Comentários de Citação sobre Juízes 3:1

והניח לכם AND WHEN HE GIVETH YOU REST — i.e., after having conquered and divided the land and having obtained rest from the nations “which the Lord left by which to prove Israel” (Judges 3:1) — which was only in the days of David (cf. Sifrei Devarim 68:3) — then,

A Midrashic approach to the words כי יכרית, based on Tanchuma Re'ey 9: We may best understand the need for this paragraph by means of a parable. A king had planted a vineyard in his field, a field which also contained great cedar trees as well as thorns and weeds. The king cut down the trees, but left the thorns untouched. When his servants observed this they remonstrated with the king saying: “our Lord, the thorns which tore our clothing you left untouched whereas the trees which give shade, etc., you cut down!” The king replied: “if I had uprooted the thorns and left the trees standing what would I use to fence off my vineyard?” This would not have been an appropriate way of doing things. The way I have done things provided me with lumber for the fence and provided more sunshine for my vineyard to produce good grapes. Israel is viewed as G’d’s vineyard as we know from Isaiah 5,7: “for the house of Israel is the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts.” When G’d made the Israelites enter the vineyard, i.e. the land of Israel, He had already cut down the mighty cedars, i.e. the Emorites who lived there, people as powerful as oaks (Amos 2,10), but He left the children and grandchildren of these powerful Emorites in the meantime until the Israelites arrived so that they would tend the land (the vineyard) pending the Israelites’ arrival. We know this from Judges 3,1: “and these are the nations which the Lord left alive there in order to test the Israelites (who had not been alive at the time of the war of conquest).” We find a similar verse in Judges 2,22: “for it was in order to test Israel by them (the remaining Canaanites) to see whether they would faithfully walk in the ways of the Lord or not.” If the vineyard would remain in place as a result of the Israelites observing the Torah the remaining Canaanites would become “burnings of lime, thorns cut down that are set on fire” (Isaiah 32,12).