Kommentar zu Schemot 17:14

כתב זאת זכרון WRITE THIS FOR A MEMORIAL, that Amalek came to wage war against Israel before any other nation.

WRITE THIS FOR A MEMORIAL IN THE BOOK. Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra commented⁴⁷¹This quote from Ibn Ezra is found in his commentary to Numbers 21:14. Part of it is also found here. that “this was a known book, namely, the book of the wars of the Eternal,⁴⁷²Numbers 21:14. which contained the history of the wars which G-d fought for those that fear Him, and it is possible that the history began from the time of Abraham.” There is nothing in these words of his but an opportunity [to say something without due consideration].⁴⁷³It should be pointed out that in his commentary to the Book of Numbers (ibid), Ramban agrees with Ibn Ezra’s comment, by way of the plain meaning of Scripture. This is because it distinctly says there, the book of the wars of the Eternal. Here, however, it just says in the book. Hence Ramban rejects Ibn Ezra’s interpretation that here too it refers to that book of the wars of the Eternal, which is no longer extant, and he proposes his own interpretation, as explained in the text.
The correct interpretation appears to me to be that the word, baseifer (in the book), alludes to the Book of the Law, something like that which is written, Take this Book of the Law.⁴⁷⁴Deuteronomy 31:26. He is thus stating: “Write this in the Book of My Law so that the children of Israel should remember what Amalek did, for I will utterly blot out his remembrance, and I will lay My vengeance upon him by the hand of My people Israel.”⁴⁷⁵See Ezekiel 25:14. This is the commandment we find written in the Book of Deuteronomy: Remember what Amalek did unto thee.⁴⁷⁶Deuteronomy 25:17. He said, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, to command him to remind Israel of all the travail that had come upon them because of Amalek, for he [Joshua] knows and is witness.⁴⁷⁷See Jeremiah 29:23. G-d is thus hinting that after the conquest of the Land, they would blot out Amalek, for the first commandment upon them was to destroy the seven nations⁴⁷⁸Deuteronomy 7:1-2. and take possession of the Land. This is Scripture’s intent in what is said there: And it shall be when the Eternal thy G-d hath given thee rest from all thine enemies… that thou shalt blot out the remembrance of Amalek.⁴⁷⁹Ibid., 25:19. Now had it been like this in the days of Joshua the son of Nun, he would have urged them on to blot out Amalek, but in his days, a good deal of the Land remained to be possessed,⁴⁸⁰See Joshua 13:1. and the time for the fulfilling of the commandment did not come until the reign of Saul.⁴⁸¹See I Samuel, Chapter 15.

כתוב זאת זכרון בספר, a reference to the portion in Deuteronomy 25,17-19.

ושים באזני יהושע, "and read it aloud to Joshua, etc." We need to understand why G'd instructed Moses to address this message only to Joshua. Perhaps the reason was the fact that despite Joshua's valiant efforts to overcome Amalek he had succeeded only in weakening him. Joshua became unduly concerned that G'd had not wiped out Amalek as He had wiped out the Egyptian army. G'd therefore wanted to reassure him. By telling Moses to be sure to make Joshua hear this message, G'd wanted to tell him that He, G'd, had heard Joshua's unspoken concern. He told Joshua not to worry, that in due course He would wipe out Amalek completely from beneath the sky.

באזני יהושע, that he shall prevail over them when he will be king and keep My commandment to wipe out the name of Amalek.

