in this way Abram acquired flocks, cattle, donkeys, bondmen, bondwomen, she-donkeys, and camels.

God Protects Sarai
That same day, GOD struck Pharaoh and his household with severe plagues – skin diseases that made carnal relations extremely painful. This plague was so severe that it even afflicted the walls, pillars, and utensils of Pharaoh’s palace. This did not faze Pharaoh, however, so God sent Sarai an angel, who was invisible to Pharaoh; the angel struck Pharaoh at the word of Sarai, the wife of Abram, whenever Pharaoh tried to approach her.

Pharaoh understood from all this that Sarai must be Abram’s wife. He summoned Abram and said, “What is this that you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife?

Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to myself as a wife? Now here is your wife; take her and go! You are better off not staying in Egypt, because the Egyptians are a lecherous people and I cannot be held responsible if they try to kill you on her account, as you originally suspected they would.”

Pharaoh charged men to escort and guard him, and they escorted him together with his wife and all that he possessed. Pharaoh gave his daughter Hagar to Sarai as a bondwoman, saying that it is preferable for his daughter to be a servant to a woman like Sarai, who is so openly favored by God, than to be a queen elsewhere. By the close of this episode, Abram had been in Egypt for a total of three months.

From Egypt, Abram ascended to the south of Canaan – he, his wife, and everything he owned – and Lot was with him.

Abram was heavily laden with wealth: with cattle, silver, and gold.

He continued on his travels, retracing his steps and patronizing the same inns at which he had lodged on his way to Egypt, both to (a) avoid stigmatizing himself or his hosts, for not staying at the same inns might be interpreted by others to mean that either he or his hosts were hard to get along with, and to (b) pay off the debts he had incurred on his way to Egypt. He traveled from the south of Canaan toward Bethel, until the place where he originally had his tent, between Bethel and Ai,

the site of the altar that he had built there at first, where Abram had invoked GOD. And now again, Abram invoked GOD there.

Lot Leaves Abram
Lot, by virtue of the fact that he had accompanied Abram, also acquired flocks, cattle, and tents.

The pasturage of the land between Bethel and Ai could not support them living together, for their possessions were so extensive that they could not remain together.

Due to the shortage of pasturable land, Lot’s herdsmen began to graze their cattle in other people’s fields. A quarrel arose between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle over this issue: Abram’s herdsmen accused Lot’s herdsmen of robbery, while Lot’s herdsmen argued that the land rightfully belonged to Lot since God had promised it to Abram, who had no heir other than Lot. Their argument was faulty, however, since the Canaanites (i.e., one of the nations descended from Canaan, which had assumed the name of their common ancestor) and the Perizites (another Canaanite nation) were then living in that part of the land and Abram had not yet acquired it. Nonetheless, Abram could not convince Lot that this argument was erroneous, and that his herdsmen should not let their flocks graze in other people’s fields. Despite the fact that he was quite wealthy in his own right, Lot savored the prospect of inheriting Abram’s wealth, as well.

Abram said to Lot, “Please, let’s not have contention between me and you, and between my herdsmen and your herdsmen. After all, we are relatives. The two of us even resemble each other enough to be mistaken for brothers.

Lot Chooses the Cities of the Plain
So Lot chose for himself all of Kikar, the plain of the Jordan River. Nonetheless, because he was embarrassed to let Abram know that he chose to live among immoral people, he journeyed first westward from the east, in order to give Abram the impression that he was going elsewhere, and only later, after he was out of Abram’s sight, did he turn eastward and go to the Jordan Plain. Thus, they separated from one another. Lot’s journey was ideological, as well: he could tolerate no more of Abram or his God, and was more than happy to distance himself from them both.

Abram lived in Canaan, while Lot dwelt in the cities of the Jordan River plain, and pitched his herdsmen’s tents throughout the whole plain, as far as Sodom.

Lot did not shy away from living in these cities, even though the inhabitants of Sodom and its neighbors were wicked by engaging in immoral practices and sinners in that they also used their possessions for immoral purposes, as well. They sinned against GOD deliberately, in order to anger Him.

For I will give all the land that you see – i.e., Canaan – to you and to your offspring forever.

