Commento su Esodo 32:29

מלאו ידכם CONSECRATE YOURSELVES — You who are killing them (your own relatives) will by this very act install yourselves as priests of the Omnipresent God,

'מלאו ידכם היום לה, acquire for yourselves some degree of perfection today! Today you will become worthy to perform service in G’d’s Temple in the future!

מלאו ידכם היום, "consecrate yourselves this day, etc." It is not clear what the word "consecrate" is supposed to mean in this context. If it referred to the matter of killing one's relatives, this had already occurred. It should have been reported prior to the Levites carrying out Moses' orders.

מלאו ידכם היום, “dedicate yourselves this day!” as if the line had been written in the past tense, as if the word כי had preceded the word מלאו, expressing approval of their loyalty. Rallying to the call of Moses and carrying out his instructions was equivalent to offering a sacrifice to G’d.

By this act you will install yourselves. . . Explanation: Originally, the firstborn were priests to Hashem. But then they sinned with the Calf and sacrificed an offering to idolatry. Therefore you are to kill them, and you should become priests to Hashem in their stead. Rashi says, “You will install yourselves,” because מילוי יד means installation to a position that one will hold from then on, as Rashi explained in parshas Terumah.

Consecrate yourselves. Moshe informed them that on account of this they would be consecrated to serve in place of the first-born, who failed to rally to him as the Levites did.

V. 29. Nachdem sie die Gesetz rettende Tat vollbracht hatten, sprach Mosche zu ihnen: "Bleibet, was ihr heute begonnen!" Setzet euch selber ein zu "Eiferern" und Vertretern des göttlichen Gesetzes. Keiner besonderen Bestellung, keiner besonderen Berufung bedürft ihr dazu. Wo das Gesetz im Volke gehöhnt wird, da ist jeder zum Vertreter und Retter des Gesetzes berufen, die Pflicht und die Verantwortlichkeit, die auf jedem ruht, stellt ihm den Bestallungsbrief aus, und je weniger Amt und Bestallung sein Tun zu amtlichem Tun stempelt, um so bedeutsamer und wirksamer ist seine rettende Tat, um so tiefer sagt sie jedem, welcher Geist in allen lebendig sein sollte. — כי איש בבנו ובאחיו. Es kann aber nur der für das Gesetz gegen die Gesamtheit auftreten, der das Gesetz gegen seine nächsten Angehörigen vertritt. Nur das, was er seinem Kinde und Verwandten nicht hingehen lässt, kann er gegen andere vertreten. Das: כי איש וגו׳ ist Parenthese: dadurch, dass ihr die eigenen nicht schont, habt ihr das öffentliche Auftreten nicht zu scheuen. Das ולתת וגו׳ ist Fortsetzung des מלאו וגו׳: Nicht die Berufung habt ihr von Gott zu erwarten, wohl aber den Segen, den Beistand und die heilbringenden Folgen des Einstehens für Gott, das ihr von innen heraus übet.

ולתת עליכם היום ברכה, “so that he may bestow a blessing on you this day.” From this day on the blessings that Moses bestowed on the Levites as described in Deuteronomy 33,8 additionally, although Yaakov had failed to bless them on his deathbed became effective, just as Moses blessed Reuven, although Yaakov had failed to bless him. He received a blessing from Moses although he did not receive it from his father Yaakov, as in the meantime his descendants had volunteered to be the vanguard of the army of the Israelites when they conquered the land of Canaan and they did not return to their families for 14 years until all the tribes had received their ancestral lands.

מלאו ידכם היום, “dedicate yourselves today, etc.;” Moses tells these people that they had already proved their absolute loyalty to Hashem, as they had not hesitated to kill members of their own family if those had been amongst the three thousand men mentioned in the last verse. This is also how our author understands Targum Onkelos on our verse. The point is not to understand Moses as using the expression: מלאו ידכם, as being in the future tense.

כי איש FOR EVERY MAN among you will consecrate himself בבנו ובאחיו BY HIS SON AND HIS BROTHER (by their death at his hand).

כי איש בבנו ובאחיו, for each one of you have already become sanctified to G’d through having circumcised his own son for G’d, something you did in the desert. (according to Sifrey Behaalotcha,15, the tribe of Levi were the only ones who observed this commandment while the people were in the desert). [how many Levites could have been circumcised during the 89 days since the Passover and the return of Moses from Mount Sinai? Ed.] Therefore, מלאו ידכם prove this sense of loyalty again by becoming blessed through assuming this difficult task of carrying out His instructions now. ובאחיו, and today you have again demonstrated your loyalty of spilling the blood of even your own brothers. Moses gave recognition to this collective act of loyalty to G’d in preference to loyalty to their fellow Jew in Deuteronomy 33,9-11 when he said about this tribe:כי שמרו אמרתך ובריתך ינצורו,.... ברך ה' חילו ופעל ידיו תרצה, “for they have observed Your word and Your covenant they preserved. Bless, Hashem, his resources and favour the works of his hand.”

