ואברכך, “I shall bless you;” I personally, not through any agent of mine.

ואגדלה שמך, “I will make your name great.” I will add a letter to your name, so that its numerical value will amount to 248, corresponding to the number of limbs in your body. Your body will then be found to be whole, matching your name.

והיה ברכה, “your blessing will precede My blessing,” i.e. when referring to you, in their daily prayers, people will first describe Me as מגן אברהם, “the Shield of Avraham,” before they will refer to Me as מחיה מתים,”the G–d who revives the dead.” An alternate interpretation: of the words: והיה ברכה “and be a blessing;” up until now, for the last two thousand years, I have been the only source of blessing for mankind; from now on the power to bless has been transferred to you, and you can bless whosoever you see fit to provide with a blessing. This is the reason why, when wanting to transfer this power to bless to his son Yitzchok, when he foresaw prophetically that Yitzchok would sire an Esau, Avraham could not bring himself to transfer this power to Yitzchok before he died, and he left it to G–d to decide if that power were to be transferred to him. This is why we read in Genesis 25,11, that after Avraham had died G–d bestowed this power on his son Yitzchok. The matter can be illustrated by a parable. A king owned a valuable orchard which he entrusted to one of his intimate friends to look after, and to irrigate properly. The friend began to undertake his task and found that there were two trees, one of which laden with a fruit containing a deadly poison, the other with an elixir of life. Both trees needed to be irrigated, but he found that the two trees were positioned in such a way that it was impossible to irrigate the one without at the same time also irrigating the other. He said to himself that if he irrigated the beneficial tree, he would simultaneously also prolong the existence of the poisonous tree. How was he to resolve this dilemma? He therefore resolved to leave well enough alone until the next time the owner of the orchard would visit it, when he could consult with him. At that time, he would follow the owner’s instructions. Another interpretation of the words: והיה ברכה. This is not so much to be understood as a blessing itself, but as a command to become the source of blessings. Wherever his journeys would take him, he was to make it his concern to spread the knowledge about his Creator and to bless the person with whom he came into contact. This is also what Avraham did, as we know from Genesis 12,8; ויקרא בשם ה', “He proclaimed the Name of the Lord,” (praising Him). Seeing that the people did not respond to his sermons positively, G–d resorted to bringing on a famine in the land.

ואברכה מברכך, “I shall bless those who bless you.” According to Midrash Tanchuma, section 4 on our portion, G–d had told Avraham that from him would come forth a tribe who would bless His (G–d’s) children. He referred to the priests who would come forth from Aaron and who would bless the Jewish people, as is written in Numbers 6,27: ושמו את שמי על בני ישראל, ואני אברכם, “so shall they put My name on the Children of Israel;” when Avraham asked: “who will bless them (the priests)?” G–d answered: “I shall bless them.” I believe that this is the correct interpretation of what the Talmud tractate Chulin folio 49 meant when the question was asked: “whence do we know that the priests themselves will be blessed, and the Talmud pointed to our verse as the answer to this question, i.e. “I shall bless those who bless them.”

ונברכו בך כל משפחות האדמה, “and all the families of the earth shall count themselves blessed if they can establish family ties with you.” The root of the word ונברכו is the same as that of מבריך, “to graft.” They will consider it an accomplishment to have Abrahamitic blood in their veins.

ואברם בן חמש שנים ושבעים שנה בצאתו מחרן “and Avram was seventy five years old when he left Charan.” At first glance this statement is puzzling as the covenant of the pieces is reported as if it had occurred later than Avram’s departure from Charan (chapter 15). According to our tradition it took place 30 years before the birth of Yitzchok, and this is what the statement that the Israelites spent 430 years in Egypt, reported in Exodus 12,40 is based on. We know as a fact from the Torah that Avraham was one hundred years old when Yitzchok was born. According to Rashi, thirty years elapsed between the covenant of the pieces and the birth of Yitzchok. If so, Avraham could not have been more than 70 years old at that event. Lot joined him and was taken captive after having separated from Avraham during that same year still, and Avraham defeated the armies which had taken him captive, after which event G–d appeared to him as reported in chapter 15. He returned to Charan once more, and when he was 75 years old, G–d commanded him to move to the land of Canaan, i.e. “the land which I will show you.” (12,1) I have found confirmation of these dates in the book called Seder Olam, an ancient historical record, considered reliable by our sages. I am quoting verbatim from that text: “Avraham was 48 years old when G–d confused the languages of the people and they moved apart from one another. When G–d spoke to him at the covenant of the pieces, he was 70 years old. (this was while he was on the soil of the land of Canaan). He returned to Charan where he stayed for another five years. It follows that 27 years elapsed between the destruction of the Tower and Avraham’s departure from Charan a second time” Our verse refers to the second departure.