I will make your offspring as numerous as the dust of the earth: if someone will be able to count the particles of dust in the world, your offspring, too, will be countable.

In order to mark out the land and so that you will feel like its owner, rise, walk through the land, along its length and breadth, for I will give it to you in the future.”

Abram, however, did not walk through the land immediately, but set up tents, and came and settled in Eilonim, the plains of Mamrei the Amorite, in Hebron. There, in appreciation for having begun to dwell permanently in the land, and in thanksgiving for the additional blessings that God had just bestowed upon him, he built a third altar to GOD and offered up a sacrifice on it. He made allies of Mamrei and his two brothers, Aneir and Eshkol.

Despite Lot’s desire to be on his own, he soon found himself in need of Abram’s assistance. This happened in the days of King Amrafel (i.e., Nimrod) of Shin’ar, King Aryoch of Elasar, King Kedorla’omer of Eilam, and King Tid’al of Goyim (“[Many] Nations,” a poly-national city).

All the latter joined forces in the Valley of Sidim (“[Many] Fields”), which later, as the Jordan River and other streams emptied into it, became the Dead Sea.

For 12 years (1996–2008), the five kings of the Plain served Kedorla’omer and his allies, and for 13 years (2009–2022) they rebelled.

They also defeated the Horites at their mountain of Se’ir, as far as Eil, the Plain of Paran, which borders on the desert. They did not wipe out the Horites, however, so the Horites regained control of Mount Se’ir after Kedorla’omer and his allies were defeated.

They then turned back and arrived at Kadesh, which is also known as Ein-Mishpat (“The Well of Judgment”), a spring at whose edge the inhabitants of the area would gather to hold court cases. They conquered the entire field that would later be settled by the Amalekites, as well as the Amorites who lived in Chatzatzon-Tamar, later known as Ein-Gedi.

The king of Sodom, the king of Gomorrah, the king of Admah, the king of Tzevoyim, and the king of Bela, which is Tzo’ar, went forth and engaged them in battle in the Valley of Sidim,

contending with King Kedorla’omer of Eilam, King Tid’al of Goyim, King Amrafel of Shin’ar, and King Aryoch of Elasar – four kings against the five. Despite the fact that these four kings were outnumbered, they nevertheless won the battle.

The Valley of Sidim was full of clay pits that supplied the inhabitants of the Plain with clay for building. When the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled, they fell there into the quagmire of clay. The king of Sodom miraculously escaped from the pit he had fallen into; as a result, the skeptics who had previously cast doubt on the veracity of Abram’s miraculous survival from Nimrod’s furnace now believed that such miracles are possible. The other survivors fled to the mountains.

The four kings seized all the belongings of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and they departed.

Lot is Captured
When they left, they also took Abram’s nephew Lot and his possessions, since he had been living in Sodom. By choosing to sever himself from God, Lot forfeited God’s protection.

Og, the sole survivor of the battle between the four kings and the Rephaim, came and told Abram, the Hebrew [Ivri, “the other-sider,” i.e., who came from the east, the other side of the Euphrates River], who was living in Eilonim, the plains of Mamrei the Amorite, brother of Eshkol and brother of Aneir, who were Abram’s allies. Og hoped that Abram would be killed trying to rescue Lot, and that he could then marry Sarai.

He and his servants had divided themselves in order to pursue the four kings should they flee in different directions. Continuing the pursuit into the night, Abram attacked before midnight. Even though he only had 318 soldiers, Abram’s strategies and Eliezer’s military prowess secured them a miraculous victory. Afterward, as stated, Abram pursued them, but only as far as Dan – a place where Abram’s descendants would incur guilt on account of the idolatry that they would practice there – which is north of Damascus.

He retrieved all the belongings; he also brought back his kinsman Lot along with his belongings, as well as the women and the other people.

After Abram returned from his victory over Kedorla’omer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom came out to greet him at Open Valley, a plain void of trees and other obstacles to movement, which was the king of Sodom’s sporting ground. There, the survivors of the war unanimously proclaimed Abram their king.

