Our parasha ends with the starkly dramatic incident in which Avraham is bidden to carry out the sacrifice of his heir and only son by his wife, Sara, Yitzhaq. The account opens with the laconic words: ויהי אחר הדברים האלה והאלקים נסה את אברהם וגו' (“And it was after these things, and G-d tested Avraham....”; XXII, 1).
As we read on, we note the following: וילך אל המקום אשר אמר לו האלקים: כו' ויאמר אברהם אלקים יראה לו השה לעלה וכו' ויבאו אל המקום אשר אמר לו האלקים וגו' (“And [Avraham] went to the place which G-d [ha-Eloqim] told him.... And Avraham said, 'Eloqim will see for Himself the ram for the burnt offering...And they came to the place [of] which ha-Eloqim told him....”; XXII,3-9). And then, suddenly: ויקרא לו מלאך ד' מן השמים וגו' (“And an angel [mal’ach] of Ha-Shem called to him from the heavens....”; ibid., 11). In other words, the entire account is couched in language using the Divine Name Eloqim, until suddenly, at the climax, the name changes to Ha-Shem.
What is the significance of this shift in Divine names?
B. We begin our investigation by taking note of a famous dispute between the Rambam and the Ramban concerning the significance of qorbanoth (“sacrifices”).
The Rambam’s view may be found in his classic Moré Nëvuchim, wherein he notes that Israel spent considerable time exiled amongst the Egyptians, who worshipped the zodia-cal sign Aries (which they identified with their creator-god, Khnum, always pictured as a potter with a human body and a ram’s head). It is this which underlay the Egyptians’ abhorrence of shepherds (e.g. כי תועבת מצרים כל רעה צאן [“for an abomination of Egypt is every herder of ovicaprids”; Genesis XLVI,34, or כי תעבת מצרים נזבח לד' אלקינו [“for the abomination of Egypt shall we sacrifice to Ha-Shem our G-d”; Exodus VIII,22). Simi-larly, Israel was exposed to the very widespread worship of shédim, “demons”, in the ancient world, in the form of goats (së‘irim) a practice to which the Torah refers several times in e,g, Leviticus XVII,7: ולא יזבחו עוד את זבחיהם לשעירים (“And they shall no longer make their sacrifices to the së‘irim”), or יזבחו לשדים לא אלוק (“They sacrifice to shédim, not G-d”; Deuteronomy XXXII,17). Indeed:
תמצא אנשי הודו עד היום הזה לא ישחטו בקר בשום פנים כו' וכן שיהיו מתבטלים אלה האמונות נצטוו להקריב שלשת אלה המינים מן הבהמות מן הבקר ומן הצאן ומן העזים כדי שיודע כי הדבר שהיו חושבים כי הם תכלית העבודה הוא אשם לבורא ובמעשה ההיא יתכפרו העונות כי כן ירופאו האמונות הרעות שהם מדוי הנפשות וכל מדוה וחלי לא יתרפא כי אם בהפכו וגו' (“You will find [that] the men of India to this day do not slaughter cattle in any fashion....And so that these beliefs should be nullified, these three species of beast, cattle, sheep, and goats [cf. e.g. Leviticus I,2], were com-manded to be sacrificed so that it be known that the thing which they had been thinking was the object of worship is a guilt-offering to the Creator. and through that action sins are atoned; for thus are these bad beliefs, which are diseases of souls, healed, and every disease or illness is only cured by its opposite....”; שם ח"ג פמ"ו בתרגום ר' יהודה אלחריזי).
The Ramban takes sharp issue with the Rambam, saying that, by this view, יעשה שלחן ד' מגואל שאינו רק להוציא מלבן של רשעים וטפשי עולם (“Ha-Shem’s table is made contaminated, if its sole purpose is to refute rësha‘im and the stupid of the world....”), and goes on to elaborate his view, in his comment to Leviticus I,9:
ויותר ראוי לשמוע הטעם שאומרים בהם כי בעבור שמעשי בני אדם נגמרים במחשבה בדבור ובמעשה צוה השם כי כאשר יחטא ויביא קרבן ויסמוך ידיו עליו ויתודה בפיו כנגד הדבור וישרוף באש הקרב והכליות שהם כלי המחשבה והתאוה והכרעים כנגד ידיו ורגליו של אדם העושים כל המלאכה ויזרוק הדם על המזבח כנגד דמו בנפשו כדי שיחשוב אדם בעשותו כל אלה כי חטא לאלקיו בגופו ובנפשו וראוי לו שישפך דמו וישרף גופו לולי חסד הבורא שלקח ממנו תמורה וגו' (“And it is more proper to hear the reason which [Hazal] say concerning them, that since the acts of human beings are completed in thought, speech, and deed, Ha-Shem commanded that when one sins, he bring a sacrifice and place his hands on it and confess with his mouth, apposite speech; and burn with fire the innards and the kidneys, which are the organs of thought and lust; and the limbs, apposite a person’s hands and legs, which carry out all the work; and sprinkle the blood on the altar apposite his own blood, so that a person think, as he is doing all this, that he has sinned against his G-d with his body and soul, and it is proper for him that his blood be shed, and his body be burnt up, were it not for the kindness [hesed] of the Creator, Who has taken a substitute from him....”).