איש בבנו ובאחיו, you have extended your hands towards heaven, i.e. in support of the interests of G’d.

“For each man” amongst you will be installed [as a result of what each did] to his son. . . In connection with the actual killing, it mentions only an Israelite brother, relative and friend, [but not a son]. Nevertheless, here it says, “His son,” in order to emphasize the point. It conveys that each man would have killed even his own son to sanctify Hashem’s Name.

I believe we can explain this verse as being in its proper place. The Torah felt that inasmuch as these Levites had carried out executions with their own hands, something that certainly is not characteristic of righteous people, their image had to be restored. We have learned in Makkot 7 that any court which carries out a death sentence once in seven years (according to some even once in seventy years) is labelled as "a murderous court." In this instance the Levites killed about 3,000 people in a single day. There was a fear that their souls could have been tarnished by the experience seeing that though what they had done was perfectly legal it might leave a residue of mercilessness or a streak of cruelty in their character. In order to reassure both them and the people, Moses the man of G'd, told them to "consecrate their hands." This was not a commandment but a reassurance that by the very act of carrying out the task allocated to them they had consecrated themselves to the service of the Lord. Not only did their action not hint at a character deficiency in them, but, on the contrary, it reflected that they were spiritually very enlightened. The proof was that they did not protest having to sacrifice their own sons or close relatives which put them in a category similar to that of Abraham at the time he was willing to offer up Isaac. G'd testified that Abraham had reached the pinnacle of perfection after he had demonstrated that he had not withheld Isaac (Genesis 22,12). G'd had given Abraham a double blessing at that time (Genesis 22,17). Moses assured the Levites that they too were recipients of a similar blessing by G'd as a reward for what they had done, i.e. ולתת עליכם היום ברכה.

ולתת עליכם היום ברכה, “and thereby bring G-d’s blessing upon yourselves this day.” This verse is the reason why, in his parting address to the Jewish people in Deuteronomy 33,811, Moses singles out the tribe of Levi for a blessing although Yaakov, prior to his death had not done so. The reason that the tribe of Reuven received a blessing from Moses at that time, although that tribe too had not received a blessing from Yaakov, was that they had volunteered to be the vanguard of the army in the forthcoming battle with the Canaanites, having vowed not to rejoin their families on the east bank of the Jordan until all the other tribes had settled on their allotted territory. The tribe of Shimon, however, had neither received a blessing from Yaakov nor from Moses, due to their prince having cohabited provocatively with a Midianite princess, and because of the original Shimon’s part in the killing of all the males of the town of Sh’chem. An alternate explanation: “and to bestow a blessing on you this day!|” Moses says here what he referred to in Deuteronomy 10,8 when he said: בעת ההיא הבדיל ה׳ את שבטעד היום הזה הלוי לשאת את ארון ברית ה׳, “at that time Hashemseparated the tribe of Levi to become the bearers of the HolyArk......until this day.” The new task of the Levites becameoperational after the Tabernacle had been built and the Holy Ark had been transferred to there. From amongst the Levites, Aaron and his sons and their descendants were selected as replacing the duties which prior to the golden calf episode had been performed by the firstborn, who were the priests in each family where the firstborn was a son. They too became disqualified by having participated at the time at least passively in the dancing around the golden calf. According to tradition, they had even offered sacrifices on the altar Aaron had built. Part of Korach’s complaint was also that he should be qualified to offer sacrifices as he too was firstborn. (Our author has more to say about this in his commentary on Numbers 16,2.)

Moses was very precise in describing this blessing as עליכם, which implied something additional, instead of saying לכם. He told the Levites that not only was G'd's blessing not required to restore a character defect which had been revealed when they acted as mass executioners, but there had not been a character defect in the first place, and He now added a further positive dimension to their respective characters by granting them this blessing. We may view the whole episode as similar to an orchard in which the trees have to be pruned in order to assure that the remaining branches develop more successfully. The house of Israel has frequently been compared to a vineyard (Psalms, 80,9 et al). When Moses spoke of the blessing that G'd would bestow עליכם, "upon you," the meaning of עליכם is "thanks to you," thanks to what you have done, the entire Jewish people will experience such a blessing. It was not the Levites who had been deficient but the people. By removing the superfluous members of the Jewish people, the Levites had assured the successful development of the remaining branches of the trees in that orchard. When we had previously quoted the Talmud which characterised a court that carried out death-sentences as "murderous," the circumstances described in the Talmud do not match what happened here at all, for two reasons. 1) The Levites (read court) executed their beloved ones. This demonstrated that their love for G'd was greater than their love for their errant family members. 2) Failure to carry out these sentences would have condemned the whole nation to destruction at the hands of G'd. The executioners therefore were the life savers of the people, not "murderous." G'd's anger abated only as a result of their action.