Noah’s son Shem, who was also known as King Malki-Tzedek (“My King [teaches] Righteousness”) of Salem, came to Open Valley and brought forth bread and wine; this was the customary way of greeting those who return from battle. In addition, this was Malki-Tzedek’s way of demonstrating to Abram that he was not angry with him for having killed his descendants, the Eilamites, and indicating to Abram that his own descendants would one day offer up grain-offerings and wine-offerings to God at the location of his city, the future Jerusalem. Malki-Tzedek, besides being a king, was also a priest to God, the Most High.

He blessed Abram, and said, “Blessed be Abram before God the Most High, maker of heaven and earth.

And blessed be God the Most High, who delivered your enemies into your hand.” Abram then gave Malki-Tzedek a tithe of everything he owned, fulfilling the Torah’s requirement to give the priestly clan a tenth of one’s produce. But whereas the Torah only requires giving a tenth of certain agricultural crops, Abram went beyond the letter of the law and gave Malki-Tzedek a tenth of all his possessions.

Abram’s gift to Malki-Tzedek did not include any of the articles that the four kings had captured and that he had returned, since he did not consider these his. Regarding these articles, the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the people you have rescued from my kingdom and keep the belongings you have retrieved for yourself. This will be my reward to you for having come to my aid.”

Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I have raised my hand and sworn to GOD, the Most High God, maker of heaven and earth,

that I will not even retain a thread or a shoe strap from among the returned belongings! Nor will I take anything that you offer me from your treasury as payment, so you will not be able to say, ‘It was I who made Abram rich.’ God has promised to make me rich; I rely solely on His promise.

That is, except for what the young men have eaten, and the share due the men who came with me into battle, as well as what is due Aneir, Eshkol, and Mamrei, who did not accompany me in battle but stayed to guard the camp. All these may take their share.”

Abram said, “God, of what benefit would anything be that You would give me, seeing that I am childless, and because I have no son, the administrator of my household is Eliezer of Damascus? True, he is a worthy disciple: he skillfully helped me pursue the four kings, and he alone of all my pupils has become so dedicated to my cause that he helps me disseminate my teachings. But he is not my son.”

Abram continued, “Look, You have given me no children, and according to astrology I see that I am destined to never father children! So what good is everything else You have given me? Eliezer, a mere member of my household, will inherit me.”

At that moment the word of GOD came to him, saying: “This person will not be your heir! Rather, one born from your own flesh will inherit you.”

He took him outside his tent and said, “Look towards heaven and count the stars – if you can count them!” He said to him, “That is how your descendants will be: they will be so numerous that you will not be able to count them. And pay no heed to your astrological calculations. I am going to change your name and your wife’s name, and this will change your destiny. Moreover, if you are connected to Me, you can transcend the celestial order.” To demonstrate this, He miraculously transported him outside the celestial sphere and told him, “You are higher than heaven and should look down at it, not up to it!”

Abram believed in GOD, and did not ask Him for any sign that He would keep His promise. God accounted it for him as an act of righteousness. God would later transform this implicit trust in Him into an inherited character trait in Abram’s descendants. Therefore, the belief in God’s promises on their part would not be considered a righteous act of free will, as it was for Abram.

However, Abram had asked God for a sign regarding His promise that He would give him the Land of Israel. When he was in the Land of Israel the first time, on 15 Nisan of the year 2018, God appeared to Abram and He said to him, “I am GOD who took you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.”

“God,” replied Abram, “by what sign can I know that I will take possession of it? And by what merit will my descendants be deserving of it?”

The Covenant between the Halves
God said to him, “By merit of the sin-offerings that they will offer up to Me as part of their ongoing maintenance of their relationship with Me. To express this merit tangibly, bring for Me three calves, three goats, three rams, a turtledove, and a young dove. Slaughter the animals and cut the mammals in half. Then walk between the halves and I will send a fire to pass between the halves. This will indicate that I am bound by an inviolable covenant to give your descendants the land.”

Following God’s instructions, Abram brought Him all of these, slaughtered them, and cut the mammals in half, placing each piece opposite its counterpart. The birds, however, he did not cut in half.

Vultures swooped down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away.

