Rachel Buried By the Roadside

(7) I [do this because], when I was returning from Paddan, Rachel died, to my sorrow, while I was journeying in the land of Canaan, when still some distance short of Ephrath; and I buried her there on the road to Ephrath”—now Bethlehem.

At that time—declares the LORD—I will be God to all the clans of Israel, and they shall be My people. Thus said the LORD: The people escaped from the sword, Found favor in the wilderness; When Israel was marching homeward The LORD revealed Himself to me of old. Eternal love I conceived for you then; Therefore I continue My grace to you. I will build you firmly again, O Maiden Israel! Again you shall take up your timbrels And go forth to the rhythm of the dancers. Again you shall plant vineyards On the hills of Samaria; Men shall plant and live to enjoy them. For the day is coming when watchmen Shall proclaim on the heights of Ephraim: Come, let us go up to Zion, To the LORD our God! For thus said the LORD: Cry out in joy for Jacob, Shout at the crossroads of the nations! Sing aloud in praise, and say: Save, O LORD, Your people, The remnant of Israel. I will bring them in from the northland, Gather them from the ends of the earth— The blind and the lame among them, Those with child and those in labor— In a vast throng they shall return here. They shall come with weeping, And with compassion will I guide them. I will lead them to streams of water, By a level road where they will not stumble. For I am ever a Father to Israel, Ephraim is My first-born. Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, And tell it in the isles afar. Say: He who scattered Israel will gather them, And will guard them as a shepherd his flock. For the LORD will ransom Jacob, Redeem him from one too strong for him. They shall come and shout on the heights of Zion, Radiant over the bounty of the LORD— Over new grain and wine and oil, And over sheep and cattle. They shall fare like a watered garden, They shall never languish again. Then shall maidens dance gaily, Young men and old alike. I will turn their mourning to joy, I will comfort them and cheer them in their grief. I will give the priests their fill of fatness, And My people shall enjoy My full bounty —declares the LORD. Thus said the LORD: A cry is heard in Ramah— Wailing, bitter weeping— Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted For her children, who are gone. Thus said the LORD: Restrain your voice from weeping, Your eyes from shedding tears; For there is a reward for your labor —declares the LORD: They shall return from the enemy’s land. And there is hope for your future —declares the LORD: Your children shall return to their country. I can hear Ephraim lamenting: You have chastised me, and I am chastised Like a calf that has not been broken. Receive me back, let me return, For You, O LORD, are my God. Now that I have turned back, I am filled with remorse; Now that I am made aware, I strike my thigh. I am ashamed and humiliated, For I bear the disgrace of my youth. Truly, Ephraim is a dear son to Me, A child that is dandled! Whenever I have turned against him, My thoughts would dwell on him still. That is why My heart yearns for him; I will receive him back in love —declares the LORD. Erect markers, Set up signposts; Keep in mind the highway, The road that you traveled. Return, Maiden Israel! Return to these towns of yours! How long will you waver, O rebellious daughter? (For the LORD has created something new on earth: A woman courts a man.) Thus said the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: They shall again say this in the land of Judah and in its towns, when I restore their fortunes: “The LORD bless you, Abode of righteousness, O holy mountain!” Judah and all its towns alike shall be inhabited by the farmers and such as move about with the flocks. For I will give the thirsty abundant drink, and satisfy all who languish. At this I awoke and looked about, and my sleep had been pleasant to me. See, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when I will sow the House of Israel and the House of Judah with seed of men and seed of cattle; and just as I was watchful over them to uproot and to pull down, to overthrow and to destroy and to bring disaster, so I will be watchful over them to build and to plant—declares the LORD. In those days, they shall no longer say, “Parents have eaten sour grapes and children’s teeth are blunted.” But every one shall die for his own sins: whosoever eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be blunted. See, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, though I espoused them—declares the LORD. But such is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after these days—declares the LORD: I will put My Teaching into their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts. Then I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No longer will they need to teach one another and say to one another, “Heed the LORD”; for all of them, from the least of them to the greatest, shall heed Me—declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities, And remember their sins no more. Thus said the LORD, Who established the sun for light by day, The laws of moon and stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea into roaring waves, Whose name is LORD of Hosts: If these laws should ever be annulled by Me —declares the LORD— Only then would the offspring of Israel cease To be a nation before Me for all time. Thus said the LORD: If the heavens above could be measured, and the foundations of the earth below could be fathomed, only then would I reject all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done—declares the LORD. See, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when the city shall be rebuilt for the LORD from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate; and the measuring line shall go straight out to the Gareb Hill, and then turn toward Goah. And the entire Valley of the Corpses and Ashes, and all the fields as far as the Wadi Kidron, and the corner of the Horse Gate on the east, shall be holy to the LORD. They shall never again be uprooted or overthrown.

