ויאמר אברם…מה תתן לי? Abram said:…"what are You able to give me?" How could Abraham begin by saying: "You have not given me, etc.," when he had received G'd's promise that he would father children? Surely he did not doubt G'd's words? Why did Abraham say: הן לי לא נתתה, instead of: הן לא נתתה לי? [why did he stress the word לי?] What did Abraham have in mind when he said to G'd that בן ביתי יורש אותי, that "a member of my household will inherit me?" Seeing that he had no seed of his own, what difference did it make to him if a member of his household or someone else would inherit him?

Abraham remembered that the promise of seed he had received was phrased thus: "your seed will be as the dust of the earth" (13,16). When people are compared to the dust of the earth such a comparison normally applies to poor and insignificant people, i.e. "as the dust"; it implies that such people do not possess a holy soul, that they are closer to animals than to angels. When Abraham stressed the לי aspect of his future descendants, he referred to the fact that G'd had not promised him children or grandchildren of any stature. This is why G'd told him "to count the stars." The stars were meant to be symbols. G'd wanted Abraham to know that his descendants would all be important in their own right. They would be righteous people who could overcome the stars, i.e. their fates would not be subject to zodiac constellations, to מזל. Bereshit Rabbah 69,5 explains the simile of the "dust of the earth" to mean that just as dust cannot prosper without water, so Jacob's (Abraham's) descendants would not prosper without Torah which is for the spirit what water if for the body. The Midrash there lists other qualities of dust which make it seem as something valuable and important. Examination of various Midrashim on the subject of עפר, dust, shows that we never find dust treated as something valuable until after Abraham's descendants were compared to stars for the first time. This is the reason that the quotation from the Midrash we have cited was from פרשת ויצא and not from here. At any rate, Abraham was concerned about the comparison of his descendants to dust in G'd's first promise.

The expression בן ביתי can be understood in one of two ways. 1) Abraham said to G'd that If He only intended to give him the kind of descendants that are comparable to lowly dust, he would prefer that a member of his present household would become his heir. He referred to his trusted disciple Eliezer. Such a one would be more suited than an unworthy biological descendant. A typical example would be a grandson such as Esau.

2. Not only was Abraham distressed at not having been promised worthy descendants, he was even more distressed that a בן בית such as Lot viewed himself as his heir. I have found an ancient commentary which understands Abraham as preferring to die intestate to having unworthy children.

והאמין בה׳ ויחשבה לו צדקה. He believed G'd who considered this as a merit for him. We can understand this as similar to the laws concerning vows. The Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 6) says that when one makes a promise to give charity to a sacred cause it is considered as binding or as effective as if one had already actually handed over the object of a vow to an ordinary person. Abraham qualified for a reward by merely expressing his belief in G'd's promise. You may well ask what practical benefit Abraham received by this reward seeing that neither Ishmael nor Isaac had been born as yet? This is why the Torah says that "he considered it an act of righteousness," i.e. also Abraham treated G'd's promise to him as if it had already been fulfilled.

Furthermore, seeing that G'd cannot influence whether man is G'd fearing or not, i.e. "all is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven" (Berachot 33), Abraham could have had doubts about G'd's promise as to the quality of his offspring. The Torah therefore gives Abraham credit for not worrying how G'd could guarantee his children would be worthy. Another way of looking at Abraham's act of faith is based on the tradition (Pessikta Zutra Lech Lecha 15,5) that the world will not lack a minimum of 30 (or 36) righteous men by whose merit it continues to exist. This tradition is based on the numerical value of the word יהיה in the previous verse. Since G'd needs these 30 צדיקים, it stands to reason that He does influence these men to be pious. If so, they can certainly not claim their righteousness as their own merit as would otherwise be the case. (Compare Deut. 6,28 וצדקה תהיה לנו that performance of the commandments will be accounted as a merit for us). Abraham may have been rewarded then for not making an issue of this, although some or all of these men may have been unduly influenced to live the lives of צדיקים.

ויאמר לאברם, He said to Abram, etc. Why did G'd say ידע תדע, instead of simply תדע, know! Why did the Torah stress the word גר in גר יהיה זרעך, instead of the more customary זרעך יהיה גר? The Torah does not usually mention what happens before having stated to whom it is going to happen! Why does the Torah not make it clear when and to whom the various stages of being a stranger, being enslaved, and being afflicted apply? Will Abraham's descendants experience all these stages of unpleasantness for the whole of the 400 years, or will some experience some of the afflictions and others only being strangers such as history has taught us?

