Commento su Deuteronomio 32:8

בהנחל עליון גוים WHEN THE MOST HIGH DIVIDED TO THE NATIONS THEIR INHERITANCE — when the Holy One, blessed be He gave those who provoked Him to anger their inheritance, He afterwards caused the flood to pass over them and He drowned them (Sifrei Devarim 311:1)

יצב גבולות עמים, after the tower of Babylon episode, when mankind had lived in a single community, G’d separated them, dividing them up, and established territorial boundaries for the various new nations. Instead of destroying the people who had engaged in building the tower as a challenge to G’d, He did not destroy them as He had the generation of the deluge, but limited their future scope of influence, by assigning only clearly marked territories within which they could be sovereign.

בהנחל עליון גוים, "When the Supreme One gave nations their inheritance, etc." This is a reference to the time when G'd assigned "guardian angels" for the various Gentile nations to represent them at the celestial court. This is an allusion to the fact that G'd considered these nations as inferior so that He did not want to relate to them directly but only by means of an intermediary.

בהנחל עליון גוים, when He assigned to them ancestral lands

בהפרידו בני אדם, “when He separated the various children of man from one another.” Some commentators feel that Moses was speaking about the generation that built the Tower, and that dispersed after their languages had been confused.

Their ancestral portions, He inundated and swamped them. I.e. what was the portion of their inheritance? He inundated and swamped them.

V. 8. בהנחל עליון גוים וגו׳. Als der in dem Bewusstsein der Völker nur noch als der "Höchste" Geehrte (siehe Bereschit 14, 19 u. 20), als Gott Völker in den verschiedenen Ländern auf Erden Besitz nehmen ließ, בהפרידו בני אדם, und durch die Verschiedenheit dieser Länder und die Eigenartigkeit des Einflusses eines jeden derselben auf Körper- und Geistesbildung, Sprache, Beschäftigung, Sitte und Charakter seiner Bewohner das ursprünglich einheitliche Menschengeschlecht — alle ja Söhne Adams — zu verschieden gearteten Völkern auseinander gehen ließ, deren jegliches als eigenartiges Produkt seines Landes eine besondere Seite des Menschheitscharakters verwirklicht (vergl. Bereschit 21, 11).

בהנחל עליון גוים, “when the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance;”

בהנחל עליון גוים, “When the Most High gave to the gentile nations, etc.;” He allocated to each nation its territory on earth.

בהפרידו בני אדם WHEN HE SEPARATED THE SONS OF ADAM — i.e. when He scattered the generation which witnessed the separation of races, He also had the power to remove them from the world, yet He did not do so, but יצב גבלת עמים HE FIRMLY ESTABLISHED THE BOUNDARIES OF THE NATIONS — He let them (the peoples) remain in existence and did not destroy them,

למספר בני ישראל. For the sake of the Children of Israel who were few in numbers, and who would eventually emerge from among these nations. Proof of all this is כי חלק ה' עמו, that G’d has no special claim on any nation other than the people of Israel. All the other nations worship alien deities. Moses explains that had it not been for the fact that G’d knew that the people of Israel would emerge eventually from among one of these nations, He would have wiped out all the people involved in the building of the tower.

בהפרידו בני אדם, after the death of Noach and the time of Avraham about which the Torah wrote (Genesis 10,5) “from this point on they separated, branched out by their respective lands, each with its language, etc.” יצב גבולות עמים, twelve descendants of Canaan (Genesis 10,6) mentioned in that context in that chapter of Genesis, corresponding to the eventual 12 tribes of Israel. Canaan and his 11 sons amounted to twelve. (Genesis 10,15-18) The Torah describes the boundaries of the Canaanites as extending from Tzidon in the north to Gerar, near Gaza in the south, and Sodom in the east. This entire region became the land of Israel during the conquest commencing in the days of Joshua, except for the coastal plains inhabited by the Philistines which was conquered many hundreds of years later, and Jerusalem which was captured by David. The Torah does not give details of the boundaries of the territories of any of the other sons of Noach. למספר בני ישראל, matching the number of the Children of Israel.

יצב גבולות עמים, “He established the boundaries of the seven Canaanite nations;” these corresponded in number roughly to the number of the Israelites.

