Commentaire sur La Genèse 28:14

ופרצת means AND THOU SHALT BECOME STRONG, like (Exodus 1:12) “the more they became strong".

ונברכו, an expression meaning “refining and improving thereby.” It means that these nations will be improved through intermarriage with your family. כל משפחות האדמה. The word is in a passive, weak mode as I have already explained on the same phrasing in Genesis 12,3

והיה זרעך כעפר הארץ, ופרצת, after your descendants will have multiplied so that they are as the dust of the earth, numerically speaking, you will spread out. The expression is to be understood as similar to Isaiah 51,23: ותשימי כארץ גוך וכחוץ לעוברים, “so that you made your back like the ground, like a street for passers by.” Precisely when the Jewish people will have reached a seeming low point in their collective experience (downtrodden by the Egyptian taskmasters, or in later exiles) they will expand and become powerful in a measure never before seen on earth. ימה וקדמה צפונה ונגבה, when that time arrives Bileam’s prophecy in Numbers 24,17 וקרקר כל בני שת, “it will smash the foundation of all mankind.” The final redemption of the Jewish people will come after they have suffered the low point in their history. (Compare Sanhedrin 95: “if you see a generation experiencing so many persecutions and setbacks that it appears a raging river is inundating them, wait for the ending for the prophet Isaiah in his description of the redemption writes of it immediately after having described the very opposite in chapter 59, 19-20”)

ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה, "and through you all the families of the earth will experience blessings." We find that this blessing was fulfilled when Jacob was in Aram. Bereshit Rabbah 70 records that until Jacob's arrival there the people suffered from a shortage of water. As soon as Jacob arrived those people were blessed with an abundance of water. Similarly we find that the famine stopped as soon as Jacob arrived in Egypt i.e. the Nile overflowed its banks again to irrigate the fields.

והיה...ופרצת, you and your descendants.

“You will become strong,” as in וכן יפרוץ. The meaning is not as in פן יפרץ בם (Shemos 19:25), where it means destruction.

בך — ובזרעך (ebenso zuvor לך ולזרעד), "durch dich sollen alle Familien der Erde gesegnet werden und durch deinen Samen". Ganz entschieden scheint hier der Segen, der von ihm ausgehen soll, ein doppelter zu sein. Kann ja überhaupt der Gesamtmenschheit ein Mensch und ein Volk nur durch geistige Einwirkung und durch eine mustergültige Lebensentfaltung Segen werden, bis sich erfüllt: בימים ההמה אשר יחזיקו עשרה אנשים מכל לשונות הגוים והחזיקו בכנף איש יהודי לאמר נלכה עמכם כי שמענו אלקי׳ עמכם "in jenen Tagen, dass, wenn zehn Männer aus allen Zungen der Völker einen Halt suchen werden, sie einen jüdischen Mann an seinem Gewand fassen werden und sprechen: wir wollen mit euch gehen, denn wir haben gehört, Gott ist mit euch". (Secharja 8, 23.) Ein solcher Segen soll Jakob als Familienvater und sollen seine Nachkommen als Volk werden. Jakob zeigt das erste jüdische Haus und lehrt, wie man ein Familienleben, ohne נחלת אבתיו, ohne ererbtes Vermögen, getragen von dem Segen und der Würde der מלאכה, der Arbeit, mit all seinen Sorgen, Plackereien und Bekümmernissen, bauen und durchleben könne, und doch ד׳ נצב עליו, und doch Gott in seinem Leben nicht vermissen. Also: ein Familien- und Volksleben, rein getragen von der göttlichen Gnade und vollendet nach göttlichem Willen, das haben die Menschen von dir und deinem Samen zu lernen.

ונברכו בך, on your account and on account of your descendants all the families of the earth will experience Divine blessings. The reason for this is that He who performs G’d’s commandments and thereby acknowledges His existence and power, deserves that the world exist on his account. Everyone else who is alive and well on earth therefore owes his well being to the Jews keeping the Torah.

ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה ובזרעך, the same type of blessing mentioned in Isaiah 61,6 i.e. because you will then be known and revered as the priests of the Lord, they will receive their Divine blessing through you.

The reason the Torah added the word ובזרעך, was that Jacob's descendants too were to confer blessings on the whole of mankind. As long as the Temple stood the seventy nations of the world enjoyed G'd's blessings because the Israelites offered sacrifices on the festival of Sukkot on their behalf (Sukkah 55). Even while the Jewish people are in exile the continued existence of the other nations is due to the Jewish people as we know from Song of Songs 1,5: "when my mother's children were angry at me they appointed me keeper of the vineyards (of the idols)." [The "mother" is mother earth in this context. Ed.]

