Halakhah su Deuteronomio 29:78

(Alef) The Psalmist said in Ps. 50:18, 20, “When you see a thief, you fall in with him, and throw in your lot with adulterers. You are busy maligning your brother, defaming the son of your mother.” It appears to me [that this can be explained] according to that which is written in Netsach Israel, chapter 25:⁶⁸Maharal, Netsach Yisrael, pp. 126-127 in London edition.
We were asked, “How is it that Israelites are constantly yearning to [do] bad, etc.? As he seeks evil for the one who is his compatriot in Torah and in the commandments. And [yet] the Torah states (Lev. 19:18), ‘and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” And I answered him, etc. However this trait is not in Israel from the angle of ‘an evil soul desires evil.’ As from the angle of their essence, this holy people is deserving of all the importance and status, etc. And the one who is important based on his own nature will [naturally] seek status (and this is what causes the Jews to hurt each other). As you will not find a villager jealous of a great minister, but rather a sage of another sage, a wealthy man of a wealthy man and a strong man of a strong man, etc. Rather this thing comes from [their appropriate] sense of importance. And the proof to this is that it is perfectly obvious that when one of them is in distress, all of them step forward like ‘a brother for adversity.’ And that is because Israel is one nation, etc. And it is not like the traits of licentiousness, etc., as that thing would show great lowliness, etc. And they are stiff-necked from repenting, etc. Because they are far from physicality, they are not [easily] impacted, but rather hold on to their traits, etc. [See there.]
And for this reason, he said, “When you see a thief, you fall in with him, and throw in your lot with adulterers” – and that is from the side of crass physicality and it is lowliness. But, “You are busy maligning your brother, etc.,” is from the side of an elevated form, and as is written in Netsach Yisrael. And they are two opposites of one issue. And ‘there should not be [lowliness] like this in Israel’ – the holy people that comes from a good nature. And that which is in Parashat Netzaivm (Deut. 29:21-26) is elucidated by this:
And later generations will ask—the children who succeed you, and foreigners who come from distant lands and see the plagues and diseases that the Lord has inflicted upon that land. All its soil burnt by sulfur and salt, etc. And all the nations will say, “Why did the Lord do thus to this land; wherefore that awful wrath?” And they will be told, “Because they forsook the covenant that the Lord, etc. And they turned to the service of other gods and worshiped them – gods whom they had not known and whom He had not allotted to them. So the Lord was incensed at that land, etc.”
And Rashi explained [the phrase], “whom they had not known,” [as] they had not known the strength of divinity in them. And Onkelos translated [it as, these gods] did not do good to them – as the one they selected for a god did not give them any inheritance or portion. See there. And at first glance, [this needs] precision – as had it given them an inheritance and a portion, the ‘prohibition [against worshiping it] would still stand in its place. [It is] as we expound in the Gemara,⁶⁹See Bamidbar Rabbah 20:9. “He exalts (masgi, which can also be read as fools) nations, then destroys them” (Job 12:23); such that it appears to them that they are healed by idolatry, etc. And see that with the generation of the flood it is written (Gen. 6:13), “and behold I will destroy them with the earth.” And the Rabbis, may their memory be blessed, expounded [it as] (Bereishit Rabbah 31:7), “with the land” – three handbreadths of the depth of a plow were despoiled. And the sin of the land was that the Lord said (Gen. 1:11) that the land should give forth “trees of fruit” – that the taste of the tree be like the fruit; but it made “trees that made fruit” (Gen. 1:12).⁷⁰Bereishit Rabbah 5:9. [It did this] because [its] material was coarse; and this caused man to incline towards physicality. And [so] the Lord said (Gen. 3:17), “Cursed is the earth for the sake of man” – as the damage was evident in man. And for this reason, [people] in the generation of the flood also sinned in physicality – violent theft, sexual immorality and murder; and this was because of the sin of the land. And therefore it was punished. And in the Guide⁷¹Guide for the Perplexed 1:36., [Rambam] wrote that we only find [the terms], awful wrath and jealousy [attributed to God] with idolatry, [since it is understandable that] the Lord has awful wrath about this. See there. But the sin of idolatry is from the angle of the form (the spiritual side) – and that it is the loss of the intellect, as it is written in Gur Aryeh.⁷²Perhaps the reference is to Gur Aryeh on Exodus 22:30. That is why the verse stated, “And all the nations will say, ‘Why did the Lord do thus to this land’” – since if their sin was from the spiritual side, the land did not sin. But if we say that the sin was from the side of physicality; you would still ask, “‘wherefore that awful wrath,’” as this is only with idolatry – as is written in the Guide – and that is from the angle of the intellect. “And they will be told, ‘Because they forsook, etc. and worshiped other gods’” – and the awful wrath was for that. And “whom they had not known and whom He had not allotted to them” – meaning that they did not apportion them any good and they did not know them [to be] with divine powers, and this was not from a confused intellect, such that ‘He fools the nations.’ Rather it was from the side of crass physicality that [such] anarchy was pleasing to them. And that was the sin of the land, and hence, “all its soil was burnt.” However, if people do righteous deeds, ‘the desolate land will be worked.’

