פרשת ויחי תשט"ו - ברכת יעקב ליוסף ולבניו

And Jacob said unto Joseph: ‘God Almighty appeared unto me at Luz in the land of Canaan, and blessed me,

and said unto me: Behold, I will make thee fruitful, and multiply thee, and I will make of thee a company of peoples; and will give this land to thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession.

And Israel dwelt in the land of Egypt, in the land of Goshen; and they got them possessions therein, and were fruitful, and multiplied exceedingly.

And Pharaoh spoke unto Joseph, saying: ‘Thy father and thy brethren are come unto thee;

And as for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died unto me in the land of Canaan in the way, when there was still some way to come unto Ephrath; and I buried her there in the way to Ephrath—the same is Beth-lehem.’

'ואני בבאי מפדן וגו AND AS FOR ME, WHEN I CAME FROM PADAN etc. — “And although I trouble you to take me for burial into the land of Canaan and I did not do this for your mother (i.e., I did not take the trouble to bury her in a place other than that in which she died, which was by the road-side) which I might easily have done since she died quite close to Bethlehem”.

ואקברה שם AND I BURIED HERE THERE and did not carry her even the short distance to Bethlehem to bring her into a city. I know that in your heart you feel some resentment against me. Know, however, that I buried her there by the command of God”. And the future proved that God had commanded him to do this in order that she might help her children when Nebuzaradan would take them into captivity. For when .they were passing along that road Rachel came forth from her grave and stood by her tomb weeping and beseeching mercy for them, as it is said, (Jeremiah 31:15) “A voice is heard in Rama, [the sound of weeping … Rachel weeping for her children]”, and the Holy One, blessed be He, replied to her (v. 16) “There is a reward for thy work, says the Lord etc. (v. 17) for thy children will return to their own border”. Onkelos translated it (כברת ארץ) by כרוב ארעא which is a full measure of one day’s ploughing. I am of opinion that they had a definite measure which they called “one full furrow”; old French cordié. So we say, (Bava Metzia 107a) “He ploughs (כריב) and ploughs again”, and (Yoma 43b) “as much earth as a fox carries on its feet from a ploughed field (בי כרבא).”

And Avram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem: I will tell you a general principle - understand it in all of the coming sections about Avraham, Yitschak and Yaacov, and it is a great matter. Our rabbis mentioned it in a brief way, and said (Midrash Tanchuma 9), "Everything that occurred to our forefathers is a sign for the children." And therefore the verses will write at length in recounting the journeys and the digging of the wells and the other events. And one who thinks about them can think as if they were superfluous things with no purpose. But all of the events come to teach about the future, for when an event occurs to a prophet, [meaning] of the three forefathers, he will contemplate from it the matter that is decreed to come to his seed. And know [about] every 'decree of the wakeful ones,' that when it goes from a potential decree to a symbolic action, the decree will be realized no matter what. And therefore the prophets will do actions in prophecies, like the statement of Yirmiyahu that he commanded to Baruch (Jeremiah 51:63-64), "And it shall be that when you finish to read the words of this book, you shall throw it into the Euphrates. And you shall say, 'So will Babylonia sink, etc.'"; and so [too with] the matter of Elisha in the placing of his forearm on the bow (II Kings 13:17), "And Elisha said, 'Shoot,' and he shot, and he said, 'It is the arrow of salvation of the Lord and the arrow of salvation from Aram,'" and it is stated there (II Kings 13:19), "And the man of God got angry with him and said, 'To strike five or six times, then you would have struck Aram to its end, and now three times will you strike Aram.'" And therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, kept Avraham in the land (of Israel) and did to him simulations of all of the future that would be done to his seed. And understand this. And I am [now] beginning to explain the matters in detail in the verses, with the help of God: And Avram passed through the land unto the place of Shechem: It is the city of Schechem, that is the name of that place. And Schechem, the son of Chamor, was named after the name of the town. And Rashi wrote, "He entered into it unto the place of Schechem to pray for the sons of Yaakov, when they would come from the field anguished. And this is correct. And I [would] add that Avraham held this place first, and before He gave him the land - it was [thus] hinted to him from this that his children would conquer this place first before they would merit [the land], and before the iniquity of the dweller of the land was complete to exile him from there. And therefore, it stated, "and the Canaanite was then in the land." And when the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him the land in a statement, then he traveled from there and planted his tent between Beit El and the Ei, since it is the place that Yehoshua conquered first....

And as for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died unto me in the land of Canaan in the way, when there was still some way to come unto Ephrath; and I buried her there in the way to Ephrath—the same is Beth-lehem.’

It is taught in a baraita: A man dies only to his wife, i.e., it is primarily she who suffers the pain and sadness resulting from his death, and a woman dies only to her husband. A man dies only to his wife, as it is stated: “And Elimelech, Naomi’s husband, died” (Ruth 1:3), and a woman dies only to her husband, as it is stated in Jacob’s parting words to Joseph: “And as for me, when I came from Paddan, Rachel died on me” (Genesis 48:7).

מתה עלי רחל, as the sages say (Sanhedrin 22) a woman’s death is felt first and foremost by her husband; [hence the justification for Yaakov saying עלי, “for me,” i.e. the loss was mine. Ed.]

And he blessed Joseph, and said: ‘The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God who hath been my shepherd all my life long unto this day,

And he blessed Joseph, and said: ‘The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God who hath been my shepherd all my life long unto this day,