If we look for allusions we can find that the whole paragraph alludes to man as a species. Zohar 1,147 understands the words ויצא יעקב as describing the soul when it first departs from the higher world and takes up residence within a body. This body is called יעקב on account of the evil urge which constantly tags along, at our heels, so to speak.

The words מבאר שבע, from "the well of the oath," is a reference to the source the souls come from which is known as "the well of living waters." The word שבע refers to the oath G'd makes every soul swear when it departs from heaven that it will not violate Torah laws while inside a human being (compare Niddah 30).

The words וילך חרנה are an allusion to the statement of our sages in Sanhedrin 91 that the evil urge enters man from the moment he leaves his mother's womb. This is based on Genesis 4,7 that "sin crouches at the entrance"

The words ויפגע במקום are a reminder that man has to invoke G'd's help through prayer, G'd being the מקומו של עולם, the site of the universe.

When the Torah continued וילן שם כי בא השמש, this is a reminder that man has to conduct himself properly all his life until he dies, i.e. "until his sun sets." This is why our sages said in Avot 2,4: "do not be certain of your righteousness until the day you die."

The Torah continues: "He took from the stones of that site;" this is analogous to the statement by Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish in Berachot 5 that a person should constantly strive to provoke his good urge i.e. criticise himself by struggling against the evil urge. Should he fail to overcome his evil urge he should busy himself with Torah study as suggested by David in Psalms 4,5. When the Torah refers to מאבני המקום, that Jacob took from the stones of that site, this refers to the בנינו של עולם the building blocks by means of which the world is built, i.e. Torah. These words may also relate to the stones used to kill the evil urge and its representatives. This is what the Talmud means in Sotah 21 when we are told that Torah saves one from the evil urge not only when one is actively engaged in its study but even when one is temporarily not busy with Torah.

The Torah goes on: וישם מראשותיו, "he placed these stones under his head," to allude to the statement of Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish that when one fails to vanquish the evil urge one should resort to reciting the קריאת שמע which is recited at night, seeing David speaks of על משכבכם, on your bed, in Psalms 4,5.

The words וישכב במקום ההוא he lay down in that place, allude to the final statement on the subject by Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish that if one fails to overcome one's evil urge one should think of the day when one is going to die. This is why the Torah preferred to use the word וישכב to the word ויישן, he slept, since that word implies a lying down from which one may not get up again. Having employed all those means to try and overcome one's evil urge one may be confident of success.

After all this, the Torah shows that Jacob had become worthy of having a prophetic revelation in a dream. It is worth while to study the dreams of Rabbi Eleazar ben Arach which are recorded in the Zohar 1,139 and in the Zohar Chadash לך לך section 25.

The ladder is the mystical aspect of the human soul, something that is not entirely uprooted from the body at the time he is asleep. Part of that soul remains in the body. When the Torah speaks of the ladder being rooted in the ground with its head in the heavens, it refers to these two parts of the soul. The proof of all this is that when man sleeps he subsequently awakens by moving his sleeping body; if the entire soul had previously departed from him he would not be able to experience these motions of his body. The picture drawn for us by the Torah therefore is that of a sleeping person who is not detached from either heaven or earth but remains in contact with both. During his sleeep the evil urge is not able to act as a barrier between man and G'd seeing that part of man's soul is in direct contact with heaven.

The מלאכים עולים ויורדים, the angels described as ascending and descending in Jacob's dream are an allusion to the good deeds which man attempts to perform in this world and which enable his soul to transmit light of a supernatural dimension to the source his soul emanates from. These are called מיין נוקבים, "feminine waters" in the Zohar 1,18. Another name for these lights is מלאכי אלוקים, "angels of G'd." In Avot 4,11 Rabbi Eliezer ben Yaakov calls the products of each good deed פרקליט, advocate. When these advocates rise heavenwards they in turn activate "masculine waters" to descend. [The concept is that just as there is an interaction between the waters in the heavens and those beneath on earth or below, without which nature cannot function and produce vegetation, there is a parallel process of a spiritual nature. In our Midrashim this interaction is compared to the sexual intercourse between man and woman which results in conception. Ed.] The Torah refers to that impact on what descends on man's soul in the words ויורדים בו, "they descend upon him."

The Torah continues והנה ה׳ נצב עליו to tell us that after such an interchange of spiritual forces man becomes capable of prophetic insights. This means that G'd will no longer speak to such a person only in a dream but that he will experience a divine revelation. Jacob's experience during that night then made every Jew in the future a potential vehicle for prophecy, for divine revelation. This is also mentioned by Maimonides who states in chapter 5 of his Hilchot Teshuvah that in principle not a single Israelite is unable to become a vessel for prophecy.