פרשת לך לך תשי"ט - אברהם ומלכיצדק + הפטרה

And he blessed him, and said: ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth;

and blessed be God the Most High, who hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand.’ And he gave him a tenth of all.

Rabbi Zekharya said in the name of Rabbi Yishmael: The Holy One, Blessed be He, wanted the priesthood to emerge from Shem, so that his children would be priests, as it is stated: “And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine; and he was priest of God the Most High” (Genesis 14:18). Once Melchizedek, traditionally identified as Shem, placed the blessing of Abraham before the blessing of the Omnipresent, He had the priesthood emerge from Abraham in particular, and not from any other descendant of Shem. As it is stated: “And he blessed him and said: Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth, and blessed be God the Most High” (Genesis 14:19–20). Abraham said to him: And does one place the blessing of the servant before the blessing of his master? You should have blessed God first. Immediately the Holy One, Blessed be He, gave the priesthood to Abraham, as it is stated: “The Lord says to my lord: Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool” (Psalms 110:1), and afterward it is written: “The Lord has sworn, and will not repent: you shall be a priest forever, because you are a king of righteousness [al divrati malki tzedek]” (Psalms 110:4), which is explained homiletically to mean: Due to the improper words [divrati] of Melchizedek, the offspring of Abraham shall be priests of God forever.

And he blessed him, and said: ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth;

קנה שמים וארץ MAKER, or POSSESSOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH — similar to (Psalms 134:3) עשה שמים וארץ “Maker of heaven and earth”: through His having made them He acquired them as His possession.

And Malchitzedek king of Shalem – This is Jerusalem as it says, “His Tabernacle was in Shalem…” (Tehillim 76:3) And in the days of Yehoshua her king was also called “Adonitzedek” (Yehoshua 10:1) because from long ago the nations knew that site was the choicest of all places, located at the center of the settled world. Or they knew its value through received tradition, that it was aligned counter to the heavenly Temple where the Holy One’s Presence dwells, which is called “tzedek” (righteousness). In the midrash Bereshit Rabbah (43:6) it says this place makes its inhabitants righteous (matzdik) – Malchitzedek, Adonitzedek (Yehoshua 10:1). Jerusalem is called righteousness as it says, “…in which righteousness would lodge…” (Isaiah 1:21): It mentions that he is the priest of the Most High Gd to make it know that Avraham never would have given a tithe to a priest of other gods, but since he knew that Malchitzedek was the priest of the Most High Gd he gave him a tithe for the honor of HaShem. The hint to Avraham in this was that the House of Gd would be in that place and there his descendants would bring their tithes and offerings, and there they would bless the Lord. According to the opinion of our Sages who said (Nedarim 32b) that Malchitzedek was Shem the son of Noach, he left his land to go to Jerusalem in order to serve the Lord there. He became the priest of the Most High Gd for them because he was the honored brother of their father, as Jerusalem had always been within the lands of the Canaanites. Rashi wrote above (12:6) ‘and the Canaanites were then in the land’ – they were progressively conquering the land of Israel from the offspring of Shem, Avraham’s ancestor, because Jerusalem fell out in the portion of Shem when Noach divided up the land for his sons (Sifra 126) as it says, “And Malchitzedek the king of Shalem.” And this is not correct, because “And the border of the Canaanites was from Sidon…” (Bereshot 10:19) which includes all of the land of Israel and the border of the sons of Shem was to the east of Masa far from the land of Israel. But, if Noach apportioned the land to his sons and gave the land of Israel to Shem this has the force of ‘one who distributes his possessions directly’ (see Mishna Baba Batra 9:7 and Rashi Gittin 14b). Therefore the children of Canaan settled there until HaShem bequeathed it to the seed of his beloved as I recalled above (10:15 ). MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. Rashi says: Acquirer is the same as עושה (Maker). [ which is to say:] Through His making he acquired them to be his These are 2 interpretations. Maybe it is so that the word קנין can mean "making," and so [we find "It was You who created (קנית) my kidneys" (תהלים קלט יג) (seemingly קנית means "You have made") becayse [the verse] repeats "You surrounded me [with flesh and bones] in my mothers womb". Also, "Is He not your Father your Maker? (קנך)He made you and firmed you" דברים לב ו) Because Hebrew uses קנין to mean "making" And the opposite is also true, [as we see in the Passuk] "[the souls] that they acquired (עשו) in Charan (לעיל יב ה)" [where עשו means "they acquired,"] and "and from what belonged to our father, he has amassed (עשה) [this entire fortune] (below, 31:1)." The most correct is what [Rashi]states further: "He acquires them to be His." Because everything one owns becomes his "acquisitions." [For ex.,] flocks of sheep and goat are called מקנה (livestock, lit, acquisitions)for flocks were viewed as the main possessions of a person. In the language of the Rabbis "if one picks up a found object on behalf of a friend, his friend acquired (קנה) it" (B.M 8a) "looking at am ownerless object acquires it" (ibid. 118a), and "a mans courtyard acquires for him (ownerless objects) without his knowledge" (ibid 11a). And so, in many places, that [קניה] is used instead of the word זכיה meaning that it means that the [object] becomes his. This is what Onkelus meant he translated ("Whose possessions are heaven and earth"), and did not say ("Maker [or Acquirer] of heaven and earth").

And he blessed him, and said: ‘Blessed be Abram of God Most High, Maker of heaven and earth;

And the king of Sodom said unto Abram: ‘Give me the persons, and take the goods to thyself.’

that I will not take a thread nor a shoe-latchet nor aught that is thine, lest thou shouldest say: I have made Abram rich;

Rabbi Abbahu said that Rabbi Elazar said: For what reason was Abraham our Patriarch punished and his children enslaved to Egypt for 210 years? Because he made a draft [angarya] of Torah scholars, as it is stated: “He led forth his trained men, born in his house” (Genesis 14:14). These trained men that he took to war were actually his disciples, who were Torah scholars.

that I will not take a thread nor a shoe-latchet nor aught that is thine, lest thou shouldest say: I have made Abram rich;

'ולא תאמר וגו SO THAT THOU SHOULDST NOT SAY etc. — For the Holy One, blessed be He, has promised to give me riches, as it is said, (Genesis 12:2) “And I will bless thee” (see Rashi on this passage, where the blessing is explained to consist in ממון “wealth”).