Part of my process of learning for the past few years has been to take snippets of a text and then, periodically, return to see what we’ve seen. Other times, I’ve worked hard to randomize the selections, to do my best not to impose my interests or preferences on the text. My hope was to let characteristic elements of that text reveal themselves through the process, not be molded by me into my own image.

That’s been less true of my selections for Ramban on Bereshit. In Devarim, we took two weeks for each parsha; the need to find more comments helped avoid me choosing only those that already resonated with me. Here, I found myself more than once running out of space after taking only comments that I’ve seen before, that have long struck me as particularly interesting.

With that significant caveat, I still believe the comments we’ve seen loosely revolve around a narrow set of questions of interest to Ramban (to me as well, but as long as it’s true of Ramban, I feel better about it). In Bereshit, Ramban repeatedly comes back to how the world around us is shaped into the form it takes, and who does that shaping.

He looks at Hashem’s role, both directly and mediated by angels, both open and obvious and hidden within the workings of nature; he looks at the way the Torah affects our understanding of the world by what it does and does not choose to mention or emphasize; at the significant role the Avot, the Patriarchs (and, to a lesser extent, all prophets), predicted, prescribed, and produced particular futures for their descendants; and then how people themselves shape the course of their lives and of history at large.

As we look at each in turn, I think we’ll get a sense of the larger picture Ramban to Bereshit showed us this time around.

Ramban’s picture of Hashem balances adamant insistence that Hashem runs the world with no competitive powers even as he also believes that Hashem leaves room for others to affect how the world unfolds. For the first side, Ramban read the word va-yar, that Hashem “saw” the goodness in the various aspects of Creation, to mean He (pardon the pronoun, but when I avoid it, my writing gets clunky or clunkier) gives all that’s in the world its ability to exist. Without Hashem’s constant “seeing,” the infusion of energy or whatever that is, it all would immediately reduce to nothingness.

Hashem as Active Ruler

Because of that, Hashem gets to decide who lives where, or at all. Ramban argues that the stories at the beginning of the Torah do not give us enough information for us to assume that they’re there to tell us how the world was created. Rather, the stories of Creation, the Flood, and the Tower of Bavel remind us that human beings’ residence in a particular land or that they live at all are only by Hashem’s sufferance.

People who go wrong can lose their right to live in Eden (as Adam and Chavah did), in their land (the people of the Tower of Bavel), or on the earth (the generation of the Flood).

For Ramban, the guiding principle of how Hashem decides how to arrange the world is called kol, and is the Attribute of ve-emet, truth. Hashem’s involvement in the world is heightened in Israel, as Ya’akov saw in his dream, that aside from the promise that he himself would have direct Providence (whereas most people’s lives are guided by angels, as we’ll discuss), the Land of Israel is where Hashem is most fully involved and invested, as it were.

Those two factors, that Hashem runs the world with kol, which is related to truth, and that Israel has more direct Providence than other places, was why Sodom got punished so quickly; other places might have been equally evil, but they were not in Israel. So, too, when Avraham discovered all the mitzvot—in Ramban’s explanation of Chazal’s view—he and his descendants only took it upon themselves to observe those mitzvot fully in Israel, where it’s mishpat elokei ha-aretz, the law of the Gd of the land.

Hashem Leaving Room for Others

The same dream that showed Ya’akov he had Hashem guarding him personally also showed angels going up and down from the earth. Ramban takes pains to stress that that is to make clear that angels do not act without checking with Hashem first.

He only needs to say that, though, because in fact—other than Israel, Ya’akov, and other special people—he himself holds that angels do govern much of what happens in the world. Again, they are are limited in what they can do; the angel with whom Ya’akov wrestled was, for example, the sar, the representative angel, for Esav, and has some control over what happens to them (none of it without Hashem’s consent, but the fact of intermediaries means they have some room for action; we’ll see more on that in Shemot).  

Ramban thinks that angel would have preferred to injure Ya’akov more seriously, but could not. He was allowed to hurt Ya’akov’s thigh because it prefigured future persecutions, but that’s it. Still, when the angels encounter Lot, even though they have a job to do, they seem to also have enough leeway to refuse to enter his house until he builds up merit by sincerely pressuring them to honor him with their presence.

The World Itself

Aside from the angels, Ramban seems to think the world itself (what we might call nature) also operates on its own terms. To explain Hashem’s use of the pluralna’aseh, let us, about creating humanity— which Rashi thought showed that Hashem consulted with the angels—Ramban instead says that there were other partners in the process.

Only the first moment of creation was yesh me-ayin, out of complete nothingness, the rest was a matter of shaping existing material into new forms. That’s why Hashem phrased the creation of fish, for example, as “let the waters sprout forth.” For people, Hashem said na’aseh adam, let us make humans, which meant “Me and the land,” since the earth was going to supply the materials.

Not only is there a natural world that follows an ordinary pattern, as if Hashem were not constantly intervening, Ramban thinks Hashem prefers that the world follow those patterns. That’s why even necessary miracles are limited to the extent possible. Noach’s ark had to miraculously expand to hold all the animals being saved, yet Hashem still had Noach build a very large structure, to make it less of a miracle when the animals fit.

The preference for limited Divine intervention means that we’ll sometimes be left to err even as we think we’re asking the right way to proceed. In his analysis of the story from the end of the book of Shofetim (which was similar to the Sodomo story), Ramban thought that the Jews asked Hashem the wrong question about their upcoming war with Binyamin. Hashem answered the question asked, without pointing out to them the more important questions they had failed to ask.

They thought they were consulting with Hashem, and Hashem did not correct them. As involved as Hashem is, Hashem also leaves room for angels, for natural forces, and for people, sometimes too much room for their own good.

Torah as an Avenue to Understanding the World

Consultation with Hashem was not the only way people could figure out the proper path. In his remarkable introduction to the commentary, Ramban explained Moshe’s use of the third person (va-yedabber Hashem el Moshe, Hashem spoke to Moshe) as meant to reflect the fact that the Torah predates the world, that Moshe was recording a pre-existing text, like a scribe.

In addition to chronological priority, Torah contains all wisdom. Many of Shlomo’s remarkable abilities—for example, to cultivate plants that grow only outside of Israel, because he knew that Israel has the roots of all places on earth, and knew which roots are where; to communicate with animals and plants; to read a person’s deeds on his/her face—as all based on his study of Torah, as did Yechezkel’s readiness for the vision of the Chariot.

The Torah conveys that information in multiple ways, such as the shapes of letters, the spelling of words, and even stringing letters together to make other words (Names of Hashem) than the ones we usually read. All of this must be a matter of tradition, Ramban says, cannot be inferred by human intellect.

With all that Torah includes, it leaves out much that it sees as not worth our while to learn. We know little of Avraham’s background, for example, because to tell us how Avraham rejected the idolatry around him in Ur Kasdim, the Torah would have to tell us more about those idolaters than it wishes. We know our forefather less well than might have been beneficial because we cannot let idolaters get their moments in the sun.

More frequently, Ramban stresses that the Torah does not bother to tell us about hidden miracles. He thought that Hashem miraculously helped Ya’akov become rich, even altering sheep’s looks when Lavan changed the rules, mid-pregnancy, of which kind of sheep would be Ya’akov’s, but only hinted at it.

He makes a principle of it when Ibn Ezra complains about Chazal’s view that Yocheved gave birth to Moshe when she was 130 years old, a miracle the Torah at most hints at. Ramban replies that the Torah is full of miracles glossed over—divinely administered reward and punishment is miraculous, because spiritual successes and failures do not naturally lead to physical outcomes, but the Torah says they will. It’s not what the Torah bothers to tell us.

The Patriarchs, Foreshadowing Our Future

The Avot, the Patriarchs, take the most advantage of the room Hashem leaves for others’ input. Ma’aseh avot siman le-banim, the Patriarchs’ actions were a “sign” for their descendants, told Ramban that what the Avot did, good and not, foreshadowed later generations’ experiences.

Avraham’s errors in leaving Cana’an during a famine and giving up Sarah too easily to Pharaoh led to parallel painful events for the Jewish people. On the other hand, his prayer at Shechem benefitted his great-grandchildren in their war to avenge the abduction of Dinah.

While Avraham’s actions affected the Egyptian exile, Ya’akov’s decision to confront Esav prefigured the Roman involvement in the end of the Second Temple, and his going down to Egypt in response to a famine paralleled the exile that came after the destruction of that Temple.  

A more positive example is Ya’akov’s view of his conquest, which he tells Yosef was with his sword and bow, just as the Jewish people will have to conquer the land through war (which Ramban saw as a favor to the people, since it eased their way to adhering to the Divine command to expel the seven nations as they took over the land).

The Patriarchs, Shaping Our Future

Ramban’s alternate explanation for the phrase his sword and bow was that Ya’akov performed actions right meant to make that future more likely. That’s because the physical actions of prophets put a particular future in force, which is also why Yosef worried about where Ya’akov placed his hands when blessing his sons.

I suggested that that might be why the commands of these Avot, particularly Ya’akov, were enforced by Hashem, such as in that the Chashmonaim were wiped out for violating Ya’akov’s order that only Yehudah be kings of the Jewish people.  

Ramban may also have thought the Avot had this power because they understood the world so well. After he presented Chazal’s view that Avraham kept the Torah, Ramban’s own more literal reading was that Avraham intuited basic principles of the world. When Yitzchak goes to pray, he picks a place where an angel had appeared before. Ramban does not make the connection, but the Avot’s expert awareness of the balance between the physical and metaphysical, their sense of the future and how they can help make it go well, would all be reasons to cede to them the rights to command us as to how we should act as we face that future.

Although he is not generally thought of as one of the Avot, Ramban sees Yosef as also feeling obligated to bring about a future he’s been told that Hashem wants. That’s why he works to make his dreams come true.

Noach and a Model of Ordinary Humanity

A significant step below the Avot was Noach, a prophet, but one whose personal qualities, as understood by Ramban, make him a more accessible version of service of Hashem than the perhaps daunting Patriarchs.

Noach’s righteousness, what earned him the right to have the verse refer to him as a tzaddik, was that he avoided wrongdoing. So, too, Ramban’s view of how he walked with Hashem was only in the sense that he rejected the financial and other perversions of his generation.

