5784/2023
This week’s Parashah begins with a story demonstrating Avram’s amazing emunah and bitachon in Hashem. Hashem commands him to leave his hometown and travel to an unknown land, and Avram immediately agrees without any questions.The Pasuk says, “וילך אברם כאשר דבר אליו ה’ וילך אתו לוט, and Avram went as Hashem had commanded him and Lot went with him”. Then the very next Pasuk says, “ויקח אברם את־שרי אשתו ואת־לוט בן־אחיו, then Avram took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew”. A question that can be asked on these pesukim is: Why does the Torah repeat the fact that Lot went with Avram? It doesn’t make sense to say, “Avram went and Lot went with him” in the first Pasuk, and then one Pasuk later repeat, “and Avram took Sarai and Lot”. Why the double language?
The Zohar explains that ויקח אברם, in ויקח אברם את־שרי אשתו, means “Avram persuaded”. So if we only had the Pasuk of ויקח אברם את לוט, it would seem like Lot didn’t want to go, and Avram had to persuade him. That is not the case. Lot originally wanted to go on his own. It’s true that later on Lot showed his true feelings by moving to Sedom, but at this point, Lot wants to follow Avram on his journey to Canaan and to Avodat Hashem. So we need the pasuk of וילך אתו לוט, to show that Lot went willingly, and not because Avram persuaded, or forced him to go. Even though Lot starts off on the right path, later in life he moves to Sedom. He is someone who we should not see as our role model.
Later on in the parsha is the story of Avram going down to Mitzrayim because of a famine in Israel. Avram is about to arrive at the gates and he says to his wife Sarai, “please tell them you’re my sister so they don’t kill me and take you as a wife”. This story is so familiar to us that we might not realize the obvious thing that doesn’t make sense: Avram has never been to Mitzrayim, he doesn’t know anything about the people there, and he immediately thinks they are going to kill him and steal his wife?! He has never felt this way before in his life, so why would he randomly think this about the Mitzriyim? Also, Avram shouldn’t need to make up a whole plan to save him and Sarai, he should have trusted that Hashem would protect them.
The answer has to do with Avram’s progression of emunah. After Avraham is promised by Hashem that he will have children, in טו:ו it says about Avraham, “והאמן בה ויחשבה לו צדקה, that Avraham fully put his trust in Hashem”. But then in the next pasuk Hashem promised Avraham that his children will inherit the land and Avraham asks, “במה אדע כי אירשנה, what will prove to me that I will inherit the land”.
Rashi explains that Avraham’s main failure to put his trust in Hashem is in these two pesukim. Avraham did a great job accepting Hashem’s promise to have children without asking any questions. But then, when Hashem promises that these children will inherit the land, Avraham says “Hashem, give me a sign, I need you to prove to me that you’re really going to give me the land”. We see from here that Avraham grew in his faith in Hashem.
We asked before why Avram was worried about the Mitzriyim stealing his wife when he should have trusted in Hashem. It would seem from this Rashi that Avraham wasn’t always perfect. When he went down to Mitzrayim he didn’t fully put his trust in Hashem that He would protect him and his wife, and when Hashem promised his children Eretz Yisrael he didn’t believe him right away. When he was promised that he would have children, though, he did accept it immediately. We learned before how Lot started off well but then went on a downward path to Sedom. Avraham is the exact opposite. Even though he may have had a few times in his life where he questioned Hashem, the main thing is that he was always striving for greater heights. He was always working on himself to become a better person and improve his emunah.
The Mishnah in Avot (2:8) states that Rabbi Elazar Ben Arach was the greatest of Rabban Yochanan Ben Zakkai’s talmidim because he was always growing in his Torah knowledge. In our life, we should try to be like Rabbi Elazar and Avraham. Learning from our mistakes, working on ourselves, and growing in our emunah as much as possible.