פירוש על שמות 6:8

נשאתי את ידי I HAVE LIFTED UP MY HAND — I have lifted it up to swear by My Throne.

AND I WILL BRING YOU IN UNTO THE LAND CONCERNING WHICH I LIFTED UP MY HAND. “I have lifted it up to swear by My throne.” Thus the language of Rashi. Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra said that it is an idiom [denoting the exercise of power], just like a man who lifts his hand to the heavens and swears, such as: For I lift up My hand to heaven⁴³Ibid., Verse 40. [to take an oath of vengeance]; And he lifted up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven, and swore.⁴⁴Daniel 12:7.
By way of the Truth, [the mystic lore of the Cabala], I lifted up My hand means that “I have raised the strength of My arm to Myself that I will give them the Land.” Similarly, For I lift up My hand to heaven⁴³Ibid., Verse 40. means that “I will lift up the great hand to the heavens since it abounds in eternal life.”⁴⁵According to Meir Abusaula (see Preface, Vol. I, p. XII, Note 21) the thought suggested here is that His Name will forever be in Israel’s midst, and thus He assured them eternal life. But the verse, And he lifted up his right hand and his left hand unto heaven,⁴⁴Daniel 12:7. has no relevance here, for that was said concerning the angel clothed in linen,⁴⁶Daniel 12:6. who swore by Him that liveth for ever.⁴⁴Daniel 12:7.

והבאתי אתכם אל, once they would mentally digest all this you would be worthy of My bringing you to the land, and I will give it to you.

והבאתי אתכם אל הארץ, "And I shall bring you to the land, etc." It is difficult to reconcile this promise with our tradition that G'd speaks the unvarnished truth when we know it to be a fact that the generation G'd was addressing at that time did not get to the Holy Land. Only the children of that generation actually crossed the Jordan and took possession of the land of Canaan. Every one of the people who left Egypt at an age of twenty or over died on the way. Our problem is even more serious in view of the statement of our sages (Shemot Rabbah 6:4) that the word לכן in 6,6, is a form of an oath.

ונתתי אותה לכם מורשה, “and I will give it to you as an ancestral heritage.” G’d did not speak about ירושה “an inheritance;” this means that the people leaving Egypt during the Exodus would not be the ones inheriting that land, but their offspring would.

והבאתי אתכם אל הארץ, “I will bring you to the land, etc.” Seeing that all the previous promises were meant to be realized in the immediate future, this promise too was intended to be fulfilled promptly. If the sin of the spies who talked the people into refusing to engage in a military struggle to oust the Canaanites had not occurred, this promise too would have been fulfilled promptly.
The prophet Ezekiel 34,13 speaks of similar four stages of redemption of the Jewish people in the future. I quote: “I shall bring them out from the nations and gather them from the lands and bring them to their ground and tend them on Israel’s mountains, etc.” When commemorating the Exodus annually on the night of the Seder we drink four cups of wine corresponding to these four stages of our redemption outlined by the above-mentioned four expressions. The reward received by the righteous for their conduct has been compared to a כוס, a cup, by David in Psalms 23,5 where he speaks of כוסי רויה, “my cup is abundant.” We find a similar reference in Psalms 16,5: “G’d is my allotted share and cup.” The word כוס, cup, in that context occurs also in Psalms 116,13 “I will raise the cup (in thanksgiving) for salvations experienced.” Isaiah writes something similar (Isaiah 66,11) “that you may suck from her breast consolation to the full.” The author continues to quote examples from the Bible showing that traditionally we either drank or will drink cups of wine as a form of thanksgiving to the Lord for salvations experienced or yet to be experienced.

To swear by My Throne. This is like saying, “To swear by My Kingship,” since a throne represents kingship, as [Pharaoh said to Yosef] in (Bereishis 41:40), “Only by [virtue of] the throne I will be greater than you.” (Gur Aryeh)

V. 8. והבאתי אתכם וגו׳. Israel soll somit völlig zum Volk konstituiert sein, bevor es ein eigenes Land erhält. Sein Volksdasein ist somit nicht durch den Besitz des Landes bedingt, vielmehr der Besitz des Landes war von der treuen Lösung seiner Volksaufgabe abhängig. מורשה: es war im Geiste schon den Vätern gegeben, ihr erhaltet es nur als deren Erben.

I believe that G'd Himself was already aware of this problem and that is why He prefaced the statement "I will bring you to the land, etc," with the words: "you will know that I am the merciful G'd who is about to take you out from under the slave labour of Egypt." The two statements are to be considered as conditions. What G'd meant was simply this. "Provided that you will have realised that I am the One who takes you out of Egypt and that I have demonstrated to be the merciful G'd,-then you will also experience that I shall bring you to the land which I have sworn to your forefathers and will give it to you as an inheritance." G'd was very careful to insert this condition in the very midst of the promise He made and not only as an afterthought. In the event that the Israelites would not fulfil the conditions laid down history would have to take its course in accordance with their conduct.

מורשה, “an inheritance.” G’d refrains from saying ירושה. There is a difference between מורשה andירושה . The people addressed were not the ones who would personally receive the land as a heritage seeing that all those who were adults would never get there due to the sin of the spies. They would, however, bequeath their claim to it to their children, i.e. they would be מורישים. This is why the Torah used the word מורשה instead of ירושה. We need to interpret the word מורשה in Deut. 33,4 in a similar manner. Torah cannot be handed down as an inheritance as if it were a house, a field, or a business, i.e. some object merely to be passed on from father to son. Inasmuch as Torah is an inheritance it remains such only for that particular generation. which stood at Mount Sinai and had received it as an inheritance, i.e. something inalienable, not to be stolen from them. The next generation had to study Torah on its own in order that it should become an inheritance for them also. However, the children of someone who “owned” Torah are predisposed to acquire it for themselves. Hence Torah is forevermore a מורשה for such children. Parents have been commanded not only to study Torah but to train their children in studying Torah, ושננתם לבניך, (Deut. 6,7). it is a מורשה, something to be transmitted to successive generations down the ages. By the same token later generations of Jews are as duty-bound to observe the commandments of the Torah as were those who had actually received it at Sinai. According to our sages the souls of those generations had already stood at Mount Sinai at the time when G’d revealed Himself to Moses and to the people (Pesikta Zutrata Va'etchanan 5,3). This concept is spelled out in detail in Deut. 29,14 “including all those who are not present (in the flesh) on this day.” (the day Moses renewed the covenant with the generation who would enter the Holy Land). G’d concluded this promise with the words אני ה’, seeing He had commenced the paragraph (verse 2).
The message is : “I Who make a promise can be relied upon to translate it into reality.”