Neither of these were small achievements in the time in which he lived, sufficient for him to be a prophet, and to save him and all the animals from the Flood. It is the animals’ debt to Noach—and us as his descendants—that created the new right to use those animals as food.

These merits may also have been the reason his sons and their wives were saved. The other option Ramban proposes, if the sons deserved to survive on their own merits, is that that’s because Noach in this instance rose to the same level as Avraham, in successfully passing on his sense of right and wrong to those sons.

In a time when all around us are evil, Noach shows Ramban that even avoiding getting caught up in their depredations can be enough to count as righteous, as one who walks with Hashem, as one who can achieve prophecy. 

Society Shapes the World

Then there’s the rest of us, ordinary people, who also contribute to the world’s development. Starting from the top rank of society, Ramban thinks people only began to select kings when they had to go to war, which explains why he thinks those kings were more limited in power than we might have assumed. In his view, Par’oh needed to convince his assembled advisors to accept Yosef as second in command, and Yosef finally revealed himself to his brothers because of pressure from the rest of the court, who were moved by Yehudah’s story.

Nor was this limited to rulers, in that Lavan could claim it was such pressure that forced him to switch Leah for Rachel.

The ability to wield such pressure also creates a responsibility on ordinary people to do so when appropriate. The tribe of Binyamin suffers for the fact that they were not offended by the rape of the concubine in Give’a, and the rest of the people suffer in part for having been offended by that but not by the incident of the idol of Michah (where people set up an idol to be worshipped as a business venture, and then the tribe of Dan stole that idol). Taking offense at sexual wrongs but not at insults to Hashem’s honor was a significant misuse of society’s enforcement of values.

Inter and Intra Group Morality

Multiple societies means multiple moralities. Dinah’s brothers were bothered by the offense to their family morality when Shechem abducted her, although Ramban thinks the Canaanites might already have become aware of how wrong that was.

But not necessarily, as Ramban is clear that morality isn’t immediately obvious. In his view, Reuven taught the brothers (who had not known it until then) that passive murder was less egregious than active, and Yehudah taught them that it still qualified as murder.

The smallest society, a family, has challenges Ramban sometimes noted as well. He thought Esav’s rejection of the birthright was typical of kesilim, who care only about the moment, do not realize the value of being the leader within their family.

A similar error seems to characterize Onan and others who refuse to perform yibum. Especially since Ramban sees it as providing a great benefit to the deceased, it’s a rejection of family solidarity, a refusal to help a relative in need.

It’s a small world but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it, the comedian Steven Wright once said. Ramban to Bereshit show us some of the difficulties of shaping it, of moving the world from Creation to the kind of future Hashem wants. Hashem helps, greatly, but also leaves much of it to regular patterns, and expects and insists that people, great and small, contribute in the various ways we’ve seen.

Since this is the last parsha in Bereshit, it seems fitting that Ramban takes one more opportunity to say that what happens to our forefathers prefigures our national history. On 47;28, he relates Ya’akov’s actions in going down to Egypt to the exile we currently endure (and which in turn had been set in motion by Avraham’s going down to Egypt when he had a famine, as we saw back in Lech Lecha).

A Self-Inflicted Wound

A first element that Ramban stresses is that Ya’akov’s sons initiated the process. They sold Yosef, which is why Ya’akov ended up in Egypt when the famine hit; that was where Yosef was, and he was the one able to take care of them. Second, they intended to return when the famine ended (as they tell Par’oh in 47;4, they had come to sojourn there because there was no food or grazing in Canaan).

Their plans did not work out [Ramban does not address why; Rashi thought Hashem told Ya’akov he would have to stay in Egypt until Hashem took them out. Ramban does not say that, and his emphasis that they did not go back seems to imply he thought there was choice to it, that they got comfortable in Egypt and saw no reason to go back]. They ended up staying there for a lengthy exile, Ya’akov passed away there, and his bones were sent back to be buried in Canaan.

That’s our encounter with Rome as well, he says [like other Jews of his time, Ramban saw Christian Europe as the continuation of Rome]. We invited them into our politics towards the end of the Second Temple, when Agrippas sought their help to shore up his hold on power. Then, when we had rebelled and they lay siege to Jerusalem, famine led to the loss of the city, and a very long exile, with no defined end (whereas Egypt and Bavel had defined terms to them).

[Ramban does not comment further, but this broadens our understanding of his view of ma’aseh avot siman le-banim. He seems to imply that had the brothers not sold Yosef—which would have “forced” Hashem to get them to Egypt some other way, true, but that crime would not be on their ledger—the rest of Jewish history might have gone better. Similarly, even after the brothers did that, had Agrippas foregone Roman assistance, perhaps at the cost of his throne, the nation might have been better off. Actions of the forefathers are a sign for the children, not a fate].

What Makes Blessings Effective

In 48;17, Yosef is bothered by his father’s placing his stronger hand on Ephraim, but it’s not clear to Ramban why Yosef cared (if Ya’akov meant the blessing for Menashe, why should where he placed his hand change that?). He first suggests Yosef loved Menashe more, since he was the first-born, so it upset him to see his favorite displaced [that would mean Yosef had learned little from his own ordeal as a favorite].

He prefers the answer that Yosef worried that Ya’akov was making a mistake. Blessings made in error lack full ruach hakodesh, Ya’akov’s full abilities to tap into the realm from which blessings come, and might not work. Ramban had thought that was why Yitzchak asked Esav to bring him food before blessing him, to stimulate himself to a fuller and more successful blessing.

It’s a topic that would take too long to consider fully, but this is a good start: for Ramban, when prophets tap into truths the rest of us cannot, they need some physical support for what they’re doing (such as placing hands on head) and need to be cognizant of exactly what’s going on. To stand in a room and wish two absent grandsons well might express good wishes, but it’s their standing in front of Ya’akov, with his hand on each one’s head (and knowing which was which) that could produce the fullest bracha.

Symbolic Actions to Predict and Shape the Future

48;22 leads Ramban to employ both ideas we have just reviewed, that Ya’akov’s actions predict our own, and that a prophet’s use of physical items strengthens his predictions or blessings. He tells Yosef he’s giving him an extra gift, Shechem¸ which he says he conquered be-charbi u-ve-kashti, with my sword and bow.

That foreshadows the Jewish conquest of Canaan (after the Exodus), where Yehoshu’a 11;19-20 tells us only one city sued for peace. In every other case, the Jews had to go to war (Ramban thinks that was Hashem’s way of helping the Jews remember they were supposed to expel all the Canaanites, to avoid adopting their perverted ways).

Ya’akov speaks of his sword and bow to signal that it will be his merits that will help the Jews win these wars. A second option is that Ya’akov performed symbolic actions in front of Yosef—he pointed his sword at the Emorites, and shot/threw arrows in their direction, so his descendants would more easily conquer the Land when the time came.

He could have learned that from II Melachim 13;16, which tells us Elisha had Yoash, the king of Israel, shoot arrows and bang others on the ground, to symbolize military victories over Aram (Elisha became upset when he hit the ground only three times, because Yoash had limited the blessing to three victories).

People, especially prophets, shape the physical world and the course of history with their actions, Ramban held. But those actions take intent, and a good match between intent and event.

Yehudah’s Irrevocable Kingship

In 49;10, Ya’akov says the scepter shall never depart from Yehudah. Ramban says that clearly Ya’akov did not mean to guarantee uninterrupted eternal rule to Yehudah, since the Torah itself (Devarim 28;36) predicts that sins can lead to exile for the nation and its kings.

The prescription here was only that no other tribe was allowed to take the throne. That also did not come true, as Ramban well knows, but for different reasons. Shaul became king only because the people asked too early and improperly. His was a monarchy conceived in the sin of their decision to reject Shmuel’s very successful service as Hashem’s reprentative. [It’s part of Shaul’s tragedy of Shaul that he was sort of set up to fail; he could have pulled out a victory had he done what he was told, but for Ramban there were never particularly high hopes for his kingship].

True, Shmuel seems to promise Shaul eternal monarchy if he listens to Hashem (see I Shemuel 13;13), but Ramban thinks he would have been king over only the descendants of Rachel, or it would have been a kingship subordinate to the one from Yehudah.

The Sin of All Non-Davidic Kings

The kings of the Northern Kingdom—other than Yerov’am, who was told by Achiya HaShiloni to take control of much of the people—violated the prescription of their forefather  (Ramban thinks Ya’akov established this as a family rule).

The Northern kings don’t listen to Hashem, either, so their disobedience does not surprise. But Ramban sees the Chashmonaim, the heroes of the Chanukkah story (as it happens, I am writing the first draft of this on the first day of Chanukkah) as having made that same error.

They were thoroughly pious people, played a central role in ensuring the Jewish people did not forget the Torah, and yet they failed to restore the kingship to the Davidic line (Ramban seems to think that had just one Hasmonean ruled and then given it to a Davidic descendant, that would not have violated Ya’akov’s terms. Taking it over as hereditary was the problem). That failure led to their being wiped out, as Baba Batra 3b tell us that anyone who claims to be from the Hasmonean line is actually a slave.

A Forefather’s Commandments

Ramban does not quite explain what they transgressed. Even if we accept his reading, that Ya’akov meant to lay down a rule about kings of the Jewish people, what is the nature of the sin of later kings (including the otherwise heroically pious Hasmoneans)?

Whatever he meant, let’s remember, it had consequences Hashem chose to enforce, since Ramban thinks the extirpation of the Hasmonean line was in reaction to this sin.  I hope you’ll pardon the speculation, but particularly in light of his idea that ma’aseh avot siman le-banim, forefathers set their descendants’ history in motion, I wonder whether he thought they thus have the right to legislate how later history should look as well.

When Ya’akov determines what he sees as the best shape of the Jewish people, his parental command obligates all who come after, because he was materially shaping our history anyway. Hashem agreed, and made the world such that it reacted to violations of Ya’akov’s rules almost as if they were violations of Hashem’s rules.

As I send this out, I’m working on collating recurring themes for comments we saw in Bereshit as a whole, so any summary of this essay would reflect that as well. Let’s just leave it for then.

Stories We Tell

Parshat Vayigash opens with Yehudah arguing with/begging Yosef to let Binyamin return to Ya’akov. He doesn’t simply make that request, he retells the history of the current encounter with Yosef, a narrative Ramban considers superfluous, since Yosef had lived it as well.

