Bar-Ilan University

Parashat Hashavua Study Center

Parashat Hayyei Sarah 5771/ October 30, 2010

Lectures on the weekly Torah reading by the faculty of Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel. A project of the Faculty of Jewish Studies, Paul and Helene Shulman Basic Jewish Studies Center, and the Office of the Campus Rabbi. Published on the Internet under the sponsorship of Bar-Ilan University's International Center for Jewish Identity. Prepared for Internet Publication by the Computer Center Staff at Bar-Ilan University. Inquiries and comments to: Dr. Isaac Gottlieb, Department of Bible, [email protected]

Isaac's Inner Life Dr. Yair Barkai Jerusalem

The first encounter between Isaac and Rebekah is described in this week’s reading in Genesis 24:61-64: Then Rebekah and her maids arose, mounted the camels, and followed the man. So the servant took Rebekah and went his way. Isaac had just come back from the vicinity of Beer-lahai-roi, for he was settled in the region of the Negeb. And Isaac went out walking in the field toward evening and, looking up, he saw camels approaching. Raising her eyes, Rebekah saw Isaac. She alighted from the camel. What does mentioning the place from which Isaac had come and the region where he was settled add to our understanding of the event? Moreover, this information is repeated chapter 25:8-11, and there too one wonders why it was included: And Abraham breathed his last, dying at a good ripe age, old and contented; and he was gathered to his kin. His sons Isaac and Ishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron son of Zohar the Hittite, facing Mamre, the field that Abraham had bought from the Hittites; there Abraham was buried, and Sarah his wife. After the death of Abraham, G-d blessed his son Isaac. And Isaac settled near Beer-lahai-roi. Two questions may be asked: 1. Why did Scripture take such care to mention where Isaac was living? 2. Why was Isaac’s dwelling place mentioned specifically in the two passages which we have cited? Beer-lahai-roi is a remote location, far from any populated settlement, in the heart of the wilderness, a place symbolic of loneliness and withdrawal from the world. We propose looking at Beer-lahai-roi in the “region of the Negeb” as representing a character trait of Isaac.

1 In the opinion of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, his parents deliberately chose to bring him up there. He comments on Genesis 20:1, s.v. “and settled between Kadesh and Shur:” We may be so bold as to say that the imminent expectation of the birth of a son led Abraham and Sarah to decide to change their place of dwelling: Isaac had to be brought up in an isolated place, far from any harmful influences. Rabbi Hirsch has a similar comment to make on Genesis 24:62, s.v. “had just come back”: It seems that Isaac had been living by himself in the region of the Negeb. Unlike Abraham, who for the preceding several years had lived among other peoples, Isaac from the very outset saw fit to live in seclusion, as Abraham had once done in his time. The seclusion that characterized Isaac from the very beginning was reinforced in the wake of two important life experiences. The first happened to him at a tender age, when he was forced to part from Ishmael, with whom he had spent his childhood. This parting took place as a result of his mother Sarah’s demands that Ishmael and his Egyptian mother Hagar be banished from the home, arguing, “the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac” (Gen. 21:10). The Torah tells us that Abraham was distressed by this act, to which he consented only because the Lord had said to him, “whatever Sarah tells you, do as she says” (Gen. 21:12). We may assume that also young Isaac was greatly saddened to lose his brother. The second trauma in Isaac's life was his near-sacrifice. Upon rising up from the altar on which he had been bound, he did not return home to Beersheba with his father. Scripture explicitly states that only Abraham returned to his servants (Gen. 22:19) and with them returned to Beersheba. Isaac is not mentioned at all. That being so, where did he go? Many answers have been suggested, some of which we present here:1  “[Abraham] sent him off to study Torah with Shem” (Genesis Rabbah [Albeck ed.], 56.19, p. 611).  “ So where did Isaac go? The Holy One, blessed be He, took him to the Garden of Eden, where he lived for three years” (Midrash ha-Gadol on Genesis, p. 360). In Legends of the Jews (note 255), Louis Ginzberg notes that Isaac was taken to the Garden of Eden to heal from the wound inflicted on him by his father before the angel had time to tell him, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him” (Gen. 22:12).  “ Perhaps he remained there, on Mount Moriah, for three years, until he reached the age of forty and married Rebekah” (Rabbenu Bahya on Gen. 23:2). In view of our remarks, one might add another explanation: Isaac went into the wilderness to live in seclusion and contemplate the emotional impact of this second formative event in his life. Or had he gone to where Hagar and Ishmael were living, in the Wilderness of Paran? Thus the answer to our first question seems to be that the Torah mentioned where Isaac was living in order to attest to his secluded life, which then had an impact on the two events mentioned in the beginning of this article: his first encounter with Rebekah, and his response to Abraham's death. To further clarify our point, let us consider the remarks of the Netziv of Volozhin, in his commentary Ha`amek Davar (Gen. 24:62):

1 The literary approach maintains that Isaac was not mentioned because he was a secondary figure in the story and Scripture was focusing on Abraham.

