So Shall You Bless

This is the ordinary way the Torah starts a new instruction: Hashem speaks to Moshe. But watch what comes next. It is not a rule about something to do or not do. It is the exact words of a blessing, written out in advance so that nobody ever has to guess what to say.

The formula is standard, and that is the point worth noticing. It does not say the priests may bless in whatever words feel right to them. The wording is dictated from the start. That raises a real question about the whole passage: if you cannot say it in your own words, is it still your blessing? Hold on to that; the last verse of the passage answers it in a way you may not expect.

The formula is the Torah’s ordinary hinge, but its placement here is deliberate. Bamidbar has spent five chapters and half of a sixth sorting: the census by tribe, the arrangement of the camp by banner, the removal of the impure from the camp, the sotah and, immediately before this, the nazir, a person who elects to set himself apart. Then, at the end of all that dividing, comes a text spoken over everyone without distinction of tribe, status or merit. Note that the lamed of לֵּאמֹר carries a dagesh here, a Masoretic feature of the word following מֹשֶׁה in this phrase - contrast לֵאמֹר in the very next verse, standing after בָּנָיו, where the dagesh is absent. It does not alter the sense.

Hashem tells Moshe who has to say the blessing - Aharon and his sons, the kohanim - and that they must say it exactly this way. Not in a hurry, and not under their breath. Out loud, so that every person standing there can hear it.

One word here is spelled oddly. אָמוֹר has a vav in it that the word does not need, and Rashi reads that extra letter as an instruction about manner: do not bless them in haste and confusion, but with intention and a whole heart. You can decide for yourself whether a spelling can carry that much weight. What is harder to argue with is where the rest of the law goes. Everything the Talmud derives from this verse - Hebrew, standing, hands raised, a voice loud enough that a person hears it - is about the same thing. The mitzvah is not the words. It is refusing to mumble them.

Sotah 38a builds the entire practice out of this verse. From the gezerah shavah between כֹּה תְבָרְכוּ here and אלה יעמדו לברך את העם at Mount Gerizim comes the requirement that it be said in the holy tongue and standing; from Aharon’s blessing in Vayikra 9:22, וישא אהרן את ידיו אל העם ויברכם, comes the lifting of the hands; from אָמוֹר לָהֶם comes aloud, כאדם שאומר לחבירו, like a person speaking to his fellow, and from the same two words פנים כנגד פנים, face to face rather than face to back; and from וְשָׂמוּ אֶת שְׁמִי in verse 27 comes the use of the Explicit Name, which the Talmud confines to the Temple. Rashi, on the plene spelling of אָמוֹר, adds that they must not bless in haste or agitation but with kavanah and a whole heart, and on אָמוֹר לָהֶם that all of them should hear. One grammatical detail sets up everything that follows: תְבָרְכוּ is plural, addressed to the priests as a body, and every second-person form in the blessing itself - יְבָרֶכְךָ, וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ, אֵלֶיךָ, וִיחֻנֶּךָּ, לְךָ - is singular.

The first line. Three words. May Hashem bless you and guard you. Rashi explains what the two halves each do: bless, so that what you have grows; guard, so that nobody comes and takes it. A present is only really yours if it is also safe.

The opening line of the holiest blessing in the Torah asks for stuff. Not wisdom, not closeness, not meaning - property, and then protection for the property. Rashi says it in exactly those words, and Ibn Ezra and Sforno agree with him. Sforno gives the reason: if there is no flour, there is no Torah. Some people find that a let-down. It is worth reading the other way round. The Torah is refusing to pretend that a person who has nothing to eat is free to think about anything else, so it deals with that first and then climbs.

Rashi: יברכך - שיתברכו נכסיך, that your property increase; וישמרך - that no robbers come upon you to take your money, with the parable that one who gives his servant a gift cannot guard it from everyone, whereas the Holy One both gives and guards. Ibn Ezra reads it as תוספות חיים ועושר, an increase of life and of wealth, with the guarding applied to the increase - שישמור התוספת. Sforno: בעושר ונכסים, שאם אין קמח אין תורה, citing Avot 3:17, and וישמרך - מן הגזלנים. Three peshat readers, all material, none embarrassed. Ramban departs from them and reads the verse על דרך האמת: כי הברכה מלמעלה, והשמירה שתשמור אותה - the blessing descends from above and the שמירה is that you keep it, on the model of זכור ושמור. Note how far that is from Rashi, for whom the entire point was that the guarding is the Giver’s and cannot be the recipient’s. Grammatically the suffix is singular - יְבָרֶכְךָ, not יברככם - although the priests face the whole nation. Count the line: three words, fifteen letters.

The second line. Five words now, two more than the first. This one does not ask for things at all. It asks that Hashem look at you with a shining face - Rashi says that means a smiling face, a bright face - and that people find you pleasing. The lines are getting longer as they climb.