Bereshit Rabbah 93;6 said this was Yehudah’s way of rebuking Yosef for threatening to keep Binyamin. In the course of the story, he reminded Yosef that they had made clear how the loss of Binyamin would threaten Ya’akov’s health, and that Yosef had promised Binyamin safe passage.

Ramban is dissatisfied with that idea, since he sees no reason to think that Yosef’s promises indemnified Binyamin against punishment for theft of Yosef’s goblet. Why would Yehudah think the history of how Binyamin came to be there would affect how Yosef dealt with a crime?

He instead suggests this was to arouse Yosef’s compassion. He meant to remind Yosef of Ya’akov’s attachment to his youngest, an attachment deepened by the disappearance of Binyamin’s older brother, the reason Binyamin did not come originally, and why Yehudah had had to guarantee his safety. Once Yosef understood the gravity of the situation, the damage to Ya’akov were Binyamin to be left behind, Yehudah hoped he would convince Yosef to accept him as replacement.

In Ramban’s version, Yehudah tells Yosef it would be a charitable gesture to take Yehudah, the more capable worker, over Binyamin. It’s an example of something I’m not sure we always notice, that when we are currying favor with powerful others, we will sometimes flatter them by telling them that some act of theirs is righteous or generous when it’s actually just a lesser evil than they had contemplated. Yosef had trumped up the charges on Binyamin, as all parties to this conversation knew, but Yehudah said what he had to say for his father’s benefit.

The Pressure on Yosef

45;1 says Yosef could no longer control himself before all who were standing there. Ramban thinks the assemblage would have included members of the royal household and ordinary Egyptians (perhaps there as part of the commerce in grain); Yehudah’s story moved them all enough that they begged/pressured Yosef to accede to his request. Yosef could not resist all of them (another example, as we saw last time, that Ramban thought that apparently absolute rulers were not as absolute as we fool ourselves into thinking), so he called out to clear the room.

That’s because he was going to have to remind his brothers they had sold him into slavery. To save them the embarrassment and to avoid a worse outcome, that Par’oh’s retinue would dismiss them as traitorous (who would sell their own brother!), and wonder why they should welcome them to Egypt. And, since Yosef was of that stock, their trust of him would be reduced as well.

What Ya’akov Never Knew

45;27 says the brothers told Ya’akov all Yosef had said, but Ramban thinks they, and everyone else, left out any indication that the brothers had sold Yosef. The brothers feared the kind of tongue lashing/curse that Reuven, Shimon, and Levi were already slated to get at the end of Ya’akov’s life, and Yosef was not going to bear tales on them.

In Ramban’s view, Ya’akov spent the rest of his life thinking Yosef had gotten lost looking for his brothers, was abducted by slave traders, and sold. That explains why the brothers have to claim, 50;16, that Ya’akov left word Yosef should forgive them. Had Ya’akov really said that, he should/would have said it to Yosef’s face. Ramban assumes it never happened, and they made it up in the hopes it would stop Yosef’s vengeance.

For Ramban, family secrets mean that even one of our Avot never knew the whole story of his family, of the relations among his children.

Yocheved’s Age at Moshe’s Birth

46;15 says thirty-three descendants of Leah were among those who went to Egypt with Ya’akov, but the list only has thirty-two names. Rabbinic tradition resolved that by saying Yocheved (Moshe’s mother) was born as they arrived. Ibn Ezra disliked the idea, because it would mean the Torah neglected to mention the remarkable miracle that she had a baby at age 130 (the Jews were in Egypt 210 years, and Moshe was eighty when they left).

Ramban says he has to answer, lest Ibn Ezra be wise in his own eyes in tearing down an idea of our Sages. [There’s an irony there, since Ramban is not afraid to register when he isn’t convinced by some statement of Chazal’s, or that it’s not the simplest reading of the text. In addition, Ibn Ezra passed away thirty years before Ramban was born, so whatever Ramban wrote would not prevent Ibn Ezra from thinking anything. I think Ramban thinks Ibn Ezra touched on an important issue, and wants to clarify it for all readers].

Ramban first points out that someone had an age issue, no matter how we juggle events. Bamidbar 26;59 makes clear that Yocheved was Levi’s daughter. If we accept Chazal’s idea that she was born at or close to their arrival in Egypt, she was miraculously old at Moshe’s birth. If we try to avoid that by claiming she was born to Levi some years after their arrival in Egypt, we put Levi (at his daughter’s birth) into the age range of Avraham at Yitzchak’s. Since Levi was 43 when they arrived (Yosef was 39, and between them in birth order were Yehudah, Dan, Naftali, Gad, and Asher), if we want Yocheved to be significantly less than 130, we’d have to put Levi at her birth at close to or over age 100, which would only get her down to her seventies, still an advanced age for childbirth.

Miracles We Need Not Know

Ramban’s point is that she might have been 130 and the Torah would not bother to tell us, because the Torah does not tell us all the miraculous events of Biblical history. When a prophet predicts a miracle (even a hidden one), or an angel reveals himself while acting as told to by Hashem, that’s necessary knowledge, as are those occasions where Hashem openly violates the usual workings of the natural world. [He doesn’t explain why, but I think it’s because those provide more direct evidence of Divine Providence and involvement with the world].

Hidden miracles aren’t worth delineating because the Torah assumes there are hidden miracles everywhere. All the karet punishments predict that a person who deliberately violates certain prohibitions —Ramban uses the example of sexual wrongs and of eating prohibited fats— will be cut off from the nation, which includes dying prematurely or losing all of one’s children.

At the national level, the Torah warns that failure to observe the sabbatical year will lead to a lack of rain, which is clearly not a natural phenomenon (or is, but then means the laws of nature include a lot that is not discernible by usual human or scientific means). The same is true of the rewards Hashem promises—they will come in natural-looking ways, but there’s nothing natural about living longer, healthier, and richer lives because one keeps the ritual laws of the Torah.

For birth age, he points to the end of the book of Ruth, which lists four generations from entry to Israel until the birth of David– Salmon, Boaz, Oved, and Yishai. From other verses, we know that David was born 370 years after the entry to Israel. That means that if each of those men gave birth in the year they died (and we divide the 370 years equally), they would have been 93 when they gave birth. Yet Tanach makes no point of it, because it’s not what Tanach cares to stress.

Avraham’s Miracle

Besides, the miracle of Avraham’s birth was not Avraham’s age, since he had lived only a little more than half his expected life span, and old age is usually after a much larger proportion of one’s life (Ramban says that in his time, when people are expected to live to seventy, they’re not thought of as old until sixty. This is an important reminder of the untruth of the claim that people used to age differently when average life spans were shorter. They always aged at about the same rate, until very recently, just that many more people did not make it through the full range).

Not only that, but Avraham had many children with Keturah, after Sarah’s passing, yet the Torah does not dwell on it. For Ramban, the miracle of Yitzchak’s birth was that Avraham and Sarah had a child after all those years of infertility, and after Sarah had reached menopause. All we need to assume about Yocheved is that she had a similar life span to her father, in which case we have no reason to think she had hit menopause when she gave birth to Moshe. Hashem could also have delayed her menopause because Aharon and Moshe were the best ones to redeem the Jewish people, and the time had not yet arrived for that to happen.

These comments remind us that what we do and don’t say, stories we do and don’t tell, are about more than what’s true, or even what’s surprising. It’s about what is relevant and valuable to be told. Otherwise, it’s often left unsaid, closing off whole areas of history to we who come after.

Pharaoh’s Dream

For all the detail in Yosef’s interpretation of Par’oh’s dream, Ramban lays out correspondences between the dream and the meaning that are not made explicit in the Torah. On 41;2, Par’oh sees the fat cows coming out of the Nile, which Ramban says was because that was the source of Egypt’s water and plenty. The cows symbolize plowing (since they were used as plow animals, at that time as much as or more than oxen) and the heads of grain symbolized the harvest, which is why Yosef tells Par’oh specifically (45;6) that there will be neither plowing nor harvesting in the famine years.

The dream also signaled that the years of plenty would be limited to Egypt, as Yosef says in verse 29. That’s why the surrounding nations could not prepare for the famine, even though they clearly heard about it because Egypt’s preparations would have been very famous (while I don’t disagree—it makes sense that other nations would notice when Egypt started putting away a fifth of its GDP for a coming famine—I am always interested in what great scholars take for granted, since other scholars of equal stature don’t always agree, so that one side thinks this is obvious, and the other side thinks it isn’t even true).

Advice or Interpretation for the Surprising Famine?

Ramban thinks Yosef’s plan wasn’t his own, it was his understanding of the dream itself. 41;4 tells us the thin cows ate the fat ones, which Ramban thinks told Yosef that the years of famine would eat the plenty of the years before. That’s only possible if they save some plenty for later. 

More, he cannot imagine Yosef had the temerity to offer an idea of his own, since what right does he have to offer the king advice? He was called there as a dream interpreter, that’s all he had the right to do [it’s an interesting claim, since we will later see that Ramban approves of Yosef’s decision to act with his brothers in such a way as to make his original dreams come true. He does not explain why there it was ok, but not here.]

On verse 27, he does think Yosef shaped his message for Par’oh’s purposes. 41;26 says the various cows symbolize years, and the dreams showed the fat cows first, yet Yosef puts the meaning of the thin cows and bad ears first. That’s because Egypt was generally a land of plenty, so there would be little surprising if he said coming years would be extra plentiful.

The news was that years of famine were coming; this dream was Hashem’s grace, letting Par’oh prepare ahead of time for a black swan event, a famine out of all expectations in Egypt.

Par’oh’s Limitations as Ruler

In verse 38, Par’oh turns to his advisers and says “is there anyone like this, with the spirit of Gd in him?” Ramban says that was a way to lead in to his nomination of Yosef to become the second in command in Egypt. Since Yosef was a Hebrew, whom Egyptians hated (as we will see when the brothers, Yosef, and Egyptians all sit separately when they eat a meal), he could only install him in office with their consent.

This is a topic I took up at greater length in As If We Were There (where I show ways in which we don’t always remember the Exodus story fully, and just how central that story is meant to be in our Jewish religious lives), but I think it bears repeating here. Ramban repeatedly sees Par’oh as more limited in power than we sometimes think of when we speak of monarchies, and he lived under a monarchy.

It reminds us that just because we come to understand a concept one way does not mean that’s the only way, or the way it was usually understood or experienced.