2 Scripture tells us that the Almighty, who directs the steps of man, arranged that Isaac would chance upon Rebekah along the way, and that she would be startled by him from her first encounter; but if the servant had first come with her to Abraham’s home, Abraham would have been the first to receive her and he would have cajoled her until her spirit was eased and she would not have been frightened by fear of Isaac; then she would have treated him as any woman treats her husband. Rather, the Holy One, blessed be He, caused Isaac to have been on his way from Beer-lahai-roi, for that was a special place for him for prayer and seclusion, by the well [Heb. be’er] where the angel had appeared. As we know, the patriarch Isaac is referred to as “the Fear of Isaac” (Gen. 31:42) because of the great sense of awe he inspired in those who saw him, a trait he acquired by virtue of the binding of Isaac and also, so it seems, from his many years of seclusion in the wilderness. Their first encounter affected the interpersonal relations between Isaac and Rebekah. The Holy One, blessed be He, destined for Rebekah to meet her future husband on his return from Beer-lahai-roi, enveloped in a halo of sanctity after his period of prayer and seclusion. Taking another look at the verses we cited in the opening to this article, at the very same moment that Abraham’s servant met Rebekah by the spring (Gen. 24:45), Isaac was by the well where the Lord had revealed Himself to Hagar. Now we can understand the reaction of the young damsel who, for the first time in her life, encountered the Fear of Isaac: “Raising her eyes, Rebekah saw Isaac. She alighted [lit. fell] from the camel” (Gen. 24:64). Thus we see that the remarks of the Netziv also explain our second question. The Torah mentions the place whence Isaac was coming to meet Rebekah because the fact that he was coming from Beer-lahai-roi at that precise time had an affect on their married life. Isaac bounced back and forth physically and emotionally between his parents’ home and Beer-lahai-roi, near which his father’s wife Hagar lived. He was torn between his sense of duty to his widowed father and the memory of his beloved mother2 on one hand, and his sympathy for the banished Hagar and his affinity for seclusion on the other. This ceaseless swinging between the two points is attested to by the unique phrase “had just come back [Heb. ba mi-bo, lit. “had come from coming”] from Beer-lahai-roi,” as Nahmanides notes on this verse: Since the expression mi-bo is a participial form, perhaps Isaac habitually went to that place, it being a place of prayer for him on account of the angel having appeared there, and he was living in the Negeb region, not far from there. In other words, Isaac came to his mother’s tent on his way back “from coming,” i.e., from his habitual trips to and from Beer-lahai-roi. The swinging of this pendulum did not cease until he found consolation in his wife: “Isaac then brought her into the tent of his mother Sarah, and he took Rebekah as his wife. Isaac loved her and found comfort after his mother’s death” (Gen. 24:67). According to another homily, Isaac also saw to his father remarrying (Genesis Rabbah, ch. 60; Freedman ed., p. 537):

2 According to Rashi (Gen. 23:2), following the midrash (Genesis Rabbah 58.5), Sarah died after the binding of Isaac: “The death of Sarah was placed after the story of the binding of Isaac since from the tidings that her son was to be sacrificed and just barely escaped being slaughtered, her soul flew out of her and she died.”

3 AND ISAAC CAME FROM COMING, etc… and whither had he gone? TO BEER- LAHAI-ROI: he had gone to fetch Hagar, the one who had sat by the well and besought Him who is the life of all worlds, saying, “Look upon my misery.” More directly, Midrash Tanhuma ([Warsaw ed.], Parashat Hayyei Sarah, par. 8) says: Isaac said: I have gotten me a wife, and is it fitting that my father not have a wife? What did he do? He went and brought him a wife… Why does Rabbi say that Keturah was none other than Hagar? Because it says of Isaac, “Isaac had just come back from the vicinity of Beer-lahai-roi,” the same well of which it is written, “And she called the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You Are El-roi’”(Gen. 16:13); from this we learn that she was Hagar. This also explains why Scripture mentions where Isaac went to live after Abraham’s death (Gen. 25:11): to indicate that henceforth he had no need of oscillating back and forth between the two points. The gap left by his mother after her passing was filled by his wife, and after his father’s burial next to his mother Sarah in the Cave of Machpelah, in complete harmony with his brother Ishmael, the circle of his nomadic wandering was closed and he could settle in the inspiring wilderness and begin his life as a patriarch of the Jewish people.

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