Commento su Deuteronomio 29:27

ויתשם ה׳ — Understand this as the Targum has it: וטלטלינון, “and He cast them out”. Similar is, (Jeremiah 12:14) “Behold, I cast them out (נתשם) from their land”.

AND THE ETERNAL ROOTED THEM OUT OF THEIR LAND, for He will exile the tribe that will do evil in the sight of the Eternal, as it is stated, and he [the king of Assyria] carried them away, even the Reubenites, and the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Menasheh.⁴²I Chronicles 5:26. The correct interpretation is that he is now alluding to the exile of all Israel, all of them being evil, and they will be banished in a complete exile. Similarly, the following chapter, And it shall come to pass, when all these things are come upon thee⁴³Further, 30:1. is a reference to the exile of all Israel, as he said, among all the nations whither the Eternal thy G-d hath driven thee,⁴³Further, 30:1. and so he concludes the entire chapter.

ויתשם ה’ מעל אדמתם, ”the Lord uprooted them from their soil.” This whole paragraph refers to the period of the first Temple, seeing that this was the period during which the people were guilty of idolatry. The expressions ויתשם and וישליכם refer to the fate of the ten tribes, exiled by Shalmanesser, who never returned to their homeland. Such people are considered נדחים, “outcast.” This is why the Torah uses the expression כיום הזה, i.e. their fate became similar to yours as of this day. Just as you are all together in one place, not spread out over the area comprising your homeland, so these exiles will be in a closely confined area. As long as you (the Jewish people) have not yet come to your homeland, i.e. אל המנוחה ואל הנחלה, (compare Deut. 12,9) you too can be considered as נדחים. Your descendants will once more face such crowded conditions, if and when they are exiled due to breaking the conditions of this covenant. Whenever a people are not on their own land where they have space to spread out they are considered as נדחים, outcast.

וישליכם אל ארץ אחרת, “He expelled them to another land.” The letter ל is anyway the largest of the letters in the א-ב. Here it is written even larger. This may be an allusion to the exceptionally high spiritual level from which the people were flung down at the time they were exiled. The prophet Jeremiah (Lamentations 2,1) already speaks of this when he says: השליך משמים ארץ תפארת ישראל, “the Lord has cast down from heaven to earth the majesty of Israel.” Another verse referring to the same experience of the Jewish people is found in Psalms 78,61: “His majesty is in the hands of an oppressor.” This is similar to Daniel 8,12: ”it hurled truth to the ground.” This is a reference to the countenance of Yaakov engraved on the throne of G’d [he is known as personifying “truth” just as is G’d Himself, Ed.] This is also what we read in Midrash Eychah 2,2: “G’d said to Israel the reason you have the audacity to anger Me is that you rely on the fact that the picture of your patriarch Yaakov’s countenance is engraved in My throne, This is why I will fling it back at you right into your faces.” This (according to the author of this Midrash) is the meaning of the verse we quoted from Lamentations 2,1 that “He hurled the majesty of the people of Israel from the heaven.” This is also what David referred to when he wrote (Psalms 102,11) כי נשאתני ותשליכני, “for You had lifted me up high only to cast me down.” G’d flung down the Jewish people whom He had raised previously to such great heights (spiritual). It is as if the psalmist said that the very great height to which the Jewish people had risen previously was a reason why their fall became so phenomenal. Seeing that G’d had flung the Jewish people down from such great heights, “He no longer remembered the footstool of His feet on the day of His wrath* (Lamentations 2,1). [the thrust of this commentary, if I understand correctly, is that the upheaval caused to the Jewish people by its exile was matched by a similar upheaval in the celestial spheres. Ed.] The various portions of verses from Lamentations (5,16) or Amos (5,2), as well as from Ezekiel (19,12) cited by the author, all tend to describe the decline of Israel’s image in the celestial regions before this was followed by Israel’s physical decline and exile. It is part of the mystical aspect of what is referred to in our verse.