והכנעני אז בארץ, “and the Canaanites were in the land at that time.” Rashi interprets these words as meaning that at that period the Canaanites were in the process of capturing that land from the descendants of Shem whose king had ruled there in Jerusalem, then known as Shalem. It had been allocated to him by his father Noach. The difficulty with Rashi’s interpretation is that Rashi, when commenting on Hebron in Numbers 13,22, states that Hebron had been founded seven years earlier that Tzoan of Egypt. We know Cham had given that city (Chevron) to his oldest son [Kush and Mitzrayim having been twins? Compare table in Chronicles of Mossad Harav Kook Ed.]. It follows that Canaanites must have been in that land already long before Avraham came to it. This is also the conclusion in the Talmud, tractate Sotah folio 34. We must therefore assume that the details of this subject are the subject of a disagreement of the sages, and that Rashi was forced to side with one side, and chose this without mentioning that there is another opinion. [In the commentary of Haketav vehakabalah by Rabbi Mecklenburg, translated by this editor, the word שבעה in Numbers 13,22, is not understood as a number but as a reference to something superior, and the observation that fathers often treat younger sons with more affection than they have for the firstborn. According to the Bible, Canaan was Cham’s youngest son; (although that raises the question why Noach cursed him, instead of Cham’s eldest son) Ed. It is interesting that the Canaanites were allowed to exist without retribution by G–d for 47 years longer than the Egyptians, 7 years although they had been founded sooner, and 40 years because the first generation of Israelites had forfeited their right to inherit the land of Canaan as the result of the spies having badmouthed the land claiming that it devoured its inhabitants, and anyway could not be conquered by them. They were granted this extension because they agreed to have Avraham’s wife Sarah buried in Chevron.

ויט אהלה, “he pitched his tent;” Rashi already comments on the peculiarity of the word אהלה, being spelled with the letter ה at the end, when the pronoun ending for “his” should have been the letter ו. He gives as the reason that the Torah wished us to know that Avraham pitched his wife’s tent before he pitched his own. (based on B’reshit Rabbah). This raises the question why the same word is similarly misspelled in Genesis 9,21 when the subject was Noach’s tent? What are we to deduce from that? We may answer that the reason why the Israelites of the Kingdom of Jerobam, i.e. the ten tribes who had seceded from the Kingdom of David, were exiled, shortly after Solomon had died? According to tradition as spelled out in the Book of prophets, the decree to exile them was sealed because they indulged in debauchery caused by indulging in too much wine too many times. Noach having become too drunk occurred in his wife’s tent, or near its entrance. (Compare Amos 6,6, on the subject of these tribes’ drunkenness) Compare also Ezekiel 23,4: where the word אהליבמה for the capital of that kingdom which had really been Shomron, was changed to indicate that G–d had no place in that kingdom and in its rulers’ considerations. Both the word אהלה and אהליבמה are used by the prophet to describe the disloyal Jews in each kingdom. [The reader is referred to the commentary by Rabbi M. Eiseman in the Art Scroll edition of the Book of Ezekiel, even Jerusalem‘s name being changed in that chapter, as except during the reign of King Chizkiyahu things were not much better in the Kingdom of Yehudah. Ed.]

הנה נא ידעתי כי אשה יפת מראה את, “I am well aware that you are a physically attractive woman;” according to the interpretation of Rabbi Joseph Kara, the Torah abbreviated what Avraham said to Sarah, the full sentence including what is reported here as a separate sentence: “I know that because you are a beautiful –white skinned – woman as soon as they see you they will kill me and take you to the king’s palace to be part of his harem. In order to save my life, say that you are my sister, instead of my wife.” Although the Egyptians were idolaters, they observed the law of not sleeping with someone else’s wife. As a result, they resorted to murder instead. This sounds strange, as the same lawgiver that prohibited adultery also prohibited murder. Their reasoning was-presumably, that it is better to murder and commit that sin once, than to commit the sin of adultery day after day. Besides, they were afraid that any husband, whose wife had been kidnapped, would complain to their respective kings about this. Once the original husband was dead, no restitution could be made.