Comentários de Citação sobre Levítico 26:45

ויזכר, there is no “remembering” as far as G’d is concerned, seeing that He could not have “forgotten” something. When the Torah, nonetheless, uses such terms as “He remembered” as applying to G’d, this is a figure of speech enabling the reader to employ his imagination and to realise that such wording introduces an activity by G’d now which had been latent for a while previously. We have numerous examples of such a term being used when a period of apparent inactivity by G’d had come to an end. Compare Leviticus 24,45 וזכרתי את בריתי, where the subject is that after a period of retribution, events occur which make it appear as if G’d had remembered His covenant only at that time. There are numerous other examples of this type. Here, it describes the fact that G’d concerned himself with the great discomfort experienced by all the people and creatures in the ark after such a long period of being cooped up.

על הפגרים, the carcasses which are whole. This term is not applied to the animals which had been cut in half as part of the sacrificial procedures, [presumably, the author does not feel comfortable in the Torah describing sacrifices which had been accepted by G’d winding up as the food for vultures. Ed.] The author quotes a number of examples where the word פגר occurs in the Bible, in all of which the reference is to a whole carcass, not to a section of it. (compare Isaiah 14,19; Chronicles I 10,12; Samuel I 31,12) The symbolism in all this is that there would hardly be a generation in which the gentile nations would not attempt to devour the Jewish people, and to annihilate them utterly. Nonetheless, in the final analysis, G’d has always saved us from becoming total victims. This confirms the prediction in Leviticus 26,44 that even during our darkest days when we are being punished collectively for our sins and the sins of our fathers, “I will not despise you and allow you to be wiped out completely.” In the verse following the one we just quoted, the Torah adds verbatim: וזכרתי להם ברית ראשונים, at such a time “I will remember for them the covenant I concluded with the forefathers.”