I believe the Torah repeated the words ידע תדע for three separate reasons. 1) Our sages said: "our forefathers descended to Egypt on account of a relatively minor sin, i.e. Abraham having asked: 'How will I know that I will inherit'" (Genesis 15,8)? G'd answered him; ידוע, "know! that because you asked, תדע you should be aware that your descendants will first be strangers, etc." 2) Seeing that G'd's response to Abraham's question contained both a pleasant and an unpleasent message, i.e. enslavement and subsequent redemption, G'd told Abraham that just as surely as there would first be enslavement, this would be followed by redemption. 3) Our sages (Berachot 18) commented on Deut. 34,4: זאת הארץ אשר נשבעתי לאברהם, ליצחק וליעקב לאמד לזרעך אתננה, that G'd told Moses לאמר, to tell the patriarchs that He had fulfilled the oath He had sworn to all of them regarding the land of Israel. In view of this the repeated use of the expression ידע תדע refers to both the present and the eventual status of that land.

The reason that the word גר is stressed by being placed ahead of what is going to happen, is to inform us that the status of being an alien commenced already at this time. Abraham's life from here on in was part of the decree. Abraham should not think that his descendants' history would parallel his own experience to the extent that they would be aliens only part of these 400 years. Abraham was not to misunderstand the meaning of the words כי גר יהיה זרעך as applying only at some time in the future. That period would commence the day he would have descendants, i.e. with the birth of Isaac. This was also a pleasant aspect of the decree in that all the years Isaac and Jacob lived either in the land of Canaan or at Laban's were counted as part of the 400 years.

Should you argue that this could have been expressed equally well by use of the normal syntax כי זרעך גר יהיה, know that G'd wisely phrased it differently in order to reveal that He had not decreed slavery and oppression for all of Abraham's descendants. G'd wanted that Abraham should have the satisfaction of knowing that some of his descendants would only have to suffer being aliens, nothing worse. It is as if G'd had said to Abraham: "you will have a share in your descendants," i.e. they will only suffer being strangers without suffering anything worse. Had G'd used the word זרעך first, this would have created the wrong impression. By inserting the word יהיה between the words גר and זרעך the Torah makes clear that some of Abraham's descendants would experience only גרות. The descendants referred to were Isaac, Jacob, and all of Jacob's sons. As a result what sounded like 400 years of enslavement and oppression actually was reduced to 210 years, the years remaining before the Exodus after the last of Joseph's brothers had died. Even the tribe of Levi who, according to our sages never performed slave labour, did not completely escape the aspects of enslavement and oppression seeing that its babies too were subject to drowning. Moses' own experience when his basket stood in the bulrushes at the banks of the Nile, is the best proof for the anxieties suffered by even the most prominent families of the Levites.

וגם את הגוי אשר יעבודו דן אנכי, "I will also judge the nation for whom they perform slave labour." What justification is there for the word "also" in this verse? The last subject the Torah spoke about was enslavement and oppression. How can the retribution be linked to the former by the word וגם, "and also?" Besides, as we are all aware that G'd is the judge, why does G'd have to say דן אנכי, "I will judge?" Who else could possibly judge? Why does the Torah write את הגוי instead of merely הגוי, "the nation?" Why does the Torah not mention the conclusion of the Jewish people's exile experience at the end of verse 13 by adding: "after that they will depart with great possessions," and then add the part about G'd's retribution to the Egyptians in verse 14? Why was the part about the retribution inserted in the middle of the sequence? The last question is probably best answered by recalling that events actually happened in precisely the order the Torah describes. First the Jews were enslaved and oppressed, then G'd smote the Egyptians with the ten plagues; finally the Jews left Egypt having "borrowed" all of the Egyptians' gold and silver.

An equally valid explanation of the sequence of the verse will become clear when we keep in mind what our sages had to say on Exodus 13,18. We read there that וחמושים עלו בני ישראל מארץ מצרים. According to the Mechilta the meaning is that only one out of five Israelites left Egypt, the remainder having died in Egypt during the plague of darkness so as not to afford the Egyptians the satisfaction to observe that they had not been worthy of redemption. The judgments that verse 14 speaks about then would be G'd judging the Israelites who did not merit to participate in the Exodus. The verse also alludes to the opportunity the Israelites had to examine where the Egyptians kept their valuables during the days of darkness, and to subsequently demand to borrow those. The expression וגם is used to demonstrate that G'd kept the promise made to Abraham here. This was recorded in Exodus 12,35-36. The word וגם means that G'd referred to something in addition to the decree of enslavement, namely that the redemption would be accompanied by a windfall of silver and gold, a compensation for some of the suffering to be endured. The word את refers to the death of 80% of the Israelites, whereas the word אנכי refers to the fact that this was something only G'd himself would know about; the Egyptians would not have any idea that some Jews died during the plague of darkness.