Yosef’s Encounter with the Brothers

When the famine hits and Ya’akov sends his sons to Egypt for food, the verse pauses to explain why they came before Yosef; 42;6 says that he was the mashbir, the one who sold grain to all who came. Ramban cannot imagine that the second to Par’oh doled out grain to each purchaser.  Nor could Bereshit Rabbah 91;6, so it explains that he only did it at that time (because he foresaw or sensed that his brothers were coming).

On a simpler level, Ramban suggests that Yosef would interview the first people from each city to determine their situation, and would then instruct his underlings as to how much grain to sell to people from that city. The brothers were the first arrivals from Canaan (a whole land, not just a city, but Ramban does not remark on that), so they came before him.

[Ramban inserts an element of apparent chance into the story; in his explanation, had other Canaanites come earlier, the brothers might never have met up with Yosef. I don’t think he thinks that, but that’s the way his idea would read. He also assumes Yosef categorized needs by city, which seems rather broad-brush to me.]

Yosef Works to Bring the Dreams to Fruition

When Yosef sees his brothers, 42;9 tells us he remembered the dreams. Ramban says that he saw them bowing and realized that that still did not mean the first dream had come true, since all eleven brothers appeared in that dream. Were he to reveal himself then, Ya’akov would certainly come to Egypt, and the first dream would never have a chance to be fulfilled.

Only the need to have the dreams come true justifies the pain this delay caused Ya’akov; if not for that, Yosef would have committed a great sin. Ramban is sure Yosef acted correctly, yafeh be-ito, well at its proper time, because he knew Hashem meant for the dreams to be brought to fruition. That also explains why Yosef had not contacted his family until then; he sensed it was his obligation to do his part regarding the dreams.

[Many years ago, R. Yoel bin Nun wrote a brilliant article where he disagreed, and offered an alternate idea for why Yosef did not contact Ya’akov, and why he revealed himself when he did. It was a lightning bolt when I first read it, although in the intervening years I have become less convinced. In any case, this is Ramban’s slot, not R. Yoel bin Nun’s, but his idea was so creative and so exciting that I cannot not reference it].

Ramban does not explain why Yosef should have worked to make the dreams come true. If dreams are a prediction from Hashem, why not leave it up to Hashem to bring them about? Nor do all prophecies necessarily come true, especially when they have negative impact on some people—why couldn’t Yosef decide that, thank Gd, Hashem’s intent was being achieved without causing his father extra pain?

Again, Ramban does not say. One possibility is that Yosef’s life revolved around dreams more than most other people’s. Perhaps Ramban thought Yosef understood that for him dreams were necessary signposts, to be worked with and made reality.

But that’s my speculation.  That aside, Ramban has taken us from dream to dream, from Yosef merely interpreting to Yosef engineering a dream’s coming true.

Full Sons, Full Wives?

Early on in Vayeshev, 37;2, the verse describes Yosef as a na’ar, a boy, with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Ramban says Ya’akov tasked these sons with watching the younger Yosef, who repaid the favor by talebearing on them (Rashi had said he told on the sons of Leah, but Ramban thinks that would leave no reason for these brothers to hate him, as they clearly do).

Leah’s sons had more than enough cause for hatred in Ya’akov’s favoritism of Yosef. The maidservants’ sons would not be threatened by that, since they were not in the running for top position in the family anyway.

Ramban follows Rashi and Chazal in assuming that Bilhah and Zilpah remained in an inferior position within the family, as did their sons, despite evidence to the contrary. Ramban does comment on one piece of such evidence, that this verse refers to Bilhah and Zilpah as neshei aviv, his father’s wives. True, in last parshah, they were calledshefachot, maids, when Ya’akov put them and their sons before Rachel and Leah when they were about to meet Esav. So which is it—were they elevated to full wife status, or permanently seen as maids?

Ramban first answers that context matters. Since these two had started out as maids to Rachel and Leah, they are always treated that way in their mistresses’ presence. At the end of the comment, he makes a complementary or independent suggestion, that once those two passed away, Ya’akov fully married them, which is why they are referred to as wives.

In between those two parts of the comment, he notes that when the Torah discusses Reuven’s sin with Bilhah, it calls her his father’s concubine; Ramban says that implies Reuven would never have done what he did with one of his father’s full wives.

He does not bring the discussion to a clear conclusion, but he seems to feel that Bilhah and Zilpah start out with one status, and slowly become more fully accepted, as do their sons.

Learning About Murder

When Yehudah convinces his brothers to sell Yosef rather than leave him in a pit, he says there’s no profit in killing Yosef and covering his blood (37;26). Ramban cannot take that last phrase literally, since there wasn’t going to be any blood. Rashi said that “covering up blood” refers to all actions taken to hide a death. Ramban thinks he can get closer to the simple sense of the words, that Yehudah was telling his brothers that bringing about Yosef’s death, in whatever way, would be tantamount to killing him and covering his blood.

His next idea was what led me to share this comment here. He says Reuven had taught the brothers that it was better to throw Yosef in a pit than to kill him themselves, that indirect causation is not exactly the same as direct action [a distinction people struggle within our times as well; I’ve seen people argue that they’re the exact same, that if one is going to do something indirectly, they might as well do it directly].

Yehudah took the morality lesson a step further, Ramban says, to remind the brothers that it was nonetheless a form of murder (as David is told in II Shemuel 12;9, about his causation of the death of Uriah, Batsheva’s husband), and they should therefore avoid it.

Ramban says both were true and leaves it at that, but he has claimed that issues of morality we take for granted were not so obvious to the sons of Ya’akov.  [Who were going to become the progenitors of the Jewish people, we should always remember. I am not questioning their stature, I am pointing out that Ramban is clear that what has been known for thousands of years can come to seem so obvious that we forget a time when it was not, when upstanding, even exceptional, people would not have understood these basic moral truths].

When a murderous rage overcomes someone, a first step is to realize that indirect action is less evil than direct. The next step is to remember that it’s still evil, and to talk oneself down from there as well. As Yehudah did for his brothers.

An Early Yibum

Yehudah’s first son, Er, dies without children. Yehudah encourages Onan, 38;8, to be meyabem Tamar, to perform levirate marriage on Onan’s widow. [I looked it up: levir is from the Latin for a husband’s brother, so levirate marriage is to marry a husband’s brother. While English uses the word brother in law for siblings and the husbands of siblings, one’s own and one’s spouses, levir was specific to a husband’s brother].

Ramban’s comment has long fascinated me, since I think he was groping towards the set of ideas that science later called genetics. The problem stems from Yehudah’s telling Onan to “establish seed,” provide some sort of continuity, for his deceased brother. Rashi thought their first child would be called after the deceased, which Ramban understands to mean they’d give the baby that name [there might be other ways to read that Rashi, but we’ll leave that].

That’s not how levirate marriage worked, Ramban objected; there’s no requirement to name the child a particular way. Nor do Boaz and Rut name their first child Machlon, although the book calls that marriage a form of yibum (even though it’s with a more distant relative, a fact Ramban will discuss). Another weakness in Rashi’s reading is that the verse here says Onan knew the child would not be his (Ramban thinks the verse uses that verb to indicate that Onan was correct, that the child would in fact not have been his in some way), and that that bothered him so much that he refused to impregnate Tamar (earning himself a word in the English language that is lastingly derogatory).

If all he had to do was name the child Machlon, why would he care, especially when relatives are usually thrilled and touched to name a child after a deceased relative?

The Child Won’t Be His and a Nascent Genetics

Ramban’s view calls the answer a “great secret of the secrets of the Torah in the creation of generations of humans,” but then says it’s easily recognized by all those to whom Hashem gave eyes to see and ears to hear. In fact, prior to the Torah, ancient wise men knew levirate marriage provided a great service, and that if no brother was available, other relatives could serve as well (the closer the relative, the better—he relates this to inheritance, which also proceeds from closer to more distant relatives, but we don’t have space to take up that aspect of it).

[He doesn’t say more, but he has said enough for me to think I have understood. Something about how people produce offspring was both secret yet obvious to those who look and listen carefully enough. To me, he means that parents shape their childrens’ physical characteristics, but that relatives share many of these characteristics.

We have words for this today, that relatives share a gene pool, and that gene pool translates into our physical and psychological profiles. Again, he doesn’t say it, but I think Ramban saw yibum as a way to produce the child the deceased brother never had the chance to. Hashem manipulates this brother’s genes so that the child conceived is a genetic match for the one the deceased would have produced with this wife. In that sense, Onan knew the child would literally not be his.]

Ramban says this works best with brothers, which fits genetics as well, since brothers are the closest match. It makes sense that a brother is best set up to give Hashem the least supernatural way to produce such a child.

Happy to Help or Resenting Being a Tool of Someone Else’s Continuity

Bereshit Rabbah 85;5 says that Yehudah started the idea of yibum; when he learned this secret from his forefathers (that even after the tragedy of a man passing away without children, we can continue that relative’s legacy), he was anxious to bring it to fruition. That’s why Hashem made it a mitzvah in the Torah, where marrying a brother’s wife in every other situation is one of the arayot, one of the capitally prohibited sexual relationships.

That, too, explains why the Torah sees it as so cruel of a brother to refuse a yibum [he again does not go further, but I believe he means that the brother has the opportunity to bring into the world the child his deceased brother did not get the chance to, and he’s refusing, a terrible cruelty.

I note also that for historical reasons we need not elaborate, Ashkenazic Jews came to prefer chalitzah, the ceremony that frees the widow to marry someone else. But the Torah sees that as an inferior choice, and my audio shiur on ou.org, A Responsum a Day for Rosh Chodesh Sivan, will, Gd willing, review a responsum of R. Ovadya Yosef’s where he vigorously defends the right of Sephardic Jews to perform yibum in our times.]

The Torah only established it for brothers, but Ramban says the wise men of the Jewish people saw that it works, to some extent, even for more distant relatives, which is why Naomi and Boaz were so invested in finding Rut a husband from within the family.

More so even than most of the other parashiyot in Bereshit, the Ramban’s we reviewed show the complications of building mixed families. Multiple wives, jealousy and hatred among brothers, and the ability to help deceased brothers leave a posterity are just some of the issues Ramban taught us about in Parshat Vayeshev.

