Shabbos Parashas Beshallach - 5774

Shabbos Parashas Beshallach - 5774

Rabbi Hal Miller

Moshe said to Yehoshua, 'Choose people for us and go do battle with Amalek.

Tomorrow I will stand on top of the hill with the staff of G-d in my hand.

[Shemos 17:9]

Here at the end of this week's parsha, Moshe sends Yehoshua to lead the

people to war. This seems to conflict with what happened earlier in this very

portion, when [13:17] G-d does exactly the opposite, and leads the Jews away

from a potential fight. There are rules covering 'required' wars as opposed

to 'permitted' ones, but that deals with how to implement the draft. Here we

are trying to understand whether or not to go to war in the first place. What

are we to learn from this apparent conflict of verses? When must we fight,

and when must we take significant action to avoid a fight?

Ramban takes a stab at our question, from a very practical angle. He explains

that in the earlier case, the Jews would have had to pass through the land of

the Philistines, who made it clear that they would not allow it in peace.

There was an alternate route, even if long and arduous, which got the people

to their destination without going through the Philistine territory. The

Philistines did not object to this, thus war was avoidable. Regardless of how

important the goal (arrival in the land of Canaan) was, the cost was not

appropriate since the goal could be achieved without it. However, in the

second case, there was no threat to Amalek. The Jews were not trying to cross

the land, nor to have any other impact on Amalek. Had the Jews turned right

back to Egypt, Amalek would have given chase and attacked anyway. Their

purpose was not defense, but hatred. There was no choice but to fight Amalek.

Sforno and others say that in the earlier case, a fight would have been

impractical, as the newly-freed slaves could not handle a military conflict.

He says, "Although they had left Egypt fully armed, they did not have the

courage to face the Egyptians in combat." This presumes that by the time of

the threat from Amalek, they had somehow gained expertise in the art of war.

Some commentators say that the people had somehow forfeited their guarantee of

Divine protection by the time of Amalek. Abarbanel states that "the Children

of Israel deserved no miracles, having just asked (a couple verses back), 'Is

Hashem among us or not?'" Others tie it to Moshe's preparing the people to go

on without him, as he knew his life would come to an end reasonably soon. This

effort was to teach Yehoshua how to lead in battle without Moshe's or G-d's

guidance, since the people would soon be conquering the land. Rashi seems to

indicate this when he comments on "And go out", saying, "do battle. Go out

from the protection of the Clouds of Glory and do battle with him."

Nachshoni asks a subordinate question: "Why did Moshe not lead the battle

himself?" Abarbanel's answer is that Moshe wanted to humiliate Amalek, by not

only refusing to lower himself to meet Amalek in battle, but to send a junior

officer in command of the fight.

But all of these answers are really discussing the practical, nature-bound

reasons. There is another way to view the verses. Abarbanel calls the fight

against Amalek a "non-miraculous" war. We can easily understand that. Just as

in Egypt, G-d could have fought and decisively won a war with Amalek without a

single Jew raising a weapon. That would have required an obvious miracle. But

G-d had told the people to go out from Egypt armed. He apparently did not

intend to fight all their battles in clear and obvious miraculous fashion.

We can look at our question instead as, when does G-d want us to sit back and

let Him fight the war, and when does He want us to step up?

The answer can be found in the last part of our pasuk. It isn't that the Jews

had somehow gotten hold of a copy of Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and become

overnight tactical geniuses. The development between the two incidents had to

do with the people's level of trust in G-d. When faced with the Philistine

threat, the people would have bolted back to Egypt. Now, they had come to

understand to a greater degree that G-d had the ability to protect them. It

was time to advance that understanding. Rav Hirsch says, "it is not Israel's

sword but Moshe's staff that conquers Amalek. And it is not any magic power in

the staff but the emunah which is expressed and brought to the minds of the

people by the uplifted hand." What this second war event teaches is that we

as a people need to look up, not just to the staff that Moshe held up on the

hill, not just to the serpent-on-a-stick that Moshe held up later to stop a

plague, but to G-d, who is above those. It isn't the staff or stick, it isn't

our generalship, it is G-d who wins our battles, regardless of the weapons we

might use or not use. The answer to our original question regarding when we

fight is that we can only do so when our trust in G-d is sufficient. Although

we can learn more about which battles to fight, the lesson in our parsha is

about trust in G-d.