Parashat
Naso 5765/ June11, 2005
Lectures on
the weekly Torah reading by the faculty of
The
Priestly Blessing
Prof. Amos Frisch
Department
of Bible
One
of the more prominent features of the priestly blessing (Num.
Yevarekhekha A-donai ve-yishmerekha – The Lord bless you and protect you.
Ya’er A-donai panav eleikha ve-yehuneka – The Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious to thee.
Yissa A-donai panav eleikha ve-yasem lekha shalom – The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and grant you peace.
Do the structural features stand on their own, or does the form reflect a gradation in the content of the blessing?
Quite a number of commentators indeed find a progression in content as well. [2] We shall illustrate this using the commentary of Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno:
“[May the Lord] bless you” – with wealth and possessions, for “without flour there is no Torah”; “and protect you” – from robbers. “Ya’er [shine]” – may He open your eyes to the light of His countenance, to behold the wonders of His Teaching and His deeds, having satisfied your needs through His blessing. “May the Lord lift up His countenance to you” – for eternity... “and grant you peace,” eternal peace, Eternity without any admixture of punishment, as befits all who are whole, for the World to Come.
Rabbi
Ze’ev Gottlieb, the editor of the Sforno
commentary to Numbers in the Mossad ha-
Rav Kook edition, distinguishes aptly between three spheres
of blessing: “According to his [the
Sforno’s] explanation, the blessings revolve around three
things: the material existence of this
world (as laying the ground for spiritual life), the spiritual life of Torah
and good deeds in this world, and the life of the World to Come, in the future.
[3]
The remark by the tanna,
Rabbi Eleazar ben
Azariah, “If there is no flour, there is no Torah” (
Avot 3.17), is cited by Sforno
to make clear the significance of material success:
it is not an anticipated reward, rather it is
a means to spiritual elevation. A
similar interpretation is found in the writings of Rabbi Samson Raphael
Hirsch: “The first benediction blesses
A variety of explanations have been given for the details of the blessings. Rabbi Solomon Ephraim of Luntshitz, known as the Kli Yakar, wrote: “Many are the opinions regarding elucidation of the blessings, each interpreting them according to his intelligence.” [5] In addition to the commentaries cited above, in our discussion of the gradation in the blessings, it is in place to note Cassuto’s explanation. [6] According to him, the first verse is comprised of “a positive wish and a negative wish”: May the Lord bless you – granting all the good that is in the world, and protect you – from all the bad. Thus we see that two independent actions are mentioned in the verse, each complementing the other – removing bad and granting good. In the second verse Cassuto sees an action and its consequence – G-d will gaze on you with a bright face, a face expressing satisfaction, and as a result He will grace you, will treat you beneficently. He finds a similar relationship in the third verse, as well – G- d’s bright face will always be turned to you, and as a result He will bring you to goodness and perfection. [7]
Scripture
does not simply establish that the Priests must bless the nation, rather it
presents the exact formulation to be used, prefacing with the words:
“Thus shall you bless.”
The precision in the formulation of the
blessing has prompted commentators to relate with precision to the details of
the blessing. Thus the priests are not
permitted to bless the people using their own words.
This brings out the divine source of the
blessing, and the priests are but the vehicle for transmitting the divine
will. The Lord’s words that conclude the
subject provide an explicit proclamation regarding the source from which
blessedness comes: “Thus they shall link
My name with the people of
The
roots b-r-kh (bless) and sh-m-r
(protect) appear in this blessing side by side in the same verse, and this is
the only time they do so in the entire Bible.
Aside from the priestly blessing there are several places in Scripture
where these verbs are textually close (although beyond the limits of the
individual verse),
[9] yet in all these instances,
save for two, sh-m-r is a human action
expressive of being faithful to the Lord, and b-r-kh
is the Lord’s response to the person’s faithfulness.
The first exception is G-d’s
words to Jacob when He revealed Himself to him at
What is the context of the priestly blessing, and how does it fit into its textual setting? The blessing follows upon the law of the Nazirite and the law of the Sotah. We offer three approaches to this question:
1) Some see a thematic connection with what precedes it. Abarbanel explains:
After the Lord gave the commandments concerning a woman suspected of adultery and the commandments concerning the Nazirite ... He gave the commandment regarding the priestly blessing. Since the entire camp was now set out according to divine order, the camp was sacred, fine, in perfect harmony. Therefore the Holy One commanded Moses to now command Aaron and his sons regarding the style of the blessing they were to use to bless all the Israelites together.
After preparing a well-ordered camp, came the time for blessing. [10]
2) Some see an associative connection. Cassuto finds the context arranged associatively, be it by idea or by language. [11] Regarding the connection of the priestly blessing to what precedes it, he does not point to a connection with the passage on Nazirites but rather he suggests a connection (too weak, to my mind) with the passage on a woman suspected of adultery, that precedes the passage on Nazirites. Cassuto’s point is a contrastive association: although in that case “the priests must lay a curse, for the most part their main function is to bless.”
3)
Some see a thematic connection with
what follows. The next chapter (Num.