Ramban to Vayishlach: Stepping Right, Stepping Wrong

Ramban opens his commentary on Vayishlach (32;4) by telling us it’s meant to inform us that Hashem saved his servant from a stronger foe (Esav), and to teach us that Ya’akov did not rely on his righteousness, but made all the attempts he could to save himself. His specific strategies are also a lasting lesson to us, that when (not if) we face similar troubles, we should use the same three paths, prayer, gifts, and war (although for war, he adds, “to run away and be saved;” that implies that he didn’t think Ya’akov intended to fight, he intended to flee).

Ramban is by far not the first to say we must balance belief that Hashem actively runs the world and saves the righteous with the recognition that each of us must do all we can to produce the outcomes we desire (I still have a computer file with the book that I wrote based on my study of five comments of Rashi’s on each parsha; there, too, among other interesting conclusions, I found that Rashi stressed both halves of that equation). Were that all, I might have refrained from reviewing this comment.

Except that in that same verse, he complicates the picture.

The Perils of Human Effort

The verse tells us that Ya’akov sent messengers to his brother Esav. Ramban explains that the south of Israel, where his father was, is close to Edom, so he was going to be passing through or near his brother’s land, and feared his brother might hear about his arrival. To avoid giving Esav cause to be annoyed, Ya’akov decided to face the problem head on and sent messengers.

Bereshit Rabbah 75;3 thinks that was an error. In the Midrash’s version, Hashem pointed to Mishlei 26;17, which speaks of grabbing a dog by its ears (a bad idea), to tell Ya’akov that he should have left Esav alone as long as he was minding his own business.

This offers Ramban an opportunity to apply his idea that ma’aseh avot siman le-banim, our forefathers’ actions model or foreshadow events in our lives. Similar to Ya’akov, it was Jewish kings who initiated contact with Rome (descendants of Esav in Rabbinic literature). Eventually, those Romans meddled in Israeli politics, culminating in the Destruction of the Second Temple.

This view of the incident tells us that we are obligated to make efforts to shape the world as we think it should go and that even the greatest among us can err while trying to do so. It makes the world a very narrow bridge, but perhaps the main thing is to take action and not to fear at all. Which is only possible if we are careful to hope/ trust that Hashem will help us make the right choices and clean up our messes after we’ve made them.

Overcoming Troubles and Persecutions

32;26 tells us that the angel with whom Ya’akov was wrestling realized he would not be able to defeat the Patriarch. For Ramban, that’s because of the angel’s limited freewill; Hashem’s messenger always, an angel can only do what is authorized, which in this case was limited to injuring Ya’akov’s thigh [Ramban doesn’t stress it, but part of his point is that strength and the ability to defeat others isn’t purely physical; on pure physical ability, the angel could have easily done what he wanted with Ya’akov. Hashem’s command was stronger].

Bereshit Rabbah 77;3 says that when the angel touched Ya’akov’s thigh, it impacted all the righteous slated to be born from Ya’akov, and says that was the generation of shemad, of religious persecutions. Ramban thinks that means the incident is reported in the Torah to show us that there would be eras in which Esav would grow powerful and cause us great pain. He notes a statement of R. Chiyya b. Abba, that there was a time of shemad during the Mishnaic period when non-Jews tortured Jews so horrifically that R. Chiyya b. Abba does not think he would have been able to withstand it.

We don’t need to review those tortures, which have sadly been superseded by later evildoers.  Ramban’s comfort comes from the Torah’s note at the end of the incident, that Ya’akov arrived at Shechem whole. So, too, we (as a people) have undergone all this and emerged. For Ramban, the wrestling match with the angel gives perspective on all our national sufferings—it only goes as far as Hashem allows it [to me, that implies that there might be ways we could act to avoid or minimize such suffering], and for all the pain, the people makes it to the other side.

We Don’t Do It or It Should Not Be Done

When Shechem, prince of the city of Shechem, abducts Dinah, 34;7 comments that the brothers were upset about his committing a nevalah be-Yisrael, something seen as wrong by the Ya’akov family, and “so was not done.” Ramban first says that last phrase builds on the previous one, that they were upset about an offense to their family’s morality. In that reading, Canaanites would not have had any problem with the rape or seduction of Dinah [the verse is clear that Shechem abducts Dinah, but it’s not clear to me that he forces himself on her sexually; Dinah is not given much voice here, for reasons that have to do with what the Torah chooses to share with us, so I don’t think we can be sure where along the spectrum of rape/seduction their intercourse fell].

He then quotes Onkelos, who read that last phrase as more generally stated, that such was not done by anyone, which is why it was considered a nevalah, a moral wrong, in Ya’akov’s family.

The two readings capture a continuing question: when we are offended by the world’s behavior, which times is it because they have violated our personal, familial, or communal standards and which times is it because they have acted against universal standards?

Proper and Improper Reactions to Wrongs

34;13 tells us that Ya’akov’s sons intended to trick Shechem and Chamor when they proposed that the men of the city circumcise. Ramban points out that this part of the story is at odds with the end. Here, Ya’akov is silent, which seems like he agreed with his sons’ idea, but that makes it unclear why he upbraids Shim’on and Levi at the end. Ramban also doesn’t understand the brothers’ suggestion, since they seem to contemplate a scenario in which Dinah stayed married to the Canaanite who had defiled her.

He therefore says they always meant the suggestion insincerely, but not the way Shim’on and Levi took it. The brothers and Ya’akov expected the people of Shechem to refuse, and they could take Dinah and go. In the unlikely event they agreed, they could still take Dinah (when the people of Shechem were weakened). That’s what they all agreed to, and which Ya’akov could have lived with.

Shim’on and Levi decided avenge the wrong to Dinah by wiping out the city. Ramban thinks Ya’akov would have accepted killing Shechem (the prince) himself, since he perpetrated a  wrong, but could not accept the broad killing. True, here he only mentions the danger into which the brothers had put the family, but when he curses their anger at the end of his life, he is referring to this incident.

The Evil of the People of Shechem

In Mishneh Torah, Rambam justified Shim’on and Levi’s actions as proper punishment of the people of Shechem’s violation of the Noahide obligation of dinin. For Rambam, that obligates non-Jews to set up a judicial system to identify and punish wrongs committed. To witness a wrong without reaction is to transgress a capital crime [others disagree with Rambam, including Ramban, but his view reminds us that bystanders have much more of an obligation to protest and/or interfere when they see others, including powerful others, committing crimes].

Ramban disagreed, first because that means Ya’akov was wrong to reprimand them. Even if he thought it was dangerous, he should have been proud of Shim’on and Levi’s courage to do what was right. He thinks instead that dinin obligates non-Jews to set up a civil law system, but that there is no human-administered punishment for not doing so.

Besides, there’s no need to reach for reasons the people of Shechem were liable for death, since they were all idolaters who engaged in sexual perversions [much more agreed-upon violations of the Noahide code]. What bothered Ya’akov was that it was not their role to mix in; he and his sons had no sense that they were supposed to enforce the Noahide laws.

Shim’on and Levi understood that, in Ramban’s view, but thought the people of Shechem had actively cooperated in their leader’s misdeed. For that reason, they became included in whatever fate befell that leader (this is an item on a list I’m compiling, where cooperating with a wrong puts that person almost equally in the wrong).

Working and Reworking

35;16 tells us that Ya’akov buried Rachel be-od kivrat eretz lavo Efrata, which translations renders as “while they were still some distance from Efrat.” Ramban originally accepted Radak’s view, that it means the distance one could travel in the time from morning until one eats one’s first meal, a common way to calculate distance at the time.

He notes that he wrote that originally. Now that he had merited reaching Jerusalem, he had seen that the distance between Kever Rachel, Rachel’s Tomb, and Beit Lechem wasn’t even a mil, somewhere under eight-tenths of a mile (Ramban seems to be assuming Efrata is Beit Lechem; I think the verse could also read as saying that Rachel passed away in Beit Lechem, and that Beit Lechem was this distance from Efrata. If that were how to read it, the closeness of her tomb to Beit Lechem would not be cause for surprise).

He therefore suggests that the verse was stressing that he buried her immediately upon her death, and did not even take her to the very nearby Beit Lechem. The reason he gives for that—that she was left there to be a comfort to her descendants on their way to exile after the destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash—would take us too far afield here, but this is a good example of the work Ramban put into this commentary, editing and altering it even after he arrived in Israel.

For Vayishlach, we have some of the messiness of human life—when to get involved with Esav, how to react to wrongs that other people commit, and how to figure out distances the Torah discusses with words whose meaning we no longer know.

How Hashem Runs the World

There are themes to Ramban, ideas that crop up repeatedly. I try to keep my interests and preferences out of these selections, so that I not fit Ramban into the Procrustean sarcophagus (as R. Lichtenstein zt”l used to say) of my own worldview. But Ramban does apply his themes in unexpected places, and this week I am going to indulge myself a bit.

Ya’akov’s famous dream at the beginning of the parsha shows him a ladder with angels going up and down. On 28;12, Ramban understands the dream to be telling Ya’akov that all that happens in this world is a decree of Hashem’s [he does not address it, but I don’t think he means to the exclusion of human free will in any way. He sounds like he means that all that others would attribute to the action or initiative of angels, or whatever other non-Divine forces we might think are orchestrating events in this world, actually come from Hashem].

Hashem does send angels to traverse the earth, but they don’t act on what they find, positively or punishingly, until they report to Hashem for instructions. In terms that fit our modern language better, he accepts the idea of forces other than Hashem impact the world [while he speaks of angels, that’s just a word; I believe he’d be equally comfortable speaking about what we today call forces of nature, like gravity or electricity or thermodynamics]. The caveat is that those forces are always and completely under Hashem’s control, whether while they act as we are accustomed, or they do that which seems miraculous to us.

The Special Direct Providence of Ya’akov and of the Land of Israel

Hashem stands at the top of the ladder to show that Ya’akov is exempt from ordinary forces, that he would be under Hashem’s direct supervision always. That’s why Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer (35) can say that this vision showed him both the angels of the four kingdoms of history, and that he, Ya’akov, would be governed by his relationship with Hashem instead.

Nine verses later, when Ya’akov awakens, he says that if he successfully returns from Lavan’s house, Hashem will be his Gd. We can leave his disagreement with Rashi about what that meant, but at the end of the comment, he says there is a “great secret” here, related to the statement in Ketubbot 110b that anyone who lives outside Israel is as if he has no Gd.

