Parashat HaShavua - Va'era
In this week's Parsha - Va’era – we read what has become known as the ארבע לשונות גאולה – the four words for redemption. Our tradition teaches us that the reason we drink four cups of wine at the seder is in response to the four verbs God used when God spoke to Moshe and provided a foretelling of how God would redeem the Israelites.
The four verbs that the rabbis have identified as the לשונות גאולה are:
והוצאתי – and I will bring you out
והצלתי – and I will deliver you
וגאלתי – and I will redeem you
ולקחתי – and I will take you to be My people
However – God's speech continues with the following verse:
וְהֵבֵאתִ֤י אֶתְכֶם֙ אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֤ר נָשָׂ֙אתִי֙ אֶת־יָדִ֔י לָתֵ֣ת אֹתָ֔הּ לְאַבְרָהָ֥ם לְיִצְחָ֖ק וּֽלְיַעֲקֹ֑ב וְנָתַתִּ֨י אֹתָ֥הּ לָכֶ֛ם מוֹרָשָׁ֖ה אֲנִ֥י ה׳:
I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I am Adonai.”
Why is the verb והבאתי I will bring you not included in the four words for redemption? Why do we not drink a fifth cup of wine in honor of this promise of being brought to the land of Israel? In other words, how is this fifth promise different from the first four?
Ibn Ezra offers an answer to this question in his commentary on the words והבאתי אתכם אל הארץ – and I will bring you to the land. But first, he raises a challenge. Focusing on the word אתכם (you - plural), Ibn Ezra notes that the members of the Israelites who left Egypt were not the ones to enter the Land of Israel for that generation died in the desert. In that case, asks Ibn Ezra, who is God speaking to?
Two of Ibn Ezra’s answers speak to this question about the fifth promise. First, Ibn Ezra suggests that the word YOU includes the people God is speaking to (the current generation) and their children (future generations). This answer resonates as familiar since at the seder we remind ourselves and each other in every generation a person must see him or herself as if she left Egypt. This suggests to us that the promise God made to Moshe and the Israelites was not strictly limited to those present but rather to future generations as well. The promise of entering the land and establishing a life long relationship with it is a promise for the present and the future.
Ibn Ezra continue and suggests that the language of והבאתי אתכם and I will bring you is conditional language. The first four promises - I will take you out, deliver you, redeem you, make you My nation - are going to happen. And then, only if you are worthy, will I bring you to the land of Israel.
The question of worthiness is a challenging one. What would make us worthy to inherit this gift/promise that was made as part of God’s covenant with our forefathers?
One suggestion offered in the Haftarah (Malachi chapter 3) that we read on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat immediately before Pesach, we read a special Haftorah is that unity or perhaps reconciliation will make us worthy. The closing verse of the Haftorah (and of the book of Malachi) teaches that Elijah will reconcile and reunite parents with their children and children with their parents. This image of reconciliation helps us understand why Elijah is known as the prophet who will usher in the Messianic period. True redemption relies on physical and spiritual unity.
We pray for parents and children - those in captivity, those fighting in the IDF and those displaced by this war - to be reunited. We pray to merit the fulfillment of the fifth promise - to not only be brought to the land, but to live there with our neighbors in peace.
Rabbi Dahlia Kronish