כברת ארץ is a measure of land equal to 2000 cubits which is the extent of a Sabbath day’s journey. This is according to the statement of R. Moses the Expositor. — “Do not imagine that it was the rains which prevented me from bringing her to Hebron for burial. It was the dry season when the ground is riddled and full of holes like a sieve (כברה).

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).”

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.]

ואקברה שם, “and I was forced to bury her there.” Nachmanides questioned what Rashi explains here, i.e. that Yaakov apologized to Joseph that he had not even been able to transport the remains of Rachel the short distance to Beyt Lechem so that she would be buried on holy soil. Nachmanides feels that the text does not only not support this, but supports the very reverse, that Rachel, though not buried in a cemetery, was indeed buried within the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael. Why else would Yaakov have said that Rachel had died suddenly, “in the land of Canaan?” Yaakov’s apology concerned the fact that he had not buried Rachel in the cave of Machpelah in Chevron, not that he had buried her outside the boundaries of the Holy Land. He emphasizes that although he had not been able to bury her in Machpelah, at least he had been able to bury her inside the Holy Land. He had not been able to abandon his entire family and carry the remains of Rachel all the way to the cave of Machpelah. He himself was likely to be buried outside of the Holy Land unless he could arrange before his death to have his remains transferred, as he was about to request from Joseph. If, at the time of Rachel’s death he would have moved his entire camp with him to the cave of Machpelah, a journey which takes a half a day for a single traveler would have consumed many days and would have been a great indignity for the remains of Rachel as he had no means to embalm her and to prevent her body from decomposing in the interval. Joseph had been fully aware of the circumstances of his mother’s death, as well as the fact that Yaakov could not have buried the remains of two sisters both of whom had been his wife, in the cave of Machpelah. The reason why he buried Leah in that cave was that he had, after all, married her first. Rachel died in “Ramah,” hence רמת רחל,” part of the territory of Binyamin after the distribution of the land by Joshua. Our sages who explain all this allegorically, say that Rachel had to die when she entered the Holy Land, in order that Yaakov not become guilty of being married to two sisters both of whom were alive, something that the Torah had forbidden. Yaakov received instructions from on high to bury Rachel where he did, so that her spirit, in due course, could petition G’d when her “children,” would be taken into captivity by the Babylonian general Nebuzaradan. Some commen-tators say that Yaakov explained to Joseph that the reason he had buried his mother on the way to Efrat was that this was within the tribal territory of one of her sons, whereas had she been buried in Machpelah, she would not have been interred in soil belonging to her offspring. Burying her in earth that would belong to the descendants of Leah would not have been something compatible with her dignity.

ואני בבואי מפדן ארם, “as far as I a am concerned, when I came from Padan Aram , etc.” (Yaakov, who insists on being buried in the cave of Machpelah, owes Joseph an explanation for why he did not bury Joseph’s mother Rachel there, when he was much closer).“Rachel died on me suddenly at a time when I did not yet possess undisputed entitlement to that burial ground, since your uncle Esau had not yet ceded it to me by leaving the Land of Canaan with his whole family, so that an attempt to do so would have involved me in a confrontation with Esau, and it would have been most unseemly for your mother remaining unburied at that time. When I buried my wife Leah in the cave of Machpelah, Esau had already vacated the land of Canaan.”

ואקברה שם, “I buried her there,” (where she had died) I knew that the piece of land where I buried her would in the future be still part of the ancestral heritage of Binyamin, and it would be fitting for her to have her last resting place in soil that would be part of her children’s heritage. We find an interesting verse in Samuel 10,2, where Samuel has just crowned the first Jewish King, Shaul, a descendant of Rachel from the tribe of Binyamin, and says to the newly crowned King: “when you leave me this day, you will meet two men near the tomb of Rachel in the territory of Binyamin, at a place called Zeltzah;” Yaakov, added that if he had buried Rachel in the cave of Machpelah, which is in the territory of Yehudah, a son of Leah, this would not have been appropriate, seeing that she and Leah had been rivals during their lifetime. An alternate exegesis of this paragraph, quotes Yaakov as follows: “the reason that I have buried your mother where I did, at the time, was that seeing that she had died in childbirth and having to transport her any distance would most likely have resulted in her blood becoming putrid after having soiled her shroud. Seeing that I wanted to at least bury her in the holy soil of the land of Israel, I buried her where I did, just inside that land.”(Compare Rashi’s commentary on this verse, according to whom Rachel’s tomb was outside the Holy Land.)

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).

