פרשת שלח לך תש"י - תפילת משה

And Moses besought the LORD his God, and said: ‘LORD, why doth Thy wrath wax hot against Thy people, that Thou hast brought forth out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand?

And the Amorites, that dwell in that hill-country, came out against you, and chased you, as bees do, and beat you down in Seir, even unto Hormah.

כדברך [I HAVE FORGIVEN] ACCORDING TO THY WORD — i.e. because of what you have said, “Lest they say: ‘Because the Lord was unable, etc.’”.

ואולם BUT, means , (I will not slay them), but this will I do unto them (what is mentioned in v. 22 ff.).

לעדה הרעה וגו׳ [HOW LONG SHALL I BEAR] WITH THIS EVIL CONGREGATION — This refers to the spies (not to the whole congregation); from here we learn that an עדה, “a congregation” is technically a gathering of at least ten persons (Megillah 23b).

ופגריכם אתם — Understand this as the Targum does: (“But your carcasses — those of you — they shall fall in this desert”). Because in the previous verse He said of the children that He would bring them into the Land, and it wishes to state now: “but you will die”, this idiom is appropriate here — to say the word אתם (in addition to the personal suffix in פגריכם, in order to stress the contrast).

ונשאו את זנותיכם AND SHALL BEAR YOUR WHOREDOMS — Understand this as the Targum does: and they shall bear your guilt (cf. Targum on ונשא את עונה, Numbers 30:16, and Rashi on that verse).

וישבו וילינו עליו [AND THE MEN WHOM MOSES SENT TO SEARCH THE LAND] RETURNED AND MADE THE WHOLE CONGREGATION MURMUR AGAINST HIM — This meant: “the men whom Moses sent and who, when they returned (וישבו) from searching the Land, made the whole congregation murmur against him by making them utter an evil report, — those men died. Wherever the phrase הוציא דבה occurs it denotes instructing to speak — that people teach their way of speaking to a person that he may speak it (cf. Rashi on 23:31). Similar is, (Song 7:10) “causing the lips of those who are asleep to speak." (דובב) There may be one (a דבה, “an utterance”) for good, or there may be one for evil: and it is for this reason that it states here, “[even those men] that made the people utter evil speech about the Land”, because, as I have stated, there is a דבה which may be termed good.

עזי וזמרת יה — Onkelos translated this by “my might and my praise”, taking עָזִּי the same as עֻזִּי, and וְזִמְרָת the same as וְזִמְרָתִי. But I wonder at the wording of the text if this translation is correct, for you will find no similar example of its punctuation (i. e. of עָזִּי) in the Scriptures except in three passages where it is, in each case, followed by וזמרת. In all other passages it is punctuated with שורק (i. e. our Kibbutz); e. g., (Jeremiah 16:19) ה' עֻזִּי ומעזי (Psalms 59:10) עֻזּו אליך אשמרה So, too, every word of two letters that is punctuated with a Melopum (our חולם) when it is lengthened by the addition of a third letter (i. e. when it has a pronominal suffix as in the examples given below), and the second has not a Sheva (חטף), the first is punctuated with a שורק (Kibbuts) — as, for instance, עֹז and עֻזִּי; ‎רֹק and ‎רֻקִי ; ‎חֹק and ‎חֻקִי ; ‎עֹל and עֻלִי as in (Isaiah 14:25) “then shall his yoke (עֻלּוֹ, from עֹל) depart from him”; — כֹּל and כֻּלּוֹ, as in (Exodus 14:7) “and captains over each of them (כֻּלּוֹ) — from כֹּל. But these three examples of עָזִּי וְזִּמְרָת, viz., that occuring here and that in Isaiah (12:2) and that in Psalms (118:14), are punctuated with short Kametz, whereas the translation of Onkelos would require עֻזִּי and not עָזִּי. Then further, in not one of them (these three passages) is it written וזמרתי, as Onkelos translates, but וזמרת and remarkably enough all of them are immediately followed by ויהי לי לישועה. — Therefore I say in explanation of the wording of the text that עָזִּי is not the same as עֻזִּי and וְזִמְרָת is not the same as וְזִמְרָתִי, but עָזִּי is a noun without a suffix of any kind, as we find in (Psalms 123:1) “The one who sits (הַיֹּשְׁבִי) in heaven”; (Obadiah 3:3) “The one who dwells (שֹׁכְנִי) in the cleft of the rock”; (Deuteronomy 33:16) “He that dwelleth (שֹׁכְנִי) in the bush” (where the syllable at the end of the word is part of the noun and is not the pronominal suffix denoting “my”). The praise, therefore, proclaimed in these words is this: The עז and the זִמְרָת of God, this was to me as a help. The word וזמרת is a noun in the construct state to the word which expressess the Divine Name (יָהּ), in the same sense as (Judges 5:23) “to the help of (לעזרַת — const.) the Lord”; (Isaiah 9:18) “through the wrath of (בעברת — constr.) the Lord”; (Ecc. 3:18) “because of (דברַת — const.) the sons of man”. The expression וזמרת has the meaning of the root which we find in (Leviticus 25:4) “thou shalt not prune (תזמר)” and in (Isaiah 25:5) “the cutting down (זמיר) of the terrible ones”, both of which have the meaning “lopping off” and “cutting down”. Thus the verse signifies: “The strength and vengeance of our God has become to us a help”. Do not be puzzled by the expression ויהי — that it does not state היה — for we have other verses also that use this idiom, and the following is an example of such a construction: (1 Kings 6:5) “round about the wall of the house, both of the temple and the most holy place, he made (ויעש) a side structure”, and it should have said (instead of ויעש etc.) עשה לו צלעות סביב. Similarly in Chronicles, (2 10:17) “But as for the children of Israel who dwelt in the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned (וימלך) over them”, where it should have said מלך עליהם. Other examples are: (Numbers 14:16) “Because the Lord was unable etc…. He slaughtered them (וישחטם)”, where it should have said שחטם; (Numbers 14:36, 37) “And the men whom Moses sent … they died (וימתו)”, where it should have said מתו; (Exodus 9:21) “And he that regarded not the word of the Lord left (ויעזב) his cattle, etc.”, where it should have said עזב‎.

כי חטאנו FOR WE HAVE SINNED in that we said, (v. 3) “were it not better for us to return to Egypt?”

ער החרמה EVEN UNTO HORMAH — The place was so called (חרמה doom, destruction) on account of what happened there.