פרשת דברים תשי"ד - נאומו של משה

turn you, and take your journey, and go to the hill-country of the Amorites and unto all the places nigh thereunto, in the Arabah, in the hill-country, and in the Lowland, and in the South, and by the sea-shore; the land of the Canaanites, and Lebanon, as far as the great river, the river Euphrates.

And you shall take possession of the land and settle in it, for I have assigned the land for you to possess: In my opinion, this is a positive commandment. He commands them to settle in the land and inherit it; He gave it to them and they should not abhor Hashem's inheritance. And if it should enter their minds to go and conquer the land of Shinar or the land of Ashur [Assyria] or to settle in some other place, they would be transgressing Hashem's commandment. And our rabbis have stressed (Ketubot 110b) the commandment to settle in the Land of Israel and forbade leaving it; they judged a woman rebellious for not wanting to ascend with her husband to the Land of Israel, and vice-versa for a man. It is from here that this commandment [of settling in the land of Israel] has been commanded to us, as this verse is a positive commandment. It is a commandment that recurs in many places [in the Torah]; e.g., "go in and possess the land" (Deuteronomy 1:8). Rashi, however, interprets "And you shall take possession of the land" to mean that you shall take possession of it from those who have settled it, and then you will settle in it and be able to survive in it; and if you don't, you wouldn't be able to survive in it (Rashi on Numbers 33:53). But what we interpret is the central point of the verse.

אחרי הכתו AFTER HE HAD SMITTEN [SIHON] — Moses said: If I reprove them before they enter at least a part of the land, they will say, “What claim has this man upon us? What good has he ever conferred upon us? He only comes (his purpose is only) to vex us and to discover some pretext for leaving us in the wilderness, for he really has not the power to bring us into the land” On this account he waited until he had defeated Sihon and Og before them and had given them possession of their land — and only after that did he reprove them (Sifrei Devarim 3:2).

סיחן … אשר יושב בחשבון [AFTER HE HAD SMITTEN] SIHON … WHO DWELT IN HESHBON — Even if Sihon himself had not been difficult to defeat, but had resided at Heshbon, he would have been difficult to defeat, because the city was a difficult one to capture: and if it had been a matter of some other city, but Sihon had resided in it, it would have been difficult to capture, because its king, at least, would have been difficult to defeat. How much more was this so now when the king was difficult to defeat and the land difficult to capture (Sifrei Devarim 3:3; cf. Rashi on Numbers 21:23).

הואיל means HE BEGAN, just as (Genesis 18:27) "Behold, now I have begun (הואלתי)" (cf. Sifrei Devarim 4:1).

רב לכם שבת — Explain this according to its plain sense: YE HAVE DWELT LONG ENOUGH [IN THIS MOUNT]. — But there is an Agadic explanation: He has given you much distinction and reward for your having dwelt in this mount: you made the Tabernacle, the candlestick and the other sacred articles, you received the Torah, you appointed a Sanhedrin for yourselves, captains over thousands and captains over hundreds (cf. Sifrei Devarim 5:2).

יש לי כל I HAVE EVERYTHING — all that will supply my needs. But Esau spoke proudly (v. 8): I have (רב) abundance — far more than my needs.

How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife?

your hardship as in “they are a trouble to me” [Isaiah 1: 14]. This is the hardship of making foolish people understand the Commandments.

your burden i.e., their demands for bread [Numbers 21: 5], and water [Exodus 17: 2] [cf. comment on Exodus 17: 2], and meat [Numbers 11: 4].