I again stress that I am going to resist the urge to share all Ramban’s Zionistic comments, but this is too good to pass up. He is implying that Ya’akov was already aware as he left Israel—after an unsolicited promise from Hashem that he, Ya’akov, would have direct Providence– that outside of Israel he would have less of a connection with Hashem than once he returned.

Hashem runs everything, Ramban holds, but runs some of it through obedient intermediaries. Certain special people (although not all the righteous, Ramban cited a verse to show) and the Land of Israel bypass that usual path, are under direct supervision of Hashem Himself, as it were.

Going Along to Get Along, the Good and the Bad

In 29;27, Lavan responds to Ya’akov’s complaint about the switch of wives. Lavan says fine, after this week of celebrating the first marriage, we’ll give you Rachel also. Who’s we? Ramban says Lavan used the plural to support his claim that the custom of the place required him to marry off his eldest first. He had had no choice, his fellow citizens wouldn’t let him breach their community standards and give Rachel, as promised [it’s a reminder of a time when communities remembered they could set and enforce standards of behavior]. In a week, everyone will agree to the second marriage.

Lavan hid behind the community standard, when he had actually freely chosen his actions. His daughter Leah was the opposite. Verse 31 says Hashem sees that she’s hated, and Ramban is mystified at why that bothers Hashem. She cooperated with her father to fool her sister and future husband, lured Ya’akov into a marriage he had not intended and cost him another seven years of his life. Why shouldn’t she be hated?

The excuse that she didn’t want to disobey her father works only through the wedding, but the verse tells us Ya’akov did not recognize her until morning. Once they were alone, she could have easily told Ya’akov that she was Leah, or hinted it.

Ramban’s answer opens a Pandora’s box of when and whether the end might sometimes justify the means. He says Hashem had compassion on her, because she did it out of her deep desire to be married to this righteous man. Bereshit Rabbah in fact thinks Ya’akov was going to divorce her, so Hashem gave her children quickly.

Lavan claimed he had yielded to the community, and Leah let Lavan put her in Ya’akov’s arms. For Ramban, a large factor in how we react to these deceptions is the motive that went into them; to me, experience suggests that is not as good a standard as we’d hope.

Ya’akov Wrests a Salary From Lavan

The story of Ya’akov’s building wealth during his time with Lavan is complicated, and we cannot review it to any reasonable degree here. Verses imply that Ya’akov did something to make the sheep birth in the way Lavan had agreed to give to Ya’akov. While I know many people who see that as underhanded, Ramban to 30;37 assumes that was part of the original agreement. Lavan would remove all of x kind of sheep from the flock, and Ya’akov could have any future ones born that way, and could try any means to engineer such births.

[We can easily imagine people so confident of the limits on another person’s options to say, “sure, do whatever you want.” Sometimes, the ethical path is to enlighten that person ahead of time. Sometimes, I think Ramban assumes, the other person has already been so unethical that we need not do so].

He offers other ways to absolve Ya’akov, such as that perhaps he did this only one of the two times a year the sheep mated, so as not to leave Lavan destitute. Radak suggested the first year’s haul of sheep was Hashem’s blessing to Ya’akov, and his stratagems were to ensure that his sheep would birth similar to themselves, to forestall any possible claim by Lavan that those sheep were actually his.

But the context matters. In 40;7, Ya’akov tells his wives their father had changed the terms of their deals repeatedly (in the next verse, Ramban thinks Lavan even did so once the sheep were pregnant, which would render Ya’akov’s breeding efforts useless. He says Hashem counteracted that by switching the sheep in the womb, which is what Ya’akov saw in the dream, where the angel of Gd makes the sheep all birth the kinds of offspring that would go to Ya’akov).

The ends don’t usually justify the means, Ramban seems to me to imply, but when others have wronged us, that opens the door to what would otherwise be ethically questionable, to restore the balance. That’s obviously a very slippery slope, but it’s how Ramban understands Ya’akov’s interaction with Lavan.

What the Torah Tells Us

Ya’akov’s claims about Lavan’s finagling the agreements, switching what kind of pay he was supposed to get, aren’t ratified by the Torah. We’re not told anywhere that Lavan actually acted as Ya’akov said he had. Ramban attributes that to the fact that the Torah does not always tell us what occurred (his other examples are off topic).

To me, that’s an important reminder of a limitation of how we interpret or conceptualize stories in Tanach—what the Torah tells us isn’t always meant to be the whole story, and we have to be careful how we extrapolate from silence. With the stories in Bereshit, many people find open spaces into which to fit their interpretations or reconstructions, when we cannot actually know what happened. Had the Torah chosen to omit or condense this conversation between Ya’akov and his wives, we would never have known the extent of Lavan’s chicanery, and might likely have read him (and therefore Ya’akov) differently and perhaps wrongly.

Parshat Vayetzei, in the comments of Ramban’s that we saw, reminds us of how complicated it can be to understand the world correctly. There’s where and how Hashem is involved, where and how we accept the rules of those around us—society and/or parents, good or evil—how we deal with difficult people, and how we know what’s going on around us when we are often not told the whole story.

Seeking Hashem’s Truth

In the beginning of the parsha, Yitzchak and Rivkah struggle with infertility. When she finally becomes pregnant, the fetuses move around inside her, causing her enough trouble that in 25;22, va-telech lidrosh et Hashem, she went to inquire of Hashem. Rashi thought she went to the Beit Midrash of Shem [for Rashi, the place to learn about Hashem at that time—Yitzchak went there after the Akedah, Ya’akov will go there before fleeing to Lavan’s house].

Ramban thinks that when used regarding Hashem in Tanach, derishah, inquiring, always means prayer. His examples are Tehillim 34;5, darashti et Hashem va-anani, I darash of Hashem and He answered me, Amos 5;4, Dirshuni vi-chyu, inquire of me and live [this example bothers me a bit, because Makkot 24a quotes this same verse and suggests that dirshuni might be by observing mitzvot], and Yechezkel 20;3, where Hashem takes an oath, as it were, that He will not idaresh for the Jewish people, which Ramban takes to mean will not respond to their prayers.

I specified the prooftexts he adduces because two of them are easily read as something other than prayer. Since Ramban could read as well as I can, it leads me to wonder whether something else was going on for Ramban, although I cannot speculate on what.

Regardless, his view affects our understanding of Rivkah. Rashi thought she went to a sage or prophet for enlightenment, while Ramban thinks she prayed to Hashem for that.

I also note that in 27;4, when Yitzchak plans on giving Esav the first-born’s blessing, Ramban comments that Rivkah apparently never told him of the prediction she received before the boys were born. At first, that was because she didn’t want to tell him she had gone lidrosh et Hashem without asking Yitzchak, Ramban says.

That comment makes more sense if lidrosh means to ask a question (what reason is there to ask Yitzchak before praying?). I mention it especially because a reader of these columns suggested to me that Ramban does not insist on consistency (one of my father a”h’s favorite quotes was Emerson’s “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”), that he might entertain multiple options without resolving them. If that were true, it might mean that he was willing to work with lidrosh both as Rashi read it as well as how he read it here.

Rejecting the Birthright

Ramban blames Esav for rejecting the rights of the first-born, even though he recognizes other reasonable options. When 25;30 says people called him Edom for referring to the soup he bought from Ya’akov as ha-adom ha-adom hazeh, this red, red, Ramban writes that they mocked him for selling that great honor for a bit of cooked food. He sees it as an example of Mishlei 23;21, that a zolel ve-sovei, someone focused on eat and drink [which is, not coincidentally, how the Torah characterizes a ben sorer u-moreh, a rebellious son], will become impoverished.

Ramban assumes that those around Esav knew what a foolish choice he had made, when the verse does not indicate it—the verse says he used an odd phraseology, so people called him that. Without obvious textual evidence that I can see, Rambam takes it to denigrate his misplaced values [Ramban’s view should make us think about what it means that that became the name of the nation that descended from him, and provides another reason both Yirmiyah and Ovadyah refer to Edom as an am bazui, a derided nation].

In verse 34, we are told explicitly that Esav looked down on the birthright. Ramban thinks that was because Esav assumed that his violent profession would kill him before his father passed away, so there was little value in the birthright.  The verse says Esav ate, drank, and went—once he was back in his element and sated, it confirmed to him that he had made the right choice.

Ramban then editorializes, “for kesilim [usually translated as fools, but he means it as those who refuse to understand wisdom, not those who are unable to] care only about eating, drinking and doing whatever they want right in that moment, with no care for the future.” It is an important aspect of the distinction between wisdom and foolishness in Jewish tradition (I’ve seen it in many authors; the one that jumps to mind is R. Sa’adya Gaon in his remarkable and important commentary to Mishlei): focus on the now is foolishness, awareness of the long term is wisdom.

Esav was just that kind of fool. To make it worse, Ramban is adamant that Yitzchak was wealthy (Ibn Ezra claimed otherwise, but I want to get to other comments of Ramban’s), so that Esav’s treatment of the birthright shows his insensitivity to issues that would have mattered to him.

What Avraham Kept

When Yitzchak faces a famine at the beginning of chapter 26, Hashem appears to tell him not to go down to Egypt. In verse 5, Hashem tells Yitzchak that he and his descendants will receive great blessings because Avraham obeyed Hashem, and the rest of the verse then lists aspects of Hashem’s commandments Avraham observed. Rashi follows the Talmudic tradition that Avraham literally kept the Torah, so he interprets each term as a subset of mitzvot.

Ramban is bothered by the idea, since later Jewish figures violate the Torah. Ya’akov marries sisters, Amram marries his aunt, and Moshe builds matzevot, forms of altars the Torah prohibits. He suggests that Chazal would have said that Avraham figured out the Torah with his ruach ha-kodesh (I think he means that Avraham was so in touch with how Hashem wants the world to work he was able to infer all of Torah without being told. That assumes that mitzvot as we have them are in some way essential to the workings of the world, that a full understanding of the world would necessarily lead to knowing all of halachah. Which is a remarkable claim).

Since it wasn’t commanded to him, it was a set of practices he took on because of their value, he could and did choose to observe that (and pass on to his descendants that they should observe it) only in Israel. That’s a reasonable choice because (Ramban Zionism alert) Torah is, essentially, mishpat Elokei ha-aretz, the law of the Gd of that land, so that, pre-Giving of the Torah, they did not need to adopt them outside of Israel.

