פרשת בהעלותך - מלחמה אמונה וגאולה

When you are at war in your land against an aggressor who attacks you, you shall sound short blasts on the trumpets, that you may be remembered before your God ה׳ and be delivered from your enemies.

(3) they prescribe acts which lead to the belief in God’s greatness. Likewise the commandment to cry to God in time of trouble, “to blow an alarm with the trumpets” (Num. 10:9), belongs to this class. We are told to offer up prayers to God, in order to establish firmly the true principle that God takes notice of our ways, that He can make them successful if we worship Him, or disastrous if we disobey Him, that [success and failure] are not the result of chance or accident. In this sense we must understand the passage, “If ye walk with me by chance” (beḳeri, Lev. 26:21); i.e., if I bring troubles upon you for punishment, and you consider them as mere accidents, I will again send you some of these accidents as you call them, but of a more serious and troublesome character. This is expressed in the words: “If ye walk with me by chance: then I will walk with you also in the fury of chance” (ibid. vers. 27, 28). For the belief of the people that their troubles are mere accidents causes them to continue in their evil principles and their wrong actions, and prevents them from abandoning their evil ways. Comp. “Thou hast stricken them, but they have not grieved” (Jer. 5:3). For this reason God commanded us to pray to Him, to entreat Him, and to cry before Him in time of trouble.

(15) To whom does the phrase 'Is there a man who is afraid or faint-hearted?' refer? The phrase should be interpreted simply, as applying to a person whose heart is not brave enough to stand in the throes of battle. Once a soldier enters the throes of battle, he should rely on the Hope of Israel and their Savior in times of need. He should realize that he is fighting for the sake of the oneness of God's Name. Therefore, he should place his soul in his hand and not show fright or fear. He should not worry about his wife or children. On the contrary, he should wipe their memory from his heart, removing all thoughts from his mind except the war. Anyone who begins to feel anxious and worry in the midst of battle to the point where he frightens himself violates a negative commandment, as it is written (Deuteronomy 20:3 : 'Do not be faint-hearted. Do not be afraid. Do not panic and do not break ranks before them.' Furthermore, he is responsible for the blood of the entire Jewish nation. If he is not valiant, if he does not wage war with all his heart and soul, it is considered as if he shed the blood of the entire people, as ibid. 20:8 states: 'Let him go home, lest he demoralize the hearts of his brethren like his own.' Similarly, the prophetic tradition explicitly states: 'Cursed be he who does God's work deceitfully. Cursed be he who withholds his sword from blood.' Jeremiah 48:10 In contrast, anyone who fights with his entire heart, without fear, with the intention of sanctifying God's name alone, can be assured that he will find no harm, nor will bad overtake him. He will be granted a proper family in Israel and gather merit for himself and his children forever. He will also merit eternal life in the world to come as I Samuel 25:28-29 states: 'God will certainly make my lord a faithful house, for my lord fights the wars of God and evil will not be found with you... and my lord's soul will be bound in a bond of life with God.'

(35) When the Ark was to set out, Moses would say: Advance, O ה׳ ! May Your enemies be scattered, And may Your foes flee before You! (36) And when it halted, he would say: Return, O ה׳, You who are Israel’s myriads of thousands!

[BE SCATTERED.] When Your enemies see that You arose to do battle, they will immediately be scattered.

The reason for this insertion of verses 36-37 according to the plain meaning of the text is this: we know that the terrestrial world is divided into three parts, i.e. sea, civilised areas, desert. Our sages in Pessachim 94 (Tossaphot) said: “one third of the surface of the globe is oceans, one third is land that is cultivated, and inhabited; one third is desert. When the Israelites entered the land of Israel they had already traversed all three kinds of the globe. The Israelites had had a visible manifestation of the fact that G’d created the world as something entirely new seeing G’d had demonstrated miracles both on sea, on land and the miracles which occurred when the seven Canaanite nations were driven out of the land of Canaan. Seeing that when one comes face to face in nature with high mountains, etc., etc., one forms the impression that these phenomena have existed for eons of years and have preceded man and G’d historically, it is necessary to counter such impressions among the people. This is why the Torah inserted the two verses 36-37 at this point as it had become aware of the impression that the wilderness had begun to make on the Israelites. The words ויפוצו אויביך וינוסו משנאיך, “may Your enemies scatter and those who hate You be put to flight,” are aimed at the people who believed that forces in nature are more powerful than G’d. The Torah which is deposited inside the Holy Ark testifies to the fact that G’d preceded all phenomena known to man. When the enemies of the Israelites are scattered this is the most potent proof of G’d’s having preceded all. This is the reason G’d performed so many miracles in the desert in order to demonstrate precisely in an environment which would otherwise lead people to believe that it had existed forever, that our G’d exercises full control over such phenomena. This is also the reason that the members of the Great Assembly who formulated most of our liturgy included a statement in Berachot 54 that benedictions are to be recited when one sees the ocean, the mountains, and deserts. The formula is generally: “blessed be the One Who created the universe.” The point of such a benediction is to confirm that in spite of appearances to the contrary the universe was created out of “nothing,” not out of pre-existing bodies of matter.

(5) In that era, there will be neither famine or war, envy or competition for good will flow in abundance and all the delights will be freely available as dust. The occupation of the entire world will be solely to know God. Therefore, the Jews will be great sages and know the hidden matters, grasping the knowledge of their Creator according to the full extent of human potential, as Isaiah 11:9 states: 'The world will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the ocean bed."