Shabbos Parashas Lech Lecha - 5779

Shabbos Parashas Lech Lecha - 5779

Rabbi Hal Miller

God appeared to Avram and said, "To your descendants I will give this land." [Bereishis 12:7]

Avram did a lot of traveling in our parsha. The reason for some of it is fairly straightforward, but on

some of it there are questions. In [12:1], God told him, "Go for yourself ... to the land that I will

show you." In [12:5], the Torah writes, "they left to go to the land of Canaan, and they came to the

land of Canaan." Avram thus did precisely what God commanded, he left Ur-kasdim and went to

the land that God showed him in our verse. But [12:8], "From there he relocated to the mountain

east of Beth El," and in [12:9], "Then Avram journeyed on, journeying steadily toward the south."

We must ask, why did Avram leave the land that God sent him to? Rashi says that all the

southerly travel, until the going to Egypt, was actually only heading toward Yerushalayim.

After he moved further south, he ran into a famine. Instead of going back to the place where God

had appeared to him, he continued down into Egypt. As Rav Moshe Feinstein notes, "It is

common for people to relocate for economic reasons," but why did not Avram think that maybe his

best choice would be to return back to the north where he'd been sent?

Kehillas Yitzchak suggests that since Avram's mission was to bring faith in God to the peoples of

the land, once the famine struck, Avram suffered a crisis of credibility and had to move on to start

over. Others say it was merely because there was no food in the land, but wouldn't that be a test

of Avram's faith that God would provide? Did he fail by leaving? Many commentators do criticize

Avraham for exactly this, often pointing out that he learned his lesson while in Egypt and returned.

After all according to Rav Hirsch, there was no Avraham before him to whom he could look for an

example of true faith.

Rav Hirsch continues at length discussing how Avram's travels avoided the main cities, rather

isolating himself while he developed his faith and understanding of God. At the time of the events

in Egypt, Avram had completed this process of development, and was ready to return to his task.

Hirsch also mentions that by that point, Avram had ridded himself of Lot and his "erev rav", which

had been dragging down the proselytization operation.

Radak points out that a proper reading of [13:3] is, "And he went to his journey from the south until

Beit El." By this we see that Avram was actually traveling north from Egypt, which of course, makes

sense. Avram was returning to the land that God showed him. Radak further mentions that Avram

understood that he personally was not acquiring the land, rather his descendants would, thus he

"folded his tent to set out to go to the more mountainous regions east of Beit El to examine that part

of the land." In other words, Avram was not leaving the land, but exploring the entirety of it. The

exception to this was the temporary trip to Egypt because of the famine. Since the land was not

actually his, Avram had the right to take such a detour. This is supported by verse [13:17], "Arise,

walk about the land through its length and breadth, for to you will I give it."

Rav Moshe says, "Avraham was tested with ten trials. The command to leave Charan was one of

these, but why? Many people travel to strange lands in the hope of providing themselves and their

families with a brighter future. Why was this a test of Avraham's faith? Didn't Avraham know that

God's power did not depend on location? Did he not have enough work to do in Charan in proclaiming

God's Name there? None of these questions bothered Avraham. If it was the will of God that he go to

Canaan, then that is what he would do.

God further pressed the test with the famine, and while Avram may or may not have been justified in

leaving, he did return when he could. Avram may have made mistakes, but as Nechama Leibowitz

wrote, Avram at that point was but a glimmer of hope in the world, eventually spreading out. In other

words, Avram was still in the process of becoming Avraham Avinu. It is that growth that we witness in

this parsha as the example we must follow.