Who were destined to issue from Shem’s posterity, etc. Otherwise, why use the term “according to the number”? This is what the verse means: “When He separated the sons of man,” i.e., when He dispersed them in the generation of the Dispesion; “He established the boundaries of peoples,” which means that He did not remove them from the world. Why did He do so? “According to the number of Bnei Yisroel,” meaning for the sake of Yisroel who would [in the future] be descendants of Shem.

בהפרידו בני אדם, "when He separated the children of man." The meaning is that G'd did not deliver all the nations into the hands of a single "deputy," i.e. a minister appointed by G'd to deal with them. Rather He appointed different "ministers" to be in charge of the fates of the various nations. The manner in which G'd went about doing this when He established the borders of the various nations was that He took into consideration the needs of the people of Israel. We must remember that when G'd created the souls He planted them originally in one of two trees. One of these trees is a "good" tree, the other is an "evil" tree. The good tree is the one from which the soul of Adam emanated, whereas the other "tree" is a simile for Samael, the symbol of wicked man. Once Adam sinned and the previous division between good and evil became eroded so that good and evil began to appear intertwined, even the offspring of Adam began to produce wicked souls until eventually one totally pure soul, that of Jacob, emerged. From that time onwards the good tree became clearly identifiable once again. This is why the Talmud in Baba Metzia 84 tells us that the beauty of Jacob's soul was comparable to that of Adam before the sin. The "good" tree we are speaking of has 70 branches corresponding to the number of people who descended to Egypt with Jacob. Accordingly, when G'd separated the various nations from one another, He divided them into 70 to correspond to the seventy branches of sanctity.

יצב גבלת עמים וגו׳ stellte Er Gebiete von Völkerschaften bereit für noch zu zählende Söhne Jisraels, ließ er einen Komplex von Landschaften von mehreren Völkerstämmen in Besitz nehmen, die darin jenen völkerschaftlichen Prozess der Beherrschung des Bodens und des Beherrschtwerdens vom Boden durchzumachen hatten, deren Land גבולות עמים zu Gebieten von Völkerschaften wurden (Bereschit 26, 3 u. 4), die sie aber nicht behalten sollten, die vielmehr von vornherein einem Volke bestimmt wurden, dessen Anfang nur erst noch in einzelnen Gliedern einer Familie vorhanden war. So Ps. 105, 11 u. 12 לאמר לך אתן את ארץ כנען חבל נחלתכם בהיותם מתי מספר כמעט וגרים בה —

בהפרידו בני אדם, ”when He separated the children of men;” during the generation of the Tower (Genesis 11,1-11) At that time, due to the confusion of their languages, each “nation,” i.e. the people who had a language in common, moved away from one another and established separate cultures. This occurred due to the direct intervention of G–d as we know from verse 8 in that chapter.

בהפרידו בני אדם, “at the time when He separated the children of man,” i.e. after the destruction of the Tower they had built. (Genesis chapter 11, 19)

למספר בני ישראל ACCORDING TO THE NUMBER OF THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL — i.e. because of the number of the children of Israel that were in future to descend from Shem’s sons, and in accordance with the number of seventy souls of the children of Israel who went down to Egypt He firmly established גבלת עמים THE NATIONS ACCORDING TO THEIR BOUNDARIES — i.e. seventy separate nations (cf. Sifrei Devarim 311:5).

According to the number of the seventy souls of the Bnei Yisroel, etc. I.e. [the verse] wants to explain one further concept. This is what the verse means: “He established boundaries of peoples,” which means that He made many nations. And how did He make them? Scripture explains, “according to the number of Bnei Yisroel” that is, He made them according to the number of seventy souls who went down to Egypt, i.e., the seventy nations. The phrase “He established the boundaries of peoples” is elucidated both with the phrase preceding and the phrase following, as I explained. Rashi needed to give two explanations because according to the first [explanation] the word “boundaries” is problematic. It should have only written, “established peoples according to the number of Bnei Yisroel.” The word “boundaries” is not needed. And according to the second explanation, since they angered Hashem, why did He not destroy them from the world? Therefore Rashi also needs the first explanation.