What Avraham Definitely Kept

He then offers a more literal reading, that mishmarti, My charge (or, what Hashem required of him) means that Avraham asserted the reality of monotheism, which forced him to disagree with and dispute all the pagans around him, and led him to call out in the Name of Hashem, and bring many to Hashem’s service [this is an aspect of Avraham’s career that is often backpedaled in favor of noting his kindnesses. I don’t need to minimize the latter to be sure that tradition focused on Avraham for the former. What made him Avraham was his finding and declaring Hashem, bringing monotheism into the public sphere].

Ramban explains each of the rest of the terms in a way that could have been true without Avraham having inferred the future content of Torah. Mitzvotai¸ My commandments, meant he obeyed the commands to leave Charan, to sacrifice Yitzchak, and to expel Hagar and Yishmael.

Chukkotai, My statutes, meant to walk in Hashem’s ways (Ramban seems to equate chok with derech, because his examples are chanun ve-rachum, compassion and mercy, which are the most well-known of the Attributes Hashem teaches Moshe; they are referred to there as Hashem’s derech. Here, Ramban also includes charity and justice, tzedakah u-mishpat, and that Avraham will command his descendants to do so as well, which refers to Bereshit 18;19, where Hashem speaks of Avraham doing just that as “keeping the derech of Hashem.”)

The last term, Torotai, My Torahs, means circumcision and the Noahide laws (for Ramban, mitzvot in this verse means specific commands, and torot is the word for that which will continue throughout Avraham’s generations).

If we had space to elaborate, just this list generates a sort of minimal Judaism, a baseline of what it means to serve Hashem. The call to be certain enough of the fact that Hashem is the sole power that runs the world, to insist on that to and in the face of those who deny it, to work to encourage others to see that truth; to follow specific (and non-intuitive) commands from Hashem at no little personal cost; to emulate Hashem’s ways of interacting with the world to the best of our abilities while also instilling the drive to do so in our descendants; as well as to keep whatever commands Hashem made permanent would challenge many or most of us.

Ramban’s peshat reading—which has the advantage of freeing us from having to believe that Torah is so obvious to the right-minded that Avraham could figure it all out on his own– shows us what might be a harder message to absorb, that even without recourse to Chazal, Avraham’s example imposes more of an obligation on Jews than we might imagine, that even were one (for whatever misguided reason) to reject the rest of halachic history, the example of this forebear should be enough to put us on a more specific path of Hashem’s service than many realize today.

Sacrificing for What Should Be

When Rivkah takes Esav’s clothing to give to Ya’akov, 27;15 refers to him as “her older son,” and to Ya’akov as her younger son. For Ramban, that’s to show how righteous she was. Mothers naturally want to give their first-born more rights and privileges (it’s an emotional instinct, he says). Rivkah acts as she does solely because she sees that Esav is wicked and Ya’akov righteous (it was her realization of that fact that led her to overcome her emotions in the name of what’s right; Ramban has to assume that when the verse earlier said that Rivkah loved Ya’akov, in contrast to Yitzchak’s love of Esav, it was again because of right and wrong, not some innate draw to Ya’akov).

It’s a comment that struck me because R. Lichtenstein, zt”l, once made a similar suggestion in a seudah shelishit talk. He was discussing 28;5, which mentions that Rivkah was the mother of Ya’akov and Esav for no obvious reason. Rashi says he does not know why the verse does that, and R. Lichtenstein’s talk was along the lines of this Ramban (through the fog of the years and my memory, I do not recall his mentioning it, although he was enough of a fan of Ramban’s commentary that I would think he would have), that Rivkah’s actions weren’t about an emotional preference for Ya’akov, they were based on a clear-eyed read of the strengths and weaknesses of two sons, each of whom she loved fully. Sometimes, we need to do what’s painful, that may even hurt those we love, because it’s what’s right.

Ramban to Toledot shows us ways in which our forebears sought and found Hashem, or didn’t. We see Rivkah praying, Esav turning away for immediate and ephemeral pleasures, Avraham finding his way either to all of Torah or to the service of Hashem even without all of Torah, and Rivkah taking action for what’s right, despite it going against what she felt.

Last week, I broke one of my rules for these posts, by focusing on only one part of the parsha. I’ve also noticed that I’ve been favoring early parts of the parsha (for the same reason I ended up writing a PhD dissertation on fifteenth century texts—I meant to get to the nineteenth, but found too much good material along the way). So I’m going to start in the middle of the parsha and make sure we get to the end (skipping much, but getting a slightly more overall perspective).

When Lack Is a Blessing

After Avraham buys Me’arat HaMachpelah to bury Sarah, 24;1 opens a new story by telling us that Hashem blessed Avraham bakol. Ramban points us to a debate (Baba Batra 16b) about the meaning of bakol, most simply “in all.” R. Meir says it means he did not have a daughter, which Ramban says would have been a blessing, since the only marriage partners for her would have been Canaanites.

Avraham could not retrieve a husband, as he was about to do with a wife for Yitzchak, since women live where their husbands are. Sending a daughter there would mean she’d be living exactly where he was told to leave, and she would almost inevitably adopt her husband’s idolatrous ways, since women tend to be under the influence of their husbands.

He doesn’t make the point explicitly, but Ramban is reading R. Meir as saying that sometimes not having that which most of us would think we’d always want can be a blessing. A daughter, in Avraham’s world, would necessarily have brought such problems that it was better for Avraham not to have one, according to R. Meir.

Avraham’s Daughter and Her Name

R. Yehudah says bakol means Avraham did have a daughter, which Ramban reads as how fully blessed he was, that he had all people want, including a daughter. Ramban does not explain why R. Yehudah disregarded R. Meir’s concerns, and I won’t speculate.

He spends more time on Acherim, others, who said Avraham had a daughter and her name was Bakol. He cannot accept the literal reading of that view, because it would turn a broad blessing into a discussion of a name. Instead, he takes us to the metaphysical, saying that bakol refers to the foundation of Hashem’s handling of the world called “kol, everything.”

He cites many verses where the word appears; as is often true in kabbalistic contexts, he takes a word most of us would read simply as a reference to an aspect of Hashem’s interactions with the world. One example is Yeshayahu 44;24, “Anochi Hashem oseh kol, I am Hashem Who made all,” which Ramban is reading as “who made kol, the foundation of how the world works.”

How Hashem Runs the World

Two more comments about this aspect of how the world works (before he returns to Avraham) seem to me to enormously complicate our understanding of his view. First, he says this kol is the eighth of the Attributes Hashem taught Moshe (in his count of those Attributes, I’m pretty sure he means ve-emet, truth). Since he thinks all those Attributes are about mercy, emet might be the most merciful possible version of truth, but it’s truth nonetheless.

That idea is captured by the second point I wanted to share, that Kol refers to Hashem and His Beit Din, His Heavenly Court as it were, who are always indicated by the word Va-Hashem (really, V-Adon…). Again, Hashem and his Court are merciful in all they do, but a court is a place of truth and justice, so the image conveys something other than just mercy.

I suggest this hesitantly, but Ramban seems to me to be implying an underlying truth and justice to Hashem’s running the world, even granting all the great mercy.  There’s more to this—Ramban says this kol is the bride of Shir haShirim, since the word for bride is kallah, close to kol, and that Chazalrefer to this as Kenesset Yisrael, the gathering of all; both those statements bear much thought and need to be interpreted carefully—but I don’t want to get bogged down and find myself out of space.

I cannot resist, however, noting that Ramban also relates this to Yirmiyahu 44;18, where, after the Destruction of the first Beit HaMikdash, Yirmiyahu with the Jews who have chosen to go to Egypt (despite Hashem’s call for them to stay). The women there refuse to give up their idolatry, saying that it’s since they’ve stopped sacrificing to the hosts of Heaven that they’ve lacked kol (which, for Ramban, would mean they’ve lost control of the world, as they thought they had before). Both the story and this Ramban deserve more thought, but we have to move on.

How Eliezer Knew

In verse fourteen, Eliezer sets up a way to find a wife for Yitzchak. Rashi thinks it was a test; if she offered to draw water for the camels when asked only to do it for Eliezer himself, that would show she had the quality of kindness befitting a member of the household of Avraham Avinu.

Ramban disagrees for textual reasons that need not detain us. He thinks Eliezer only meant this as how he would identify the right girl/woman whom Hashe sent. What would confirm she’s the one is that he will then find out she’s from Avraham’s family, is of good intellect and physical charms, etc. He was asking Hashem to let the interaction at the well identify a young woman to investigate further, not tell him this was absolutely the right woman.

That fits what’s rapidly becoming a central theme for me, that Jewish tradition understands Hashem to want us to balance our efforts with Divine intervention. In so doing, it reduces the level of the miraculous that Eliezer sought (and therefore reduces the burden of explaining how Eliezer could be so apparently arrogant as to assume Hashem would do this for him). He was hoping for a Divine kindness, not miracle. And he got it.

Where We Pray and What Comforts Us

When Rivkah arrives in Canaan, she and her caravan encounter Yitzchak, who is returning from Be’er Lachai Ro’i, where Hagar met the angel when she was pregnant with Yishma’el. Verse 62 says he was “ba mi-bo,” an odd phrase (literally “coming from having come”); Ramban explains that it means he was returning from one of his frequent journeys out to the well.

It was a good place to go to pray, according to Ramban, since an angel had appeared to a human being there, and it and was close to where Yitzchak was living. For that to make sense, he must be assuming that Yitzchak thought that a place where an angel appeared is a better place to pray. I think that’s because where the metaphysical has interfaced with the physical is a place we can have better hope of our prayers (from the physical world) more effectively interfacing with (or entering) the metaphysical.

Of course, one could counter that Hashem hears all prayers, so why would the place matter? Once again, Ramban goes no further and neither will we.

Verse 67 says Yitzchak brought Rivkah “ha-ohelah Sarah imo, to the tent Sarah his mother.” Ramban takes the ambiguous phrasing to mean this was the first time Sarah’s tent was pitched since her passing, as a sign of honor to Sarah and a function of the intensity of Yitzchak’s mourning for her. With the arrival of Rivkah, he honored her by giving her his mother’s tent, and was finally comforted.