Then, as the sun was about to set, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and he was overwhelmed by a dark and ominous dread, prophetically foreboding the horrors of exile his descendants were destined to experience.

“When they leave that land, I will also execute judgment upon the nation whom they will serve for having oppressed them cruelly. I will afflict them with ten debilitating plagues. After that they will leave with great wealth.

As for you, you will not live to see any of this; before it happens you will join your fathers in the afterlife in peace for, as you know, your father, Terach, is no longer an idolater and will therefore be assured a place in the afterlife. You will be buried after reaching a good old age, i.e., you will live to witness your children and grandchildren remaining loyal to your ideals.” Indeed, although Abram’s son Ishmael was wicked for much of his life, he repented before Abram died. Abram’s grandson Esau likewise turned wicked only after Abram died.

“The fourth generation after your grandson is exiled to another country will return here, for not until then will the sin of the Amorites – which is the first nation they will conquer – have run its course and will the Amorites have accrued enough demerits to warrant their being supplanted by your descendants.”

Having informed Abram about the future exile of his descendants, God proceeded to implement the covenant as He promised. The sun having set, it became very dark, and behold, a smoking furnace and a flaming torch passed between those animal pieces.

On that day, after making the furnace and torch pass between the animal halves, GOD made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I have given this land, from the Stream of Egypt [Wadi el-Arish] to the Euphrates, which, since it is now serving as one of the borders of the Promised Land, can be termed ‘the great river.’

This Promised Land comprises the territories of the Keinites, the Kenizites, the Kadmonites – which will in the future be occupied respectively by the Ammonites, the Moabites, and the Edomites –

the Hittites, the Perizites, part of the territory presently occupied by the Rephaim,

the territory of the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites. I will give the last seven lands to your descendants as soon as they return from their first exile. In the messianic future, they will possess the first three lands. In any case, they will acquire legal ownership of the land only when they enter and conquer it.”

Sarai and Hagar
Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not borne him a child. She had an Egyptian bondwoman whose name was Hagar.

Abram and Sarai knew that the Torah requires a man who has been married for ten years and has not fathered children to take an additional wife to try to have children through her. Although they had been married for a number of years prior to this episode, God had only promised Abram and Sarai offspring when He commanded them to move to Canaan, so they understood that they should calculate these ten years only beginning from that point in time. Therefore, it was only in the year 2033, after Abram had lived in Canaan for ten years, that they decided upon the following plan: Abram’s wife, Sarai, convinced Hagar the Egyptian, her bondwoman, to marry her husband by telling her how fortunate she is to have relations with someone who has so sanctified his physical body. In this way she gave her to her husband, Abram, as a second wife.

He conducted marital relations with Hagar and she conceived immediately. When Hagar later saw that she was pregnant, she regarded her mistress with disdain. She concluded that Sarai was a hypocrite: if she was really as righteous as she pretended to be, why didn’t God bless her with children, as He had blessed Hagar from her very first conjugal union with Abram?

When Sarai heard Hagar’s words, she said to Abram, “I do not blame Hagar for feeling this way; you are to blame for the wrong of my humiliation and deserve to be punished for it! When you entreated God for children, you prayed only for yourself instead of for both of us as a couple! Moreover, you see that it was I who selflessly placed my bondwoman in your bosom, and now that she sees that she is pregnant, she regards me with disdain and yet you do not admonish her! Let GOD judge between me and you!” She then turned to Hagar and said again, “As for your accusations against me, let GOD judge between me and you!” and Hagar miscarried.

Hagar Flees
Abram replied to Sarai, “Here, your bondwoman’s fate is in your hands. Deal with her as you see fit.” Sarai dealt harshly with her, giving her hard work in order to break her ego. So Hagar ran away from her and went into the desert.

An angel of GOD found her by a spring of water in the desert, next to the spring on the road to Shur. Hagar was accustomed to seeing angels in Abram’s tent, so she was not afraid.

He said, “Hagar, bondwoman of Sarai! From where are you coming, and where are you headed?” Obviously, the angel knew where Hagar was coming from, but he used this question to initiate a conversation and detain her. She replied, “I am running away from Sarai, my mistress.”