The idea underlying this division was to enable each branch of sanctity in the world to be able to rule over its spiritually negative counterpart. This is the mystical dimension of Proverbs 5,5: "her feet descend to death." The idea is that the feet of sanctity stomp on the heads of the קליפה, the spiritually negative forces. In other words, Jacob's branches rule over the nations of the world. Moses continues with, כי חלק ה׳ עמו "for G'd's portion is His people," meaning that inasmuch as G'd has chosen the Jewish people to be governed by Himself directly and has thus elevated Israel over the other nations, He thereby rules over mankind as a whole. The reference of חלק ה׳ עמו refers to Israel after they had received the Torah when they became fit to be called the people of G'd. Moses adds יעקב חבל נחלתו, "Jacob is the measure of His inheritance." The word חבל refers to the most important part of that inheritance. This is an allusion to the quotation from Baba Metzia 84 about the beauty of Jacob matching that of original man, Adam.

יצב וגו׳ למספר וגו׳ vergl. ונצבת לקראת (Schmot 7, 15 .2), ונצבת לי שם (daselbst 34,2), אשר הצבת לבדנה (Bereschit 21, 29), הצב für das Feststellen von Ländergebieten: אתה הצבת כל גבולות ארץ (Ps.74, 17).

יצב גבולות עמים למספר בני ישראל, “He set the borders of people, relative to the number of the Children of Israel.” He selected the boundaries of the twelve tribes in the land that would be Israel’s in the future. How did He do this? He first allocated the relevant areas to the descendants of Canaan –who were enslaved to the descendants of Shem through Noach’s curse. Seeing that slaves cannot own anything in their own right, they are never more than tenants on that land.- Genesis 10,15-18 lists the genealogy of Canaan, eleven in number, that are relevant in that respect. At least one of the Canaanite families at some point split into two separate families, (“nations”). This was the P’rizi, which therefore has not been listed in the verses we just quoted. The boundaries of the lands occupied by the descendants of Canaan are also spelled out in that chapter in detail. As a result of this we have 12 separate branches of the Canaanite nation matching the 12 tribes of the Israelites at the time of Moses. [Levi did not get an ancestral share, but Joseph, as Yaakov’s firstborn from the wife Rachel he had worked for had two shares, allocated to Menashe and Ephrayim, the sons born to him before Yaakov’s death. The words: למספר בני ישראל, “corresponding to the number of tribes of the Children of Israel,” in our verse make perfect sense therefore.

יצב גבולות עמים למספר בני ישראל, “He set the borders of the peoples according to the number of the Children of Israel.” He set aside 12 portions of land for the as yet unborn 12 founding fathers of the Jewish nation. There is a tradition that the twelve sons of Canaan (listed in Genesis chapter 10, where eleven have been named) who used to be slaves of the descendants of Shem, son of Noach, as per the curse of their grandfather Noach, received the lands which in due course were taken over from them by the 12 tribes of Israel under the leadership of Joshua. When the Israelites took over, the former inhabitants had no legal claim against the at all, as whatever slaves “own,” is really the property of their masters, and seeing that the Israelites were descendants of Shem, the Canaanites’ master, they had not had any title to that land ever. It is not surprising that one these tribes of Canaan split into two, during the approximately 300 years between the end of the deluge and the time of Avraham. The author has mentioned this tradition already in his commentary on Leviticus 20,24.

Moses also had in mind the fact that there are two categories of souls. One kind of soul has descended directly from a very high region in heaven, and that is the type of soul referred to here as חלק ה׳, "part of G'd," so to speak. Other souls originate in a pool called נחלת שדי, the inheritance of the G'd known as שדי. These souls Moses refers to as חבל נחלתו, "tied by a rope to His inheritance." The word חבל was chosen by Moses deliberately to allude to something very important revealed by the Kabbalists. Every vital soul of man has a "string" connected with its root. This "string" begins at his nostrils and it is by means of this "string" that the soul derives its sustenance enabling it to live. Concerning the soul of the wicked, the Torah said in Numbers 15,31 (in connection with deliberate sinners) הכרת תכרת הנפש ההיא, עונה בה, "that person (soul) will surely be cut off, his sin is upon him." This means that the lifeline connecting that person's soul to its origin will be severed. Once the soul cannot derive sustenance from its source it dies. Of the righteous, on the other hand, the Torah stated in Deut. 4,11 "As to you who have cleaved to the Lord your G'd, you are all alive today."