Avnei Nezer, Yoreh De'ah, II, no. 454, secs. 5-7 and no. 457, sec. 5, points to Rambam's omission of the commandment concerning construction of the ark and its cover—an omission for which Rambam was taken to task by Ramban. Despite the clear nature of the divine command to fashion such appurtenances, Rambam does not enumerate their construction as constituting separate and distinct mizvot because he views their construction as being subsumed under the commandment to construct the Temple. Stretching the parallelism a bit, Avnei Nezer argues that Rambam does not enumerate settlement in Erez Yisra'el as a separate mizvah because he regards it as subsumed under the commandment to annihilate the Seven Nations indigenous to the Land of Canaan. [For a critique of this analogy see R. Israel Zev Mintzberg, Yishuv Erez Yisra'el (Jerusalem, 5690), pp. 32-33.] However, subsequently, in the same responsum, secs. 23-27, Avnei Nezer himself queries, "But how can there be a mizvah in the time of exile [regarding which time] it is written in the Torah 'and the Lord … cast them into another land' (Deut. 29:27)?" Avnei Nezer, secs. 24-27, then develops the interesting thesis that only such persons who are deserving of redemption are commanded to dwell in Erez Yisra'el. Even more astonishing is Avnei Nezer's further statement, sec. 26, that one who is not so deserving but who nevertheless makes aliyah is accounted as if he continues to reside in the Diaspora and has fulfilled no mizvah thereby. However, Avnei Nezer, secs. 39 and 62, concludes with the statement that, his own opinion notwithstanding, the position of rabbinic decisors is that settlement in Israel is a mizvah. Whether this mizvah is biblical or rabbinic in nature is contingent upon the conflicting talmudic views with regard to whether the biblical sanctity engendered by Ezra's settlement is eternal in nature or whether it, too, lapsed (as did Joshua's earlier sanctification) upon the destruction of the Second Temple. Nevertheless, Avnei Nezer, sec. 52, asserts that since subsequent to the "three oaths" there is no longer an obligation upon the entire community to settle in the Land of Israel, there can therefore be no obligation upon any individual to settle in Israel. In sec. 56 he adds that if all Jews were to be granted permission to immigrate to Israel, settlement in the Land of Israel would become obligatory provided that it be possible to settle among righteous people.

R. Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, Ein Yizḥak, I, no. 8, resolves the issue raised by Havvot Ya'ir but in doing so he severely limits the ambit of the principle hal'itehu la-rasha. Ein Yizḥak observes that Jews are parties to a covenantal relationship requiring each person to serve as a surety for observance of the commandments by all others. The principle of suretyship, or arvut, is limited to transgressions of which one has knowledge; there is no responsibility, and hence no onus of suretyship, regarding the transgression of a fellow Jew of which one has no knowledge. The latter are in the category of nistarot, i.e., "concealed" or secret things, that are depicted in Deuteronomy 29:28 as matters to be dealt with solely by God. Applying that thesis to the paradigm case of hal'itehu la-rasha, viz., the situation described in Bava Kamma 69a, Ein Yizḥak asserts that, since the identity of the individuals who steal grapes from the vineyard is unknown, those infractions are "concealed" and hence there is no obligation to prevent transgression by such individuals.³⁸See also R. Joshua Baumol, Teshuvot Emek Halakhah, II, no. 6.

In light of the "three oaths" described in Ketubot 111a, this position does not seem to be defensible other than with regard to a defensive war for retention of already acquired territory. The opinion of these scholars notwithstanding, the very fact that an oath not to reconquer the Land of Israel by force as well as the biblical verse "and the Lord rooted them out of their land in anger and in wrath and in great indignation and cast them into another land, as it is this day" (Deut. 29:27), certainly make it logical to assume that during the period of exile God has relieved the Jewish people from this obligation, at least insofar as conquest and retention of the land is concerned. Were an obligation predicated upon the commandment "and you shall inherit the land" still to exist with regard to retention of territory already acquired, it is difficult to comprehend the halakhic basis and justification of exacting an oath not to retake the land by force.