A second angel of GOD appeared and said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her dominion.”

A third angel of GOD appeared and said to her, “I will grant you a multitude of descendants; they will be so numerous that they will be uncountable.”

Ishmael
A fourth angel of GOD appeared and said to her, “You will again conceive, and will give birth to a son. You must name him Ishmael, for GOD [i.e., God (El)] has heard [shama] your outcry.

He will be a wild man who loves to hunt in the desert; he will be a robber, so his hand will be set against everyone, and therefore everyone will hate him and their hand will be set against him to attack him. But because his progeny will be numerous, he will dwell in the company of all his kin.”

Hagar gave a new name to GOD who had spoken to her through these angels, saying, “You are the God of Seeing, who sees all but cannot be seen, and who has mercifully seen my humiliation!” For she said, “Would I have even dared to think that I would be privileged to see angels here, too, by myself, after having seen in Abram’s tents that one must be very righteous in order to merit such a privilege? Certainly not! It is only out of God’s mercy that He sent me these angels.” Hagar’s declaration proved that she had repented of her previous haughtiness and had thereby earned the right to now return to Abram’s household.

The well was therefore called Be’er LaChai Ro’i (“the well where the living [angel] appeared”). It is between Kadesh and Bered, i.e., Shur.

Hagar again conceived and bore a son to Abram. Although Hagar never told Abram that the angel had instructed her what to name the child, Abram was invested with Divine inspiration and gave the name Ishmael to his son whom Hagar had borne.

Abram was 86 years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram in the year 2034.

I will make a covenant between Me and you to love you and, in the merit of your observing the commandment of circumcision, to give you the Promised Land, and I will make you exceedingly numerous.”

Abram Becomes Abraham
“As for Me, here is My covenant with you: You will be the father of a multitude of nations.

I will make you exceedingly fruitful: Besides the nation that will descend from Ishmael, I will not only make you into one additional nation from your promised son; I will make you into two more nations, descended from your grandsons: the Edomites and the Jews. The kings of these nations will also descend from you.

I will also maintain another aspect of My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations, as an everlasting covenant: Your descendants will remain true to the Divine mission with which you will inculcate them. Thus I will be able to be God both to you and to your descendants after you.

And I will give the land in which you are sojourning, the entire land of Canaan, as an everlasting heritage to you and to your descendants after you, and here, in this land, I will be God unto them. But I will not openly manifest this special relationship on those of your descendants who live outside the Promised Land.”

God further said to Abraham, “As for you, your obligation in this relationship is that you keep My covenant, you and your descendants after you, throughout their generations. Namely –

this is My covenant, between Me and you, i.e., all the current members of your household, and your descendants after you, for you to keep: to circumcise every male among you.

Sarai Becomes Sarah
God said to Abraham, “Regarding Sarai, your wife – you must not call her anymore by the name Sarai, meaning ‘my princess,’ the ruler of only my kingdom, for Sarah, meaning ‘princess’ in general, is her name. Like you, she will be the progenitor of many nations. Unlike you, however, I will remove the letter from her name that is unrelated to its new meaning. In your case, the fact that you remain the ruler of Aram does not limit your greatness; in her case, the implication of ‘my princess’ is that she is only ‘my princess’; therefore, I must remove the letter yud from her name. But in the future I will add it to the name of another leader of the Jewish people.

for I will maintain My covenant with Isaac, whom you will conceive after your circumcision, and who will thus be holy when Sarah will bear him to you at this time next year. Only Isaac’s descendants will be required to circumcise themselves, and just as I promised to multiply Ishmael’s descendants, I will multiply Isaac’s to an even greater degree.”

God was directly “above” Abraham when communicating with him, for Abraham effaced himself so thoroughly before God that he was a direct vehicle (or “chariot”) for the revelation of God’s presence in the world. When He had finished speaking with him, God’s presence ascended from resting “above” Abraham.

Ishmael his son was only 13 years old when the flesh of his foreskin was circumcised. To his credit, Ishmael did not protest being circumcised.

On the very day that Abraham turned 99 and Ishmael turned 13, Abraham was circumcised, along with Ishmael his son,