He adds, “for what reason [if not to make these points] is there for the verse to mention a man’s love for his wife,” a reminder that his culture operated under different assumptions than most of us do today.

Knowing What’s Enough

Almost at the end of the parsha, 25;8, Avraham passes away, “zaken ve-save’a, old and sated.” Ramban says it means he saw the fulfillment of all his heart’s desires, was sated with all the good that had come his way. In 35;29, Yitzchak dies “old and sated of days,” which he says is similar, that he had no urge to see what more days would bring. David HaMelech (I Divrei HaYamim 29;28), too, dies be-seivah tovah, a good satiation.

It’s a kindness to the righteous (that they die after seeing enough of their hopes come to fruition to satisfy them) as well as an expression of their good character, that they do not want more than is appropriate. [The Patriarchs, for example, did not see any of the great promises made to them, a characteristic Midrash praises. Being sated means to Ramban that one has a realistic view of what is possible, and is satisfied if a good percentage of that happens].

That’s not a common trait, as Kohelet 5;9 says, that one who loves money will never be satisfied by money, and the Midrash (Kohelet Rabbah 1;13) says people don’t leave this world with half their desires fulfilled. The righteous set proper horizons, which lets them then be satisfied before they go to the next world.

In these Rambans, Chayyei Sarah is about finding blessings. Whether it’s Avraham’s blessing, the blessing of finding Rivkah, or the blessing of a satisfied life, people in Chayyei Sarah model for us what it is and how to get it.

When I spent a year reviewing five comments of Rashi’s on each parsha, I strove to spread the selected comments from throughout the parsha. That’s my overall intent in studying Ramban as well, except that he often has lengthy comments so rich that they take up all our space. This week, for example, comments of his on what happens when the angels encounter Lot will more than fill our bellies with insight into those and other events.

Extending Oneself for Others

When Lot sees the angels, he invites them to his home, and 19;3 tells us va-yiftzar bam me’od, he pressed them greatly. Ramban thinks that tells us that Lot was sincere, which was a merit that made them more willing to accept his hospitality. At the outset, they refused both to help him increase his merits as well as because they were not willing to enter the home of someone who wasn’t a tzaddik tamim, a wholly righteous person.

Lot’s interest in helping wayfarers is more impressive than it might at first seem, for Ramban, since on verse five, he cited Sanhedrin 109a, which says that the people of Sodom objected to visitors because they did not want immigrants [Ramban does take some of the Sodom story as being based on anti-immigrant sentiment, other than the wealthiest ones, such as Lot. I did not realize that that has contemporary implications until after I was already writing this summary. It ends up being political in our times, but I did not choose these Rambans to feed any agenda of mine. Which doesn’t mean Ramban’s words aren’t worth taking to heart. It’s also worth remembering that the US in the early and mid-twentieth century had a checkered record on immigrants; it accepted many, but it also had constant discussions of quotas, and of forcing immigrants to prove they already had means of support.]

Deserving the Angelic

Ramban’s view of the angels also stands out, that they would have refused to enter Lot’s home had he not built up merit. Especially since they had been sent to take him out of town, and because angels are often portrayed as having little or no will of their own, Ramban’s view offers a different perspective.

He sees angels as having some sense of themselves, some notion of what’s comfortable or uncomfortable. To associate with (or at least to enter the home of) a man who’s not a tzaddik tamim is unpleasant enough that they would not have done it; to avoid that, they helped him by refusing at first, giving him the opportunity to earn their presence. That sees them as choosing their associates as well as taking action to help others improve themselves.

Sodom’s Sin and Punishment

Where the people of Sodom demand to see Lot’s guests, verse five, Ramban sees their anti-immigration policy at work. (Lot got in on his wealth or the prestige of Avraham, he says.) Yechezkel 16;49 refers to Sodom’s refusal to support the poor, when she herself was wealthy and sated, as its essential sin, which shows Ramban that this is a lasting part of Sodom’s image.

Sodom also gets punished more quickly than it might have otherwise because it is in the Land of Israel. He’ll say this several more times (such as in Vayikra 18;24), but his view is that the Land of Israel (metaphysically) cannot tolerate sinners.

Sodom meets its fate not because it was the worst place ever—outside of Israel, others were equally evil or depraved. But in Israel, behavior that might be allowed to linger elsewhere is stamped out more quickly, because of Israel’s sanctity and as a sign to those who might in the future consider acting in similar ways.

Lot’s Concern for His Daughters, or Lack of It

By far the longest comment in the parsha comes at 19;8, where Lot offers to send out his daughters instead of the angels. Ramban first points out how his dedication to being a good host reveals his poor sexual ethics. Were Lot to have had a moral problem with men using (we would say abusing) his daughters sexually, he never would have offered that; he suggested it only because he didn’t see it as a problem.

Tanchuma Vayera 12 is his source; it says that in general, a man will give his life to protect his daughters’ sexuality. The Midrash thinks that Lot’s willingness to give them up led Hashem to react that Lot must have been saving them for himself (I think the Midrash means that he had not yet married them off because he was hoping to use them himself, as he eventually did. Since he was already thinking about them sexually, he thought of giving them to the Sodomites. That also changes how we read his later impregnating those daughters, but Ramban doesn’t get into that).

Ramban takes the moral flaw the Midrash identified and says that it went deeper, that he didn’t see a problem with making them available to the mob crowded at his door.

Sodom or the Concubine of Giv’a

Ramban brings up Shofetim 19, where a man’s concubine leaves him for her father’s house (verse two says va-tizneh alav, which Ramban understands to mean that she prostituted herself—or had an affair– and then left him). The husband woos her back, but on their return home, they get stuck for a night in Give’a, where the townspeople act similarly to the Sodomites.

In Shofetim, the man doesn’t just offer his concubine, he throws her out to them, they abuse and rape her the whole night, and she dies in the morning. His reading of the continuation of the story is the most interesting part of Ramban’s discussion, so let’s leave that for a bit.

Similar as the stories are, Ramban highlights differences that make Sodom worse (and what he sees as worse is itself educative). Scripture describes the crowd in Sodom as the entire populace, while in Give’a, it refers to benei beli’ya’al, morally deficient people. They were powerful enough politically that no one could stop them, but the entire city wasn’t directly implicated.

Second, Ramban thinks the people of Give’a cared about the sex; once the men sent out the concubine, they satisfied themselves and that was it. Terrible as that is, he sees it as better than Sodom, where the people wanted to be sure they weren’t required to help needy people. Part of his reasoning, I think I should mention, is that he understood the phrase in Shofetim to mean that the concubine had been unfaithful (and, perhaps, promiscuous) and also that he did not think being gang-raped was the reason she died. I don’t need to agree with either of those claims to see that they affect his view of the two incidents.

But it is still clear that he thought the desire to avoid helping others in need was worse than the desire to have improper sexual relations. Since the Torah includes some versions of sexual immorality among the commandments one must die before transgressing, his claim here is arresting, that as bad as sexual depravity is, opposition to helping others in need is worse.

Binyamin Should Have Taken Care of Their Own

In reaction to what happened (the concubine dies the next morning), the man convinces all the tribes other than Binyamin to wage war. Ramban thinks that the people of Give’a did not deserve death from a legal perspective, but cites Sanhedrin 46a, which says that courts may punish in ways the Torah itself did not prescribe, to protect Torah observance. The war against Give’a (and Binyamin) was to make clear that this behavior could not and would not be tolerated.

The rest of Binyamin did not join, they sided with Give’a. Ramban thinks that was primarily because they objected on jurisdictional grounds. Since Give’a was their city, the nation should have let them judge the wrong and react to it. Ramban thinks that’s a general principle, stated in Sifrei 144, that each tribe judges itself. The man should have gone to the elders of Binyamin first, and only if they refused to handle it would it have been acceptable to involve others.

In fact, Binyamin was not offended by what had happened, which made them worthy of the punishment they eventually got (it’s a truth I worry is still too little recognized, that we are obligated to react when we see a wrong, not just refrain from participating; Binyamin’s failure to do so made them liable for the terrible destruction that then came their way. In other words, the refusal or failure to oppose evil can bring consequences worse than the original evil itself. As Watergate and following scandals should have taught us, it’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up).

The People Fail to Consult with Hashem

The beginnings of the war go badly for the massed tribes, and Ramban attributes that to several failures on their part. First, Binyamin was right that they should have been given the first opportunity to react. Second, they did not ask Hashem before they launched this endeavor—they asked who should lead them into battle, but not whether to go or whether they’d win, because they had no doubt. There were ten times as many of them, how could they not win?

In a sobering side comment, Ramban says Hashem responded to the question asked, that Yehudah should always lead them into battle. His reading feels very contemporary, that people might assume much that is untrue, and then think they asked Hashem what they should do. Nor does Hashem correct them; Hashem answers what’s asked. Sometimes when we go wrong, for Ramban, Hashem forces us to realize that truth on our own.

Since neither side acted properly, Hashem left their outcomes to happenstance. The more proficient soldiers of Binyamin won at first, but then they went wrong, killing more of their brethren than they needed to. Then the massed tribes turned to Hashem, although they yet ask whether they would win [I could imagine assuming that’s part of the question of “should I go to war,” but Ramban isn’t taking it that way], because they were still sure their superior numbers guaranteed a victory.

Massive casualties the next day drove the point home, and they turned to Hashem fully, and repented their reliance on their own strength. At that point, Hashem helped them.

What Moves Us to Object

The last idea we can mention here is his quote of Sanhedrin 103b, that the roots of this war were in a previous incident, the idol of Michah. In briefest summary, the tribe of Dan stole another man’s idol (from which he had made a living, like churches that make a nice living off parishioners’ donations) and took it to their new residence.

There is no recorded hue and cry in that instance, when Hashem’s honor was insulted by the spread of idolatry, but there was here, over the mistreatment of the concubine and her husband. Sanhedrin sees Hashem as objecting to those misplaced values, which led to a civil war that ended up hurting everybody.

The people of Sodom were evil in ways Lot managed to avoid emulating (he wanted to welcome guests). But their policies, for Ramban, were intolerable, objectively and especially in a Land that does not accept such behavior upon it. And they were more so than the superficially similar concubine story, which was about sexual perversions, a tribe’s refusal to police itself, and a nation’s failure to see where and how to consult Hashem as it moved to restore justice.