Choosing Our Relationship with God
by R. Gidon Rothstein
Parshat Ha’azinu
Who’s Atoning for Whom?
The last phrase of the Song of Ha’azinu reads “His Land will atone His people,” making unclear the subject and object. Ibn Ezra knows some who think Hashem will do the atoning, or accept the atonement, for both, Land and people. They assume the Torah sometimes omits vavs, meaning our verse should have said ve-amo, and His people.
Others thought the Land will atone for the people (Ibn Ezra calls it a derash, although it is also the reason we bury people directly in the ground, in Israel and some communities even outside). Ibn Ezra ratifies the idea, just doesn’t think it fits the verse, especially because Land is feminine, where the verse uses the masculine form of atone.
He therefore thinks it’s the other way around, the people will atone for the Land, by taking vengeance on enemies, cleansing the Land of all the blood those enemies will have spilled in it. In Bamidbar 35;33, the Torah had said the Land can only be cleansed/atoned—with the same verb as here—by the blood (death) of the killer.
When Jews are killed in Israel, Ibn Ezra is saying, the Land itself demands redress, accomplished by killing those killers. [In our current war, when our brave soldiers were finding and killing those who committed the atrocities of October 7, they were fulfilling Ibn Ezra’s view of this verse.]
Unnatural Losses and Divine Providence
A wise Jewish people would spot when God causes their troubles, because of their sins, we read in verses 29-31. For Sforno, the wisdom lies in being able to see the unnatural element in their losses. When a smaller army defeats them handily, it can only be because their own God fights against them, suppressing or removing their strength and military prowess (God forbid).
Other nations lose at war sometimes, too, but verse thirty-one distinguishes based on “our” God versus theirs. Those other nations have a sar, an angel, whose status in Heaven guides their fortunes. While that sar is ascendant in Heaven, they will win; when they lose, it is because the sar has lost.
Non-Jewish nations’ losses are never against the pattern of nature, since those sarim reflect the ordinary natural world. Nations rise, flourish, and fall, all within ordinary patterns. Jews are in the paradoxical position of being guided directly by God, and when they lose, it is unnatural, because God has decided to punish them (Sforno writes “turns against them.”)
Should we notice it, we can use it to improve. If we are wise.
Wrong Impressions Make Our Lives Harder
Verse twenty-seven isn’t easy to translate, so I’ll just give Or HaChayim’s reading. The verse refers to God’s anger with other nations, saying it is agur, for Or HaChayim a sign their misdeeds suffice to deserve destruction.
Should they see the Jews rolling along in Israel, no repercussions for their idolatry, they will deny God, God forbid, because He seems not to follow through on His threats to punish idolatry, as it were. God’s compassion on Jews would perversely lead these non-Jews to sin comfortably, especially to feel their faith is equally valid to the Jews’. When Jews do well, those nations will attribute it to the other powers they were worshipping, will say God doesn’t do or make all this happen.
Needing to disabuse the world of the false notions our idolatry and success would send, Hashem will be “forced” to punish us.
Yehoshu’a Stays Himself
At the end of the parsha (I had few options with Emet Le-Ya’akov, and the other substantive one argued a political position I had trouble conveying), Moshe recites/announces the Shirah of Ha’azinu to the people, he and Hoshe’a bin Nun (we call him Yehoshu’a).
R. Ya’akov Kaminetzky is bothered by why he is there at all, and why we call him Hoshe’a here, when Moshe himself changed his name to Yehoshu’a, back in the story of the spies, thirty-eight years earlier. Rashi said Moshe brought him along to have him address the people with a meturgeman, a person who functions like a megaphone, a display of leadership status, to forestall challenges after Moshe passes.
The birth name, according to Rashi, shows Yehoshu’a’s continuing humility, his not having gotten full of himself, his self-image still the same as early in his life (when his name was Hoshe’a). R. Kaminetzky refers us to Rashbam in Shelach, who thought Moshe’s renaming him Yehoshu’a was a custom of the times, a new name for an elevated position.
In that framing, Hoshe’a here shows he remembered his origins, had not let his success warp him, was still the boy from Ephraim… not Yehoshu’a, the leader of the Jewish people.
[He doesn’t mean Yehoshu’a would be timid, he was not. R. Kaminetzky is highlighting the two sides of proper Jewish leadership, the leader being strong, decisive, even imperial, while at the same time being humble and aware he, as a person, is no different or better than anyone else.
A tough task.]
Ha’azinu, a parsha where people take the Land of Israel’s vengeance for the people murdered in its borders, can have leaders who remember not to confuse their positions with their persons, if we do well. Or can incur God’s wrath, God’s making us lose to much weaker enemies, and “force” God to do this, so enemies not learn the wrong lessons from our not being punished.
The choice is ours.