כתוב זאת זכרון בספר, “record this in a book for remembrance in the future.” Ibn Ezra writes that the book referred to is the one also known as מלחמות ה', “the Lord’s wars,” a book which has disappeared in the course of time. Nachmanides writes that what Ibn Ezra writes here is pure speculation, and that the book referred to is the Torah itself. [he bases himself on the vowel patach under the letter ב in the word בספר, which describes a well known book. Ed.] Compare Deut. 31,26 לקוח את ספר התורה הזה, “to take this Book of the Torah.” G’d commanded Moses to incorporate this historical item in the holy Torah so that the Israelites would forever remember the totally unprovoked attack by Amalek that they had had to endure. This is just another aspect of the commandment at the end of Parshat Ki Tetze, to wipe out the memory of the people of Amalek totally and irreversibly, once the time had come when we were at peace and genocide could not longer be considered an act of revenge motivated by personal motives. (Deut.25,17-19) When the Torah here instructs Moses ושים באזני יהושע, “make sure that Joshua hears it well,” this is because the commandment would not become operative until after the Jewish people were settled in their own land, so that Moses, who was not going to take them into that land, would not have a share in performing this commandment. [if not for the sin of the golden calf and that of the spies, carrying out the commandment might not have had to wait until the Jewish people had appointed a king for themselves, well over 300 years after Joshua’s death. Ed.] Seeing that Joshua left much of the land of Canaan unconquered at the time of his death, the commandment in accordance with Deut.25 could not yet have become operative.

כי מחה אמחה, “for I will utterly wipe out, etc.” The first word מחה refers to the elimination of Amalek’s patron in the celestial spheres, the second i.e. אמחה, refers to the wiping out of the forces and influence of Amalek on earth. This reflects what our sages have said (Devarim Rabbah 1,19) that prior to destroying a nation on earth G’d always first deals with its patron in the celestial spheres. They base this on Isaiah 34,5: ”For My sword shall be drunk in the heaven,” followed by: “it shall come down upon Edom, upon the people I have doomed.”
A Midrashic view: The words כי מחה refer to what G’d does to Amalek in this life; the word אמחה refers to what G’d will do to Amalek in the hereafter (Mechilta Amalek section 2). The words מתחת השמים are a reference to Lamentations 3,66 where Jeremiah prayed: “Oh, pursue them in wrath and destroy them from beneath the heavens of the Lord.”

V. 14. בַספר, in das Buch der Lehre und des Gesetzes ושים וגו׳: und was du allgemein zum Gedächtnis niedergeschrieben hast, das übermittle erklärt und entwickelt dem Geiste Josuas. Wir haben hier für ein geschichtliches Moment כתב und בעל פה wie für das Gesetz. Vergl. ואלה המשפטים אשר תשים לפניהם (Kap. 21, 1). — את זכר עמלק. Nicht Amalek ist das Verderbliche, das Andenken, das Ruhmesgedächtnis Amaleks ist das Verderbliche für die sittliche Zukunft der Menschheit. So lange die Annalen der Menschheit das Gedächtnis der Helden des Schwertes mit Ruhm bedecken, so lange Würger und Mörder des Menschenheils nicht in Vergessenheit begraben werden, so lange blickt jedes jüngere Geschlecht bewundernd zu diesen Größen der Gewalt hinauf und weckt deren Andenken die Lust zu gleicher Gewalt und gleichem Ruhm. Erst wenn das göttliche Sittengesetz das einzige Maß für Kleinstes und Größtes geworden und nicht in umgekehrtem, sondern in gleichem Verhältnis der Anspruch des Sittlichen wächst mit der Größe und der Macht, und je größer und mächtiger der Mensch, um so weniger eine Versündigung gegen das Sittengesetz entschuldbar gefunden wird, und Verbrechen Großer und Mächtiger um so tiefer mit Abscheu erfüllen: erst dann wird Amaleks Reich auf Erden für immer dahin sein. Dass dies das endliche Ziel der Gotteswaltung in der Geschichte sei, das hat Gott hier nach der ersten Schwächung Amaleks ausgesprochen: "Auslöschen, auslöschen werde ich das Andenken Amaleks, so weit der Himmel reicht." — So ist auch Ps. 9, 7 der Gedanke prägnant ausgesprochen, daß erst mit dem Untergang des Gedächtnisses der Verheerungen und Eroberungen, diese selbst von der Erde verschwunden sein werden: אבד זכרם המה!

כי מחה אמחה, “for I will completely wipe out, etc.” the repetition of the verb is to tell us that both in this world and in the world to come there will eventually remain no descendants of Amalek.

כתוב, “record in writing!” but not only orally; if this piece of history would be handed down from father to son only orally, it would be exposed to becoming forgotten in the course of time.[When G-d eventually commanded King Shaul to carry out the commandment to wipe out Amalek, and that nation had not had any contact with the Jewish people for 200 years, none of the Israelites would have understood why they had to commit this kind of genocide. Ed.] The written Torah itself had foretold in Deuteronomy25,19, that this commandment would be carried out only after the Jewish people faced no more enemies all around it.