Next we consider Rashi’s famous comment on Genesis I,1: Throughout the account of Creation, he notes, the only Divine Name used is Eloqim: שבתחלה עלה במחשבה לבראתו במדת הדין וראה שאין העולם מתקיים והקדים מדת רחמים למדת הדין והיינו דכתיב "ביום עשות ד' אלקים ארץ ושמים" (“for at the beginning it was intended to create [the universe] with the mea-sure of judgment [middath ha-din], and He saw that the world was not enduring, and pre-ëmpted the middath ha-din with the measure of mercy [middath ha-rahamim], as it is written, ‘on the day Ha-Shem Eloqim made earth and heaven’ [II,4]”). From this we can discern that the Divine Name Eloqim is emblematic of din, and that the shém Ha-Shem is emblematic of rahamim.
With this in mind, we consider a comment which I have heard in the name of Rabbi Yoséf Dov ha-Lévi Soloveitchik זצ"ל. Rabbi Soloveitchik suggests that our episode ref-lects the Ramban’s view of the sacrificial order, in that all of the steps leading up to Yitz-haq’s sacrifice at Moriya are driven by Divine din, as indicated by the repeated and exclusive use of Eloqim. Only at the last moment does Divine hesed and rahamim come into play, as the mal’ach Ha-Shem cries out, אל תשלח ידך אל הנער ואל תעש לו מאומה כו' וישא אברהם את עיניו וירא והנה איל אחר נאחז בסבך בקרניו וגו' (“Do not set your hand against the young man [na‘ar] and do nothing to him....And Avraham lifted his eyes andd saw, and behold, a ram was behind, caught in the thicket by his horns....”; ibid., 12-13).
As Rabbi Soloveitchik notes, then, our passage clearly supports the Ramban’s view of the sacrificial order. It can also be shown, however, that that there is a scriptural basis for the Rambam’s view. For instance, in Deuteronomy XVIII,9-12, we read: כי אתה בא אל הארץ אשר ד' אלקיך נתן לך כו' לא ימצא בך מעביר בנו ובתו באש כו' כי תועבת ד' כל עשה אלה וגו' (“For you are coming to the land which Ha-Shem your Eloqim is giving you....There will not be found amongst you one who passes his son and his daughter into the fire....For an abomination of Ha-Shem is anyone who does these things....”).
The reference is to the particularly worship of the idol Molech. Note how the passage begins; it is Ha-Shem Eloqim, Rahamim and Din, which will sustain us in the Holy Land. The human sacrifice hinted at in this passage (and confirmed in Canaanite archaeological sites) is the essence of unremitting Din without Rahamim, cruel, inexorable, and unyield-ing, despite what must have been a tradition amongst the bënei Yisra’él extending back to Avraham, confirmed and enshrined in the written Torah at Sinai, of the substitution of animal for human sacrifices. Anyone who would so reject the Divine hesed and rahamim inherent in the acceptance of animal over human sacrifice, the preëmption of Din by Rahamim which was witnessed by Avraham and Yitzhaq is indeed a to‘avath Ha-Shem, an abomination of that ineffable Name in particular, the embodiment of rahamim.
The fact that this experience of Avraham and Yitzhaq was private, shared with no-one else, and is to-day known only through the Torah (even though Noah was acutely aware of the species to be used for sacrifice [cf. VII,2 and VIII,20], this knowledge was apparently forgotten during Nimrod’s reign) is crucial to later developments.
When Avraham set out for that fateful encounter at Moriya, the Torah tells us, ויקח את שני נעריו אתו (“he took his two në‘arim with him”: XXII,3). Rashi fills in the gap by telling us that the në‘arim were Eli‘ezer and Yishma‘él. As he approached the holy site, he told the në‘arim, שבו לכם פה עם החמור ואני והנער נלכה עד כה וגו' (“Seat yourselves here with the donkey, and I and the na‘ar [i.e., Yitzhaq] will go onward”; v. 5). Yishma‘él and Eli‘ezer were not there; they did not witness the preëmption of Din by Rahamim, Eloqim by Ha-Shem . All that they saw of Divine interaction was the earlier Din noted by Rabbi Soloveitchik.
This has ramifications especially for Yishma‘él’s descendants, in whose Arabic language the very word for religion is – din, and the only name by which they know the Creator is Allah, whose root, alef-lamed-hé, be it noted, is clearly that of the shém Eloqim.
D. The mal’ach Ha-Shem went on to proclaim to Avraham: עתה ידעתי כי ירא אלקים אתה ולא חשכת בנך יחידך ממני . As anyone with a living sense of the holy Hebrew language will attest, the juxtaposition of the word ‘atta, “now”, with the perfective verb yada‘ti pre-cludes translating the verb temporally, “I knew” (as it often is rendered); instead, it indi-cates completeness and perfection of knowledge: “Now I know perfectly that you are G-d-fearing, and you did not spare your only son from me”. What was the source of the mal’ach’s perfect knowledge?
Hazal tell us: העושה מצוה אחת קונה לו פרקליט אחד (“One who does a single mitzva acquires a single advocate”; אבות פ"ד מי"א), which Rabbi ‘Ovadya mi-Bartenura tells us is a מלאך מליץ טוב, “a mal’ach interceding [for] good.” So how did the mal’ach know? Mimmenni! “From me”. The very fact of the mal’ach’s presence was the testimony of what Avraham had done, for he had just come into existence as a result of Avraham’s perfect perform-ance of the mitzva which G-d had given him.
The Talmud tells us: חשב אדם לעשות מצוה ונאנס ולא עשאה מעלה עליו הכתוב כאילו עשאה (“[If] a person thought to do a mitzva and was prevented by circumstance from doing it, Scripture considers it as though he had done it”; ברכות ו.). Avraham’s perfect intent brought into being the mal’ach Ha-Shem which prevented the execution of the mitzva, and converted it into the sublime act of Divine hesed described by the Ramban.
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