7) tells of the festive event of inaugurating the Tabernacle, and this provides
the setting for reciting the blessing.
This is illustrated by the remark of the amora
from the land of Israel, Rabbi Joshua ben Levi, who
related to the verse, “Make for me an altar of earth ... in every place where I
cause My name to be mentioned I will come to you and bless you” (Ex.
20:21). Hence, he commented, “when they
made the Tabernacle, the Holy One, blessed be He, gave them the blessings” (
Pesikta Rabbati
5.11). One could put this differently, saying that since the priestly blessing
has to do with the work of the priests in the Tabernacle, the inauguration of
the Mishkan was the appropriate time to present
it. As a precedent and parallel, we can
point to the blessing that Aaron delivered on the eighth day, after the seven
days of consecration: “Aaron lifted his
hands toward the people and blessed them” (Lev.
Perhaps all these elements can be combined to form a single theme. In explaining the verse that follows the passage of the priestly blessing – “On the day that Moses finished setting up the Tabernacle ...” (Num. 7:1) – Rashi presents the following interpretation: “It says kallot [=finished]; on the day the Tabernacle was set up, the Israelites were like a bride [kallah] coming under the bridal canopy.” This interpretation lends colorful expression to the status of the Israelites when the Tabernacle was erected. The building marked a significant landmark in the covenantal relations between the Holy One, blessed be He, and His people. In anticipation of the general communion with the Lord, now to take place in a locale to which the entire people could come, the groom bestowed his gift – the great blessing to the people. That is to say, the lord bestowed the Priestly Blessing upon the people.
Prior to this, only the exceptions to the rules of the Torah were mentioned – those who were impure (see Num. 5) or sinful, like the Sotah on the one hand, and the Nazirite who set himself apart to be holy, on the other. The details concerning these cases were discussed elsewhere, so that mentioning them in this context could be viewed as a contrastive comparison between the exceptions and the entire people. The Israelites now had to sanctify themselves in preparation for their meeting with G-d. At this meeting the Lord’s regular emissaries, whom He sanctified and chose – the priests, sons of Aaron – come and bless the entire people, conferring on them an unconditional blessing, as they stand before the Lord just as the bride stands before her groom.
[1] Cf. M.
Greenberg, “Tefillah,” Encyclopedia
Mikra’it, VIII,
[2]
Cassuto asserts, “The content of the blessing ascends from
verse to verse, and the gradation of the idea is emphasized by the gradation in
structure” (M. D. Cassuto, “.1 Berakhah
– Birkat Kohanim,” Encyclopedia
Mikra’it, II, Jerusalem 1954, col. 359).
Similarly, Greenberg:
“The progressively longer sentences symbolize
steadily increasing abundance” (ibid.).
[3]
Be’ur al ha-Torah le-Rabbi
Ovadiah Sforno [Commentary
on the Torah by Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno],
Z. Gottlieb ed.,
[4] Rabbi
Samson Raphael Hirsch, Numbers, Hebrew translation by Rabbi M.
Breuer,
[5] In
contrast to all those who make careful distinctions between the details of each
blessing, and even find a progression there, Haran
maintains that “each verb repeats the same idea, and the repetition itself is
done not in order to add further depth, but to add emphasis and reinforcement”
(M. Haran, “Birkat
Kohanim mi-Ketef
Hinnom – ha-Mashma’ut ha-
Mikra’it shel ha-
Taglit [The Priestly Blessing from Ketef
Hinom – the Significance of the Finding to the
Bible],” Cathedra, 52: 9(1989), p. 81).
[6] See note
2, above.
[7] The
letter vav that precedes the verb that begins
the second part of each of the three verses (yishmerekha,
yehuneka, yasem) might
be interpreted as conjunctive, and then we would have six distinct actions; or,
it could be interpreted as a vav denoting the
result of the first verb, in which case we would have only three actions; cf.
Milgrom (note 1, above), p. 51, in his explication of verse
22.
[8] In the
opinion of Rabbi Akiva, Hullin
49a, in contrast to the opinion of Rabbi Ishmael, who views the pronoun as
referring to the priests. For a detailed
analysis of both grammatical possibilities, see
[9] What
Korpel calls “external parallelism,” although I see the
situation somewhat differently from him.
See M. C. A. Korpel, “The poetic Structure of
the Priestly Blessing,” JSOT, 45 (1989), pp. 3-13.
[10] Cf.
what Yehudah Mori’el has to
say on the idea of sanctity as the common element of the adjoining passages;
cf. what Yehudah Mori’el
has to say on the idea of sanctity as the common element of the adjoining
passages; cf. Y. Mori’el, Iyyunim
be-Mikra II: Numbers – Deuteronomy,
second edition, Tel Aviv, 2000, pp. 46, 48-49.
[11]
Cf. M. D. Cassuto,
“Smikhut ha-Parshiyot
ve-Sidduran be-Sifrei ha-
Mikra” [1947], Sifrut
Mikra’it ve-Sifrut
Kena’anit (Mehkarim
be-Mikra u-va-Mizrah ha-
Kadmon, I),