At that time—declares the LORD—I will be God to all the clans of Israel, and they shall be My people. Thus said the LORD: The people escaped from the sword, Found favor in the wilderness; When Israel was marching homeward The LORD revealed Himself to me of old. Eternal love I conceived for you then; Therefore I continue My grace to you. I will build you firmly again, O Maiden Israel! Again you shall take up your timbrels And go forth to the rhythm of the dancers. Again you shall plant vineyards On the hills of Samaria; Men shall plant and live to enjoy them. For the day is coming when watchmen Shall proclaim on the heights of Ephraim: Come, let us go up to Zion, To the LORD our God! For thus said the LORD: Cry out in joy for Jacob, Shout at the crossroads of the nations! Sing aloud in praise, and say: Save, O LORD, Your people, The remnant of Israel. I will bring them in from the northland, Gather them from the ends of the earth— The blind and the lame among them, Those with child and those in labor— In a vast throng they shall return here. They shall come with weeping, And with compassion will I guide them. I will lead them to streams of water, By a level road where they will not stumble. For I am ever a Father to Israel, Ephraim is My first-born. Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, And tell it in the isles afar. Say: He who scattered Israel will gather them, And will guard them as a shepherd his flock. For the LORD will ransom Jacob, Redeem him from one too strong for him. They shall come and shout on the heights of Zion, Radiant over the bounty of the LORD— Over new grain and wine and oil, And over sheep and cattle. They shall fare like a watered garden, They shall never languish again. Then shall maidens dance gaily, Young men and old alike. I will turn their mourning to joy, I will comfort them and cheer them in their grief. I will give the priests their fill of fatness, And My people shall enjoy My full bounty —declares the LORD. Thus said the LORD: A cry is heard in Ramah— Wailing, bitter weeping— Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted For her children, who are gone. Thus said the LORD: Restrain your voice from weeping, Your eyes from shedding tears; For there is a reward for your labor —declares the LORD: They shall return from the enemy’s land. And there is hope for your future —declares the LORD: Your children shall return to their country. I can hear Ephraim lamenting: You have chastised me, and I am chastised Like a calf that has not been broken. Receive me back, let me return, For You, O LORD, are my God. Now that I have turned back, I am filled with remorse; Now that I am made aware, I strike my thigh. I am ashamed and humiliated, For I bear the disgrace of my youth. Truly, Ephraim is a dear son to Me, A child that is dandled! Whenever I have turned against him, My thoughts would dwell on him still. That is why My heart yearns for him; I will receive him back in love —declares the LORD. Erect markers, Set up signposts; Keep in mind the highway, The road that you traveled. Return, Maiden Israel! Return to these towns of yours! How long will you waver, O rebellious daughter? (For the LORD has created something new on earth: A woman courts a man.) Thus said the LORD of Hosts, the God of Israel: They shall again say this in the land of Judah and in its towns, when I restore their fortunes: “The LORD bless you, Abode of righteousness, O holy mountain!” Judah and all its towns alike shall be inhabited by the farmers and such as move about with the flocks. For I will give the thirsty abundant drink, and satisfy all who languish. At this I awoke and looked about, and my sleep had been pleasant to me. See, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when I will sow the House of Israel and the House of Judah with seed of men and seed of cattle; and just as I was watchful over them to uproot and to pull down, to overthrow and to destroy and to bring disaster, so I will be watchful over them to build and to plant—declares the LORD. In those days, they shall no longer say, “Parents have eaten sour grapes and children’s teeth are blunted.” But every one shall die for his own sins: whosoever eats sour grapes, his teeth shall be blunted. See, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when I will make a new covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers, when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, a covenant which they broke, though I espoused them—declares the LORD. But such is the covenant I will make with the House of Israel after these days—declares the LORD: I will put My Teaching into their inmost being and inscribe it upon their hearts. Then I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No longer will they need to teach one another and say to one another, “Heed the LORD”; for all of them, from the least of them to the greatest, shall heed Me—declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquities, And remember their sins no more. Thus said the LORD, Who established the sun for light by day, The laws of moon and stars for light by night, Who stirs up the sea into roaring waves, Whose name is LORD of Hosts: If these laws should ever be annulled by Me —declares the LORD— Only then would the offspring of Israel cease To be a nation before Me for all time. Thus said the LORD: If the heavens above could be measured, and the foundations of the earth below could be fathomed, only then would I reject all the offspring of Israel for all that they have done—declares the LORD. See, a time is coming—declares the LORD—when the city shall be rebuilt for the LORD from the Tower of Hananel to the Corner Gate; and the measuring line shall go straight out to the Gareb Hill, and then turn toward Goah. And the entire Valley of the Corpses and Ashes, and all the fields as far as the Wadi Kidron, and the corner of the Horse Gate on the east, shall be holy to the LORD. They shall never again be uprooted or overthrown.

(8) Noticing Joseph’s sons, Israel asked, “Who are these?”