ושים באזני יהושע AND PUT INTO THE EARS OF JOSHUA, who will bring Israel into the Holy Land, that he must command Israel to pay him his recompense. Here it was intimated to Moses (by the mere statement that Joshua should in some future time carry out the injunction to destroy Amalek) that Joshua would bring Israel into the Holy Land (cf. (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 17:14:1).

ושים באזני יהושע, make sure that Joshua remembers all this. Moses carried out this command by building the altar and offering up the prayer declaring G’d as his flag.

כי מחה אמחה, “for I will surely erase, etc.” The reason why Amalek’s deed evoked such a violent response from G’d was that as a result of the drowning of the Egyptians in the sea the whole of mankind including the leaders of Edom, the descendants of Esau, had suddenly been in awe of the power of Hashem. The fact that Amalek had broken this spell by attacking G’d’s people, set back the timetable of the kingdom of G’d on earth to such an extent that the people responsible for this could not be allowed to remain part of mankind’s history. We need to understand why here G’d is portrayed as wiping out the memory of Amalek, whereas in Deut. 25,19 this task is one assigned to the Jewish people. Why is this? Some commentators understand this as follows. As long as the Romans had not destroyed the Temple, the task of wiping out Amalek was that of G’d’s people. After G’d’s people had become weakened by loss of the Temple and their independence, it was left to G’d Himself to complete the destruction of Amalek. The Midrash explains the apparent anomaly differently; G’d says to the Jewish people that if they will do their best to eradicate the influence of Amalek in the terrestrial world, He on His part, will eradicate any trace of him in the celestial spheres.

The repetition of the words מחה אמחה, may be an allusion to two occasions when a major battle would be fought against Amalek, one by King Saul, the other by Mordechai. The third and last such battle will occur prior to the coming of the Messiah.

את זכר עמלק, the word זכר is a reference to Haman, the word Amalek is to be understood at face value.

זאת זכרון בספר, “this atrocity that the Amalektites had committed against the Jewish people, attacking it in the desert, without any provocation whatsoever. Our descendants when the time came must have a written record of this dastardly attack on perfectly harmless people who had never attacked anyone. זכרון בספר, “a written record as a reminder;” the prefix ב with the vowel patach, meant that this book already existed, and was known as 'ספר מלחמות ה, “the book recording wars fought by or on behalf of Hashem;” it is only due to our sins that this book has not been preserved, just as the book known as sefer hayashar is also no longer in our possession. Another book no longer in our possession is the book written by the prophet Iddo, as recorded in Chronicles II 13,22 by its author Ezra. There were also written records known as the history of the kings of Israel (Kings I 14, 1929) as well as the books of Solomon (Kings I 5,12) (Compare Ibn Ezra on this)

כי מחה אמחה BECAUSE I WOULD UTTERLY BLOT OUT [THE REMEMBRANCE OF AMALEK] — the reason why I admonish you thus is because (כי) I desire to blot it out.

מחה אמחה את זכר עמלק, not only the people but even their livestock. We know this from the instructions given by the prophet Samuel to King Sha-ul in Samuel 15,3 where the king is ordered to destroy utterly all the possessions of Amalek.

ושים באזני יהושע, “and commit it orally to Joshua;” he who had begun to carry out the commandment of wiping out Amalek deserves the credit to see to it that this book is handed down from generation to generation until a king will arise in Israel who will complete the task that Joshua began. G-d warns the people not to be astounded at the absolute harshness of this command Neither are we to assume that there had been military encounters between the Israelites and the Amalekites until some 400 years later years later under King Shaul. There had not been any. The unforgivable sin of the Amalekites was that when after the Israelites had crossed the sea of reeds and the Egyptians drowned in pursuit, when all the surrounding nations had been so impressed and lived in trepidation so that they were ready to accept the universal kingdom of heaven, this nation had appeared to show them that one could stand up against the chosen people and survive such an encounter, i.e. that their G-d was not invincible.