The question arises why G'd punished the Egyptians altogether when they had actually carried out the decree G'd had announced long previously.

Maimonides already answered this in his ספר המדע, explaining that G'd had never appointed a specific nation to carry out His decree. Whenever Gentile nations abuse Jews and this appears to be a fulfilment of a divine decree, none of the Gentiles had ever been specifically charged to be G'd's agents in the matter. Nachmanides and Rabbi Avraham ben David both take issue with Maimonides on this. They feel that inasmuch as those Gentiles had carried out G'd's wishes they had actually performed a מצוה. Nachmanides explains that the reason that G'd punished those nations was that they carried out the commandment with excessive enthusiasm. They demonstrated that they were intent on inflicting maximum discomfort on the Jews rather than to carry out G'd's will by what they did. When we keep this in mind, the word וגם refers to the excessive zeal displayed by the nations who persecute us which is the reason that G'd judges them. The word את then means that while G'd is busy punishing the Gentiles, He punishes the Jews who deserve it at one and the same time.

The Gentile nations persecute us because we separated ourselves from them by rejecting their religion. Had the Jewish people worshiped the lamb (Egyptian deity) in Egypt, the chances are the Egyptians would not have seen in us a foreign element and they would not have persecuted us. The same holds true throughout our history. Our persecution by the nations (at least from their point of view) has always been due to our refusal to accept their religious yardsticks, and to our describing ourselves as G'd's chosen people. The Gentile nations never viewed themselves as performing G'd's decree to punish us for our sins. There is therefore no question that they deserve retribution for what they did to us on their own initiative. G'd decreed that we be punished because we did not observe all of His commandments, whereas they persecuted us for not disregarding all of His commandments. This is what the prophet Zecharyah 1,15 had in mind when he quoted G'd as saying: אני קצפתי מעט והמה עזרו לרעה, "I was angry a little (because of a few sins Israel committed), and they overdid the punishment." In fact the Gentile nations contributed to our transgressing more of G'd's commandments because they maltreated us so much.

G'd goes on record here that He knows the true motivations of our oppressors and that is why He will punish the Egyptians. The Torah continues by linking Israel's redemption to the degree of abuse they would experience at the hands of the Egyptians by saying: ואחרי כן יצאו, "and as a result of this (exaggerated maltreatment) they will depart with great belongings;" Israel's redemption would be due in large measure to the excessive cruelty of its oppressors rather than to its accumulated merits. Sanhedrin 104 tells about the delegation the Egyptians sent to Alexander the Great demanding that the Jews return the silver and gold they had taken with them from Egypt at the time of the Exodus. Israel's representative countered by demanding back-pay with interest for several hundred years of slave labour by over a half a million of its people for over 200 years.

Our verse also contains a hint that when the Israelites went down to Egypt G'd's presence accompanied them (Megillah 29). Psalms 91,15: "I will be with him (Israel) in distress," is also proof that the שכינה accompanies the Jewish people into exile. Another indication that our verse speaks about the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt is Exodus 24,10 where the nobles of Israel had a vision of a sapphire brick underneath the throne of G'd. This is an allusion to G'd having been present when the Israelites were engaged in brick-making in Egypt.

ואתה תבא אל אבותיך בשלום. As for you yourself, you will join your forefathers in peace. Why did the Torah interrupt the promises made to Abraham's descendants with a promise to Abraham personally? Even though G'd wanted to reassure Abraham that he personally would not experience the part of the decree connected with enslavement and oppression, this could have been stated after G'd had concluded telling him which generation would experience the redemption! The meaning would have been clear since the promise was adjoining the promise that Israel would experience redemption! Besides, why did the Torah have to repeat itself, stressing: a) "in peace," and b) "in a ripe old age?" Would it not have sufficed to promise Abraham that he would die in a ripe old age before the enslavement of his descendants would commence? The promise of death in a ripe old age would have implied that Ishmael would become a penitent, as pointed out by Bereshit Rabbah 38,12.

Righteous people, and especially our patriarchs, were always concerned with losing part of the reward they had stored up for use in the Hereafter through some act of kindness G'd would perform for them in this world. According to Bereshit Rabbah 44,4 Abraham worried that he might have caused the death of an innocent person in his war against the four kings and that as a result he had forfeited some of his eternal reward. G'd therefore reassured him by saying in 15,1: "Do not worry, your reward will be great." In view of the concern that Abraham displayed then it is reasonable to assume that he was similarly worried whether the eventual redemption from Egypt would not use up too many merits if it were accompanied by extraneous perks such as the רכוש גדול, acquisition of material wealth that would accompany it. What troubled Abraham was that clearly G'd would have to perform miracles in order to free his enslaved descendants when the time came. G'd wanted to put his mind at rest immediately; this is why He interrupted the prediction of what was going to happen by promising Abraham that his peace of mind would not be disturbed. The promise of שלום, refers to Abraham's peace of mind in the Hereafter, whereas the שיבה טובה, ripe old age, refers to his concerns about life on earth.

