Parasha: Lech Lecha · Aliyah: Third (Tiferet)

אל נא תהי מריבה, Let no quarrel develop between me and you. Abraham told Lot that what had started as an argument between their respective shepherds was bound to lead to a quarrel between the two of them even though Lot claimed that he would never allow this to happen. After all, he respected his uncle too highly as the senior member of the family. The substance of the shepherds' arguments concerned the fact that Lot allowed his shepherds to graze on privately owned land, counting on G'd's promise that the land would belong to Abraham's family in the future. Seeing that Abraham had no children and was genetically unable to father children, Lot viewed himself as Abraham's heir. Abraham alluded to this by the superfluous comment that they were brothers.

Another reason Abraham referred to their being brothers may be understood in light of our sages' comment on Psalms 50,20 [I have not found that commentary. Ed.]. The Psalmist describes a brother who lives with another brother as maligning him. Applied to our context this means that Abraham was afraid that if the local inhabitants would take Lot to court for stealing from them, his own reputation as the elder brother (uncle) would become tarnished. He could not allow this to happen.

Abraham may also have hinted to Lot that the very fact that their principals were brothers made Lot's shepherds take that relationship for granted. Familiarity breeds contempt; had the two not been related, Lot's shepherds would have given Abraham the respect due him as an elder and as a person whom G'd had obviously favoured.

וה׳ אמר אל אברם. G'd said to Abram. The form of address is unusual. We would have expected ויאמר השם "now G'd said to Abraham, etc." The reason for the form of address chosen by the Torah maybe that the Torah wanted to give us a hint that G'd had already waited a long time to tell Abraham what He now told him, but that as long as the wicked Lot was part of his entourage He could not do so. G'd now fulfilled the second part of what He had said to Abraham in 12,1 i.e. אל הארץ אשר אראך.

וראה מן המקום, "and look from the place, etc." G'd had to emphasise the word מן המקום to alert us to the miracle that He expanded Abraham's sense of vision so that he could see the entire land of Israel from the place he stood on. He did not even have to turn around to look in the different directions.

כי את כל הארץ, For the entire land, etc. We are all familiar with the limitations of our eyesight. We can see for a certain distance, no more. We are also familiar with the so-called קפיצת הדרך, telescoping a distance of earth under one into a very small distance such as was experienced by Eliezer on his way to Charan, and Jacob on his way to Charan. In this instance G'd brought the various borders of the land of Israel closer to Abraham so that he could see them all with his normal eyesight. Abraham took possession of the land symbolically because all of it was within his view. Normally speaking, there is no more absolute sign of possession than to move a rock from its location. Here G'd moved the entire land from its location to bring it within the sight of Abraham's eyes.

קום התהלך בארץ. "Arise, and walk through the land." The Talmud Baba Batra 100 discusses how one acquires title to land. [The context of the discussion is whether the fact that people used someone's private property as a shortcut entitles them to continue to do so even if the property in question changed hands. Ed.] Rabbi Eliezer, basing himself on our verse, claims that merely traversing the land assures one of one's rights to the area one has traversed; the other rabbis hold that one has to go through the regular legal procedure for acquiring title. The rabbis say that our verse is not to be taken as a general rule, but that an exception was made in the case of Abraham who was especially beloved of G'd. G'd intended to facilitate Abraham's descendants taking possession of the land when the time came. According to these rabbis, Abraham's title to the land stems from verse 15 where G'd had promised it to Abraham. The reason G'd rolled the land up so as to bring it close to Abraham was in order that the act of moving it would demonstrate ownership by the person on whose behalf it was moved.