Komentarz do Rodzaju 12:3

ונברכו בך AND IN THEE SHALL BE BLESSED — There are many Agadoth concerning this but the plain sense of the text is as follows: A man says to his son, “Mayest thou become as Abraham”. This, too, is the meaning wherever the phrase ונברכו בך “And in thee shall be blessed” occurs in Scripture, and the following example proves this: (Genesis 48:20) בך יברך “By thee shall Israel bless their children saying, “May God make thee as Ephraim and Manasseh”.

ונברכו, a composite, from the word מבריך, מרכיב, refining through adding superior ingredients. The Torah chose a passive mode to express this blessing.

ואברכה מברכך, I shall bless those who bless you. This additional blessing was to compensate Abraham for G'd's failure to tell him the destination he was headed for. After all, G'd did not even tell Abraham which country to head for! It was a tremendous test for Abraham to just leave his home, etc., without having the slightest idea where he was to make his new home. The fact that Abraham did not query G'd in his mind or by prayer is considered as extremely praiseworthy. As a result of this blind faith in G'd, Abraham encountered success wherever he went. His spiritual stature grew constantly.

ואברכה מברכך, your allies and those who seek your welfare.” A reference to Oner, Eshkol, and Mamre, Avram’s allies, as well as others whom the Torah has not named. The blessing‘s effect is that people displaying sympathy and love for Jews will be recompensed by G’d. A prominent example of this is that the house of Potiphar was blessed as a result of Potiphar’s positive attitude to Joseph, his Hebrew slave. (Genesis 39,5) Even Yaakov’s arch enemy Lavan, admitted that his presence with him had resulted in G’d making him rich. (Genesis 30,27)

ואברכה מברכיך, “I will bless those who will bless you.” The plural ending in the word מברכיך is a hint that there will be more people blessing you than people cursing you. Some commentators say that the verse is a prophecy concerning the priests who will be descended from Avraham and whose task it will be to bless the people.

ואברכה מברכך, “I shall bless those who bless you.” According to Midrash Tanchuma, section 4 on our portion, G–d had told Avraham that from him would come forth a tribe who would bless His (G–d’s) children. He referred to the priests who would come forth from Aaron and who would bless the Jewish people, as is written in Numbers 6,27: ושמו את שמי על בני ישראל, ואני אברכם, “so shall they put My name on the Children of Israel;” when Avraham asked: “who will bless them (the priests)?” G–d answered: “I shall bless them.” I believe that this is the correct interpretation of what the Talmud tractate Chulin folio 49 meant when the question was asked: “whence do we know that the priests themselves will be blessed, and the Talmud pointed to our verse as the answer to this question, i.e. “I shall bless those who bless them.”

ואברכה מברכיך, “I will bless those who bless you.” You must never think that there are no people on earth that are psychologically close to you and are potential saviours of you, for I love those who love you and I hate the people who hate you. [in other words I know that there are people who love you. Ed.]

ומקללך אאור, it is not customary to use the plural mode when speaking of curses. Seeing that there would be very few people, if any, who would curse Avram, this is hinted at in the use of the singular mode in the word ומקללך, “someone who curses you.”

ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה, “and all the families on earth will be blessed through you.” Not only Avraham’s direct descendants will be blessed through him, but far wider circles, all the families on earth. Some commentators derive the expression from the causative form of the root ברך, meaning to refine through genetic improvement, מבריך. The term is applied especially to improving the qualities of certain grapes and the wine they produce. In our case it would mean that all the families of the earth would be improved through intermarriage with descendants of Avraham. Avraham having married Hagar, of Egyptian descent and siring a son from her would be a case in point. Later on, he married Keturah who was of the descendants of Yaphet and sired 6 sons from her.

We are entitled to ask why the wording of the Torah is different in respect to those who bless Abraham from that to those who curse him. In the former case G'd mentions that He will bless such people even before they have actually blessed Abraham. In the case of people who curse Abraham, G'd is not described as cursing such people until after they have actually cursed him. If G'd were to curse the potential curser prior to his cursing Abraham, that person would never become aware of the reason G'd cursed him. On the other hand, G'd does not cause any harm by blessing those who intended to bless Abraham already in anticipation of their good deed.

ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה, “and all the families of the earth shall count themselves blessed if they can establish family ties with you.” The root of the word ונברכו is the same as that of מבריך, “to graft.” They will consider it an accomplishment to have Abrahamitic blood in their veins.

ואברכה מברכיך ומקללך אאור, “I will bless those who bless you, and curse those who curse you;” you may question why elsewhere G-d uses the reverse order, i.e. “he who curses you, and I will bless him who blesses you” (Genesis 27,29). The reason for that formulation is that as a general rule, the righteous first experience trials and tribulations in their lives, whereas their relative serenity does not occur until they are well advanced in age.[When Yaakov was well advanced in years and thought the time had come for him to “retire,” according to Rashi in his commentary on B’reshit Rabbah 84,3, he attributes his problem with Joseph to Yaakov expecting worry free life in this world also. Ed.] The answer to the above question is that we must distinguish between who does the blessing and cursing. When the subject is a human being, a righteous person who bestows a blessing, he will commence by mentioning the negative first and the positive as the conclusion (as did Yitzchok when he blessed Yaakov, thinking that Esau was righteous, as in Genesis 27,29) When the subject is G-d Himself, as when G-d blessed Avraham, here, it is more appropriate that He should commence by mentioning the positive aspects first. Furthermore, as generally speaking there are likely to be more people who bless a man such as Avraham, seeing that they are the majority, they are mentioned first, whereas the Torah speaks of מקללך, “he who curses you,” in the singular mode, not “they who curse you,” in the plural mode.ונברכו, a weak conjugation, according to Rash’bam, in the sense of refining through mixing. Through mixing with your descendants many nations will become spiritually uplifted. This is also why the Torah refers here to: משפחות האדמה, “the families on earth.”

ונברכו בך כל משפחות, all the families of the earth within whose radius Avram would make his residence, such as the land of Canaan, Egypt, and the land of the Philistines, would experience a special blessing due to the proximity of Avram.

It is also noteworthy that the Torah speaks about the people who will bless Abraham in the plural, whereas the reference to anyone who might curse Abraham is phrased in the singular.

Perhaps this is best explained in connection with what the rabbis said to the son of Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai in Moed Katan 9. They wished him: תזרע ולא תחצד, "may you sow and not harvest," and a few more such strange sounding wishes. The Talmud describes how Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai explained to his son that though these wishes sounded like curses they were actually blessings. The reference to sowing and not harvesting was a blessing i.e. that he should father children but not have to bury them. It is not the actual phraseology that matters but the intent. G'd told Abraham that there are some people who clothe their curses in words that sound like blessings. He told him that He would also bless the individual who blessed Abraham in such an unusual manner as did the rabbis who blessed the son of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai. The word מקללך applies both to what preceded it and to what follows it. Accordingly there are two kinds of people who might curse Abraham; the ones who dress up the curse to sound like a blessing, and the ones who curse outright. The first category is alluded to when you read the word ומקללך as if it belonged to the word מברכיך which preceded it. The other kind of curser is the one who curses without provocation and without hypocrisy. When the Torah says of G'd אאר, this refers to both categories of people cursing Abraham.

An alternate way of explaining this is based on the statement in Taanit 20: "better the curse of an Achiyah Hashiloni (a prophet, compare Kings I 14,15) than the blessing conferred upon the Jewish people by Bileam." The former used words of a curse to give the Jewish people an incentive to overcome the curse, the latter praised them excessively, hoping to lull them into a kind of spiritual nirvana that would make them easy prey for the evil urge. Concerning the person who bestows the kind of Achiyah Hashiloni's curse on Abraham, G'd says that He will bless a person who curses with such good intentions, whereas concerning the one who does the reverse, G'd will curse him though he couched his curse in words which seemed to convey a blessing.

ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה, and all the families of the world will receive a blessing thanks to you. This is the difference between people who bless you and those that are indifferent to you, neither blessing Abraham not cursing him. G'd will bless directly anyone who blesses Abraham; the ones who do not bless Abraham will receive only an indirect blessing, i.e. via Abraham.