ודור רביעי ישובו הנה, "And the fourth generation will return here, etc." We must examine why the extent of the sins of the Emorite has a bearing on the timing of Israel's return to its homeland. Rashi and Nachmanides disagree on what the words "the fourth generation" refer to. Rashi understands them as a reference to the fourth generation from Yehudah (who descended to Egypt). His son was Peretz, his grandson was Chetzron; great grandson Caleb returned to the land of Israel. Nachmanides rejects Rashi's explanation preferring to understand the words as referring to a fourth generation of Emorites. He bases himself on G'd waiting up to four generations before visiting the sins of the fathers on their descendants (Exodus 34,7). Even if we accept the words of Nachmanides, why did G'd mention this fact to Abraham? Besides, it appears that no provision was made for the possible penitence of the Emorite, which, according to Nachmanides, would have delayed a return of the Jewish people to their homeland still further? Furthermore, assuming that Nachmanides is correct, why did G'd mention the sin of the Emorite altogether once He had told Abraham that the Jewish people would return to their homeland in the fourth generation?

Actually, G'd told Abraham of two possible timetables according to which the return of his descendants to the land of Canaan could occur. One is the end of the exile in Egypt and the oppression there. This would occur when the combination of the years of being a stranger, being enslaved, and finally being oppressed (עינוי), would total 400 years. At that point G'd's decree would have been completed and He could lead the Jewish people forth from Egypt on the very day that those years came to an end. The second time factor which would enable the Jewish people to return to their homeland would be determined by the measure of guilt the Emorites had accumulated by that time. This would occur in the fourth generation, a generation later than the Exodus. For the purpose of this calculation the generation of Caleb is considered the third generation inasmuch as Caleb left Egypt as an adult. Even though Caleb personally entered the Holy Land (Numbers 14,30), the entry of a single Jew certainly does not constitute the return of a people to their homeland. When the Torah speaks about a generation it refers to the majority of the members of that generation. Caleb's sons constituted part of the fourth generation, as did all those who had not attained the age of 20 prior to the Exodus. The four generations are not to be counted as commencing with Yehudah, as does Rashi. If we were to count in Rashi's fashion i.e. from the time G'd's decree became effective, there is no reason why Isaac himself should not be considered as a generation either, seeing that the 400 years commenced with his birth. If, on the other hand, we are to count the generations as commencing with the first Jew who descended to Egypt, the count should commence with Jacob. If we did this, Caleb himself would already be the fifth generation. It is clear then that the count was meant to commence with the period the Israelites experienced enslavement. Shemot Rabbah 1,5 states that as long as any of Joseph's brothers was alive none of the Israelites were enslaved. The calculation of the fourth generation the Torah speaks about here therefore commences with Yehudah's sons Peretz and Chetzron.

The fact that the Torah uses the plural when speaking about the return of the Jewish people is a hint that the Torah speaks about people who have been forcibly prevented from returning up until that time. They would return after four generations have been completed. The first generation of Israelites who were forcibly prevented from returning to the land of Canaan were the children of Joseph and his brothers.

We now need to understand why the guilt of the Emorite plays any role in all this when the Torah elsewhere told us in Numbers 14 that the sin of the spies and the generation who believed the ten spies was the cause that re-entry to the land of Israel was delayed by an additional generation. The 400 years G'd had decreed were completed at the time the Jewish people asked that the spies be sent out. Had they not done so, they would have entered the land of Israel at the end of the 400 years G'd speaks about in our פרשה. This would have coincided with the 3rd generation of the Jews who had experienced servitude. The additional generation was due to the sin of the spies. Assuming this tragic delay had not occurred, how could G'd have squared entry of the Jewish people to the land of Canaan with the measure of guilt of the Emorites the Torah speaks about here?

We must understand the Torah in terms of how the Talmud Berachot 7 explains Chabakuk 1,13: למה תביט בוגדים, תחריש בבלע רשע צדיק ממנו, "Why do You countenance treachery, and stand by idly when the one in the wrong devours the one in the right?" The Talmud says that while it is possible that the wicked triumphs over someone relatively more righteous than he, he will never triumph over someone truly righteous. This means that the wicked are not totally devoid of merits, and we find on occasion that by using their merit they can overcome someone else who is generally more pious than they (while on this earth). The reason is that the wicked at that time can point at the imperfections of the person who thinks of himself as righteous. When the wicked is absolutely wicked however, it is not only permissible to destroy him but whichever righteous person does so first deserves credit. One need not be a totally righteous person in order to be entitled to wipe out such a wicked person.

