Shabbos Parashas Naso - 5779

Shabbos Parashas Naso - 5779

Rabbi Hal Miller

They shall place My Name upon the children of Israel and I shall bless them.

[Bamidbar 6:27]

In verse 23, God directs Moshe to command Aharon and his sons to bless the

people, then in 24-26 is what they are to say. Our verse follows with what sounds

like a summary of events rather than a command. The phraseology seems

confused and disjointed on the surface so there must be something deeper.

Who is the "them" that God is going to bless when it says, "and I shall bless them"?

In context, the "they" in "they shall place" refers to the Kohanim, but the object of

the sentence is the children of Israel. Why does the verse begin with an action for

the Kohanim but end with an action for God, "I shall bless them"?

The Gemora in Chullin [49a] addresses these questions. R'Yishmael tells us that

the first part of our verse commands the Kohanim to bless the people, and the

second part says that afterward, God will bless the Kohanim. R'Akiva says the

Kohanim bless the people and God affirms their blessing. According to R'Akiva,

righteous people do in fact bring blessing into this world, including to themselves,

but R'Yishmael thinks that the righteous cannot cover themselves, so God must

bless them separately.

Onkelos translates our verse, "They shall put the blessing of My name upon the

Israelites and I will bless them." This seems to be a middle course, where the

Kohanim are doing preparatory work, placing the "blessing of My name" on the

people, then God comes along to implement the blessing.

Rashi brings R'Yishmael's, R'Akiva's, and Onkelos' views as alternatives.

But these views are not universally held. Rav Hirsch, following Rambam, says,

"The Kohanim do not bless Israel, their words have no power of conferring

blessing, their mission is only to place His name upon the children of Israel, and

God will bless." This is an expansion of what Onkelos is saying. Not only is the

task of the Kohanim only to do the setup, but the Kohanim themselves, and in

fact all humans, do not have the ability to actually bless. This is at least a partial

refutation of the Gemora, although with some effort we can read the Gemora in

a way that comes close. Talelei Oros brings the Yerushalmi [Gittin 5:8], "Who

blesses you? Is it not I who bless you? And thus is it written, 'And I shall bless

them'." Sifre agrees, specifying that the Kohanim are not allowed to say that it

is they who bless the people.

Abarbanel, interprets in verse 23, amor lahem, not as "say to them", rather "say

for them", both perfectly correct grammatically. This changes the concept of

Kohanim blessing the people to Kohanim asking God for a blessing on behalf

of the people, and fits with the Yerushalmi and Sifre.

Nechama Leibowitz goes to lengths in opposition to the opinions in Chullin and

in support of the Yerushalmi, Rambam, Rav Hirsch, and Abarbanel. She then

asks why we would need Kohanim at all if the blessing actually only stems from

God? She answers with a list of places where we are taught our responsibility

to act in cooperation with God, and says that our parsha is an example showing

the requirement for hishtadlus, doing our part as though it depended upon our

hand while knowing that it really all depends on God.