Shabbat Parashat Vayechi - 5785

Shabbat Parashat Vayechi - 5785

Rabbi Hal Miller

  The days came close for Israel to die so he called for his son, for Yosef, and said to him,

  please if I have found favor in your eyes...please do not bury me in Egypt. [Bereishit 47:29]

What does our verse mean that "the days came close for Israel to die"? It is a literal

translation, so there is not much doubt about the words themselves. We must look at the

context to gain understanding. The verse before ours tells us that "the days of Yaakov, the

years of his life were one hundred and forty-seven years", also a literal translation. There

are some obvious differences, the use of Yaakov in one verse and Israel in the other, and

"the days of Yaakov, the years of his life" in one, where the other only speaks of days.

Ramban and others explain that the righteous sense when their strength is ebbing and body

weakness is increasing, even without disease, meaning a spiritual loss of strength. We see

this also with King David at the end of his life (Melachim Alef 2:1) and similar with Moshe

(Devarim 31:14). This might explain the change from Yaakov to Israel in the two verses,

discussing the end of Yaakov's life but the coming of days for Israel. Radak adds the reason for

the coming of days that Yosef was under the protection of his father for the first 17 years of his

life, and Yaakov was under the protection of Yosef for the last 17 years of his, so as that period

of days was coming to an end, there was a completed balance, which was now ending.

Or HaChayim disagrees, noting that as people age and lose strength, many continue to live

for a long time yet. Instead he cites the Zohar that 30 days prior to a righteous one's death,

his divine image is removed from him. Or HaChayim understands this to be the case with

Yaakov, that his ability to explain the End of Days to his sons evaporated with the onset of

that 30-day period.

Bereishit Rabbah (96:4) discusses this verse, citing R'Shmuel bar Nachmeini in the name of

R'Yonatan, "Our teachers said, all those of whom 'drawing near' is written did not attain their

father's years." We can see that Avraham lived 175 years, Yitzchak 185, but Yaakov only 147.

Amram 137, and Moshe only 120. The 'coming of days' verses applied to Yaakov and Moshe

but not the others. This is also true with Yishai and David. Further, "R'Shimon ben Lakish said,

the days of the righteous die but they themselves do not die." Reading our verse carefully, we

could understand it as "the days came close to die", with "Israel" modifying the subject, "the

days". Thus the days will die, but Israel would not.

In the Artscroll Talmud Bava Kama on 60b there is a note citing Rashbash, son of Tashbetz,

with an idea on another topic that may help us understand our verses. Rashbash notes that

at the beginning of a plague one should flee the city but once the plague becomes widespread

one should "hunker down" indoors. After COVID, we have some appreciation of this statement.

Rashbash asked how it would help to flee since on Rosh Hashanah if the decree was for one to

die in the plague, it would find him, and if it was not decreed, he would be safe anyway. His

answer is that when one is born he is given a set number of years to live, but depending on how

he uses them, some could be added or some taken away. If one endangers himself without need,

he will have years deducted from his original allotment, but if he takes proper precautions, he

will live out his entire lifespan.

How does this help us in our verse? We could equate the famine to a plague and find that Yaakov

should have left Canaan at the beginning, on his own initiative. Since he did not, and the famine

was established for a couple years already before the episode of the brothers and Yosef, Yaakov

was then at the point of "hunker down", relying on his sons to make trips to Egypt. Although

certainly it appears to have been God's will that Yaakov and family go to Egypt, Yaakov did not

follow the playbook and thus lost some of his allotted lifespan. This explains verse 28, "the days of

Yaakov, the years of his life" being only 147. We then return to the quote from Reish Lakish above

about the death of days as opposed to death of the righteous, and note that many commentators

say from this that Yaakov never died. Our verse then is not about the physical death of Yaakov

son of Yitzchak, but about the end of an era, the closing out of the days of Israel as they had been

in order to begin a new phase of history, one without the Patriarchs, but one which shows that the

days of the new nation of Israel thus will carry on forever.