At the time of the Exodus as well as at the time when they despatched the spies about 15 months later, the Israelites were on the level of perfectly righteous people. Although they had sinned during the episode of the golden calf, they had been punished for that sin and had regained their status as צדיקים גמורים, as perfectly righteous people. The "echo" of that sin was not strong enough to deprive them of that title especially vis-a-vis the Emorites. In Sanhedrin 110 Rabbi Eliezer describes the people at that time as pious, quoting Psalms 50,5: "bring in My devotees, who made a covenant with Me over sacrifice" as his support. After the episode with the spies, Israel lost this status. From that moment on their moral superiority over the Emorites was marginal. As long as they had been considered חסידים their merit was enough to overcome the Emorites immediately. If the Emorites had refused to vacate the land in order to allow Israel to return there, they could have easily overcome them in battle. Now they had to wait until the Emorites accumulated a further measure of sin before their own moral superiority would suffice to overcome the Emorites in their homeland. Proof of our contention is found in Numbers 14,44 when the Israelites had realised that they had sinned grievously in fearing the Canaanites, and volunteered to fight them. Moses warned them against such an enterprise. They insisted and were defeated. Had they been considered as righteous they certainly would not have been defeated. All of this is an elaboration of what the prophet Chabakuk spoke about.

The point is underscored by Moses in Deut. 9.5, where Moses credits Israel's conquest of the land of the Canaanites not to their piety but to the wickedness of the inhabitants of that land at that time. Moses meant that the measure of their sins had become full by that time. Moses told the Israelites at that time that though they were not totally righteous, their merit was sufficient to overcome the complete lack of it in their opponents. He emphasised this lack of righteousness by the Israelites three times! However, the Emorites had absolutely no merits left that they could have used to help them triumph against Israel's various moral shortcomings.

We now understand the need for mentioning the "fourth generation" in G'd's promise in our verse. G'd stated that the latest possible date for Israel taking over its inheritance would be at the end of four generations since the onset of slavery. By that time the Emorites would not have any merit left they could use to deny Israel their return to the land of their forefathers. This part of the prophecy would become relevant only if Israel did not maintain sufficient moral superiority over the Canaanites, if they did not qualify for the appellation צדיק גמור.

ביום ההוא כרת ה׳ את אברם ברית. On that day G'd made a covenant with Abram. The reason that G'd used the past tense in referring to the gift of the land of Israel to Abraham and his descendants is that He had already made Abraham take possession of it, as we explained on 13,15. Abraham's children would henceforth own the land in their capacity as his heirs.

In view of this clear-cut promise of the Bible that the descendants of Abraham were to inherit the land of the ten nations mentioned, how could Jewish heretics delude themselves by denying that there is hope for us in the future, seeing that G'd's promise had already been fulfilled and we have forfeited it due to our sins?. [I believe the author refers to converts who accept the Christian theologians' views of Jewish history. Ed.] In view of the fact that we never possessed the land of all of these ten nations, the promise of the covenant has clearly not been fulfilled as yet. Up until now Israel only occupied the land belonging to seven of the ten nations listed here. We did not even possess all the land of those seven nations. How then can one understand the people of little faith [the author calls them the dried up bones describing the revelation in Ezekiel 37. Ed.] who have given up on our glorious messianic future? G'd treated us according to the principle of מדה כנגד מדה, that punishment must fit the crime. Seeing that we were supposed to be G'd's servants but rebelled in that we failed to observe many of His commandments, He caused those who were supposed to be our servants to rebel against us. This does not mean that G'd does not have the power to fulfil His covenant in full at the appropriate time.

The reason that the Torah first lists the nations whose territory we never captured, i.e. the Keyni, the Knizi and the Kadmoni, is that they are only different names for the Ammonites, the Moabites and the Edomites. When the time arrives when we will experience realisation of G'd's promise concerning those three nations, we will also again recapture the lands of the other seven nations listed here at the end. The Torah mentions those three first in order to teach us that the essential element of G'd's promise is that we will dispossess those three nations. The author sees an allusion of the future in Abraham's defeat of the four kings listed in 14,1. Three of them symbolise the Ammonites, Moabites and the Edomites. The last one (of those four), "Tidal king of גוים," represents the other seven nations. [The author seems to feel that the word גוים does not describe the name of a specific nation. Ed.]