פירוש על בראשית 15:3

הן לי לא נתתה זרע BEHOLD, TO ME THOU HAST GIVEN NO CHILD —What use, then, is all else that thou givest me?

בן ביתי יורש אותי, even though, in the end, You will give me biological offspring, as You have said in 12,7 לזרעך אתן את הארץ הזאת, “I will give this land to your descendants,” such children will only be minors at the time, so that my servant Eliezer will have to raise them and guide them, in effect being my heir.

ויאמר אברם…מה תתן לי? Abram said:…"what are You able to give me?" How could Abraham begin by saying: "You have not given me, etc.," when he had received G'd's promise that he would father children? Surely he did not doubt G'd's words? Why did Abraham say: הן לי לא נתתה, instead of: הן לא נתתה לי? [why did he stress the word לי?] What did Abraham have in mind when he said to G'd that בן ביתי יורש אותי, that "a member of my household will inherit me?" Seeing that he had no seed of his own, what difference did it make to him if a member of his household or someone else would inherit him?

הן לי לא נתת זרע, although You have said to me “I will make you into a great nation and I will make your descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth” (12,2) When Avram said all this to G’d, it did not cross his mind that G’d might have deceived him, lied to him, and that this was why the promise had not come true. He may have thought of one of two reasons being the cause why the promise had not been fulfilled. 1) that he had committed some sin after G’d had made the promise, so that the premise upon which the promise had been based was no longer valid. 2) or, he thought that the seed G’d had spoken of was a reference to some other family member, people carrying many of the same genes. The word זרע does appear in such a sense in Esther 10,3 where Mordechai is described as דובר שלום לכל זרעו, “interceding on behalf of all his seed.” If Mordechai had interceded only on behalf of personal children and grandchildren, this would hardly have been worth mentioning, certainly not worth praising him for. Basically, Avram wanted G’d to know that if G’d had meant that the definition of the word זרעך as mentioned in 12,2 was only in the most general sense, such as in Esther 10,3, then he, Avram, would not consider this reward as something special seeing G’d had not seen fit to make his wife conceive offspring from his seed.

לִי steht bezeichnend voran und נתתָה hebt die angeredete Person hervor. Willst du mir schon etwas geben, siehe, Reichtum verlange ich nicht, allein, wenn ich auch ein Bettler wäre, der einfachste Mensch, dem Gott Einsicht, Kraft oder materielle Mittel gegeben, wünscht sich und sein Streben in Kindern fortleben zu sehen. Ich aber habe wohl ילידי בית, aber sie sind nicht ילירי, nicht זרעי, wohl erzogen von mir, aber nicht erzeugt, von mir erkauft, aber nicht von dir mir gegeben. Abraham bittet nicht um Änderung dieses Zustandes, er weist nur darauf hin: הנה ,הן, siehe an, ob es recht ist. Ist es in deinen Augen recht, so ist es überall auch das Rechte, übst Liebe, auch wo ich es nicht begreife. — Möglich, ja wahrscheinlich sogar bezeichnet ויאמר hier nicht, was Abraham gesagt, sondern nur was er gedacht, darum folgt nicht eine Antwort ויאמר אליו, sondern והנה וגוי eine plötzliche Unterbrechung seiner Gedanken.

Abraham remembered that the promise of seed he had received was phrased thus: "your seed will be as the dust of the earth" (13,16). When people are compared to the dust of the earth such a comparison normally applies to poor and insignificant people, i.e. "as the dust"; it implies that such people do not possess a holy soul, that they are closer to animals than to angels. When Abraham stressed the לי aspect of his future descendants, he referred to the fact that G'd had not promised him children or grandchildren of any stature. This is why G'd told him "to count the stars." The stars were meant to be symbols. G'd wanted Abraham to know that his descendants would all be important in their own right. They would be righteous people who could overcome the stars, i.e. their fates would not be subject to zodiac constellations, to מזל. Bereshit Rabbah 69,5 explains the simile of the "dust of the earth" to mean that just as dust cannot prosper without water, so Jacob's (Abraham's) descendants would not prosper without Torah which is for the spirit what water if for the body. The Midrash there lists other qualities of dust which make it seem as something valuable and important. Examination of various Midrashim on the subject of עפר, dust, shows that we never find dust treated as something valuable until after Abraham's descendants were compared to stars for the first time. This is the reason that the quotation from the Midrash we have cited was from פרשת ויצא and not from here. At any rate, Abraham was concerned about the comparison of his descendants to dust in G'd's first promise.

והנה בן ביתי יורש אותי, “and here a member of my household is going to be my heir.” Avram points to the apparent contradiction to G-d having assured him that he would sire biological heirs. He implies that seeing that he is already aging, even if and when he would have son, the son would be too young to take over from him when he would die, so that he would have to leave his affairs in the hands of his servant. This servant would possess power of attorney for all practical purposes to do what he liked. G-d reassured him on that score saying that not only would he have a biological heir, but that son would be fully of age before Avram would die.

The expression בן ביתי can be understood in one of two ways. 1) Abraham said to G'd that If He only intended to give him the kind of descendants that are comparable to lowly dust, he would prefer that a member of his present household would become his heir. He referred to his trusted disciple Eliezer. Such a one would be more suited than an unworthy biological descendant. A typical example would be a grandson such as Esau.

2) Not only was Abraham distressed at not having been promised worthy descendants, he was even more distressed that a בן בית such as Lot viewed himself as his heir. I have found an ancient commentary which understands Abraham as preferring to die intestate to having unworthy children.