Notice what is missing from this line: there is no object in it. Nothing is handed over. It asks for a face, and for חֵן - the quality that makes someone want to help you before you have done anything to deserve it. The blessing has moved from what you have to how you are looked at, which is a real promotion and not a soft one. Sforno spells out the ladder: once your needs have been met by the first line, He opens your eyes to see wonders in His Torah and in what He does.

Rashi: יראה לך פנים שוחקות, פנים צהובות - a laughing face, a glowing one - and ויחנך, that He grant you favour. Ibn Ezra takes it as responsiveness to prayer, quoting באור פני מלך חיים (Mishlei 16:15): that when you ask something of Him He receive you and wish to fill the request at once, and וִיחֻנֶּךָּ, that in a time of trouble He be gracious. Sforno makes the ascent explicit and is worth quoting in full: יגלה עיניך באור פניו להביט נפלאות מתורתו וממעשיו, אחר שתשיג צרכיך בברכתו - He opens your eyes by the light of His face to see wonders in His Torah and His works, after you have obtained your needs by His blessing. The Sifrei glosses יאר first as מאור עינים and then, דבר אחר, as the light of Torah, כי נר מצוה ותורה אור. Ramban cites the Sifrei in the name of Rabbi Natan: זה מאור שכינה. The metaphor of the face is carrying the whole rise: the first line gave, the second attends. Five words, twenty letters.

The last line. Seven words, the longest of the three, and it ends with shalom. The rabbis said that Hashem searched and could not find any container able to hold a blessing except peace. That is why it comes last. Without it, nothing you were given in the first two lines stays.

There is a contradiction inside this line, and the tradition did not hide it. Devarim 10:17 says of Hashem אֲשֶׁר לֹא יִשָּׂא פָנִים - He shows nobody favour. Here the priests ask for precisely that, that He lift His face towards you. Berachot 20b has the angels raise the objection to God directly and get an answer. Rashi reads יִשָּׂא as יכבוש כעסו, He suppresses His anger, which tells you what favour means here. It is not fairness. It is forgiveness, and the point of the objection is that those two things genuinely pull against each other.

Rashi: ישא ה׳ פניו אליך - יכבוש כעסו, He suppresses His anger. Bamidbar Rabbah 11:7 reaches a similar place by a different road, taking ישא as לשון הסרה and glossing יעביר כעסו ממך, He removes it, with פניו read as the face of wrath. The clash with אשר לא ישא פנים ולא יקח שוחד in Devarim 10:17 is put in the mouths of the ministering angels in Berachot 20b, and the answer given is that Israel are exacting with themselves and bench over a kezayit when the Torah asked only for satiety - a defence of favour on the grounds of what Israel voluntarily add. Ibn Ezra reads יִשָּׂא as the reverse of אעלים עיני מכם, the face turned towards rather than away, and וישם לך שלום as no harm reaching you from stone, from beast or from enemy. Sforno places the summit here: מנוחת שלום, a rest with no admixture of punishment. And the last mishnah in Uktzin, in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Chalafta, states that the Holy One found no vessel able to hold blessing for Israel except peace. That is the structural argument for the order: property can be taken, favour can be withdrawn and shalom is the only one of the three that keeps the other two. Seven words, twenty-five letters, and the blessing closes.

Now Hashem says what the kohanim are actually doing. They put Hashem’s name on the people - and Hashem is the one who blesses. The kohanim are not magicians and the words are not a spell. They are more like the person who carries a letter to your door.

So if Hashem does the blessing anyway, why does anyone need to stand there and say it? Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael read the last two words differently - Rabbi Akiva takes them to mean that Hashem endorses what the priests have said, Rabbi Yishmael that Hashem blesses the priests themselves. Neither of them makes the priests the source: in both readings the priests say and Hashem blesses. Which leaves the question standing rather than answering it. If the saying is not what produces the blessing, then it is doing something to the person who hears it, or to the person saying it, or to the room. Decide which, and you have decided what you think blessing is.

ושמו את שמי - Rashi, from the Sifrei: יברכום בשם המפורש, which Sotah 38a restricts to בית הבחירה by a gezerah shavah with לשום את שמו שם, the substitute name being used in the provinces. On ואני אברכם Rashi gives both readings from Chullin 49a: first לישראל, ואסכים עם הכהנים - the position of Rabbi Akiva, that the priests bless Israel and the Holy One מסכים על ידם, concurs with them; then דבר אחר, that the them are the priests, which is Rabbi Yishmael’s position, that the priests bless Israel and the Holy One blesses the priests. The Gemara then has to ask where Rabbi Akiva gets a blessing for the priests at all, and answers from ואברכה מברכיך. The dispute is grammatically about an antecedent and theologically about whether a human being can be a conduit at all, and whether the one who blesses is himself rewarded for it. Note also that וְשָׂמוּ here is the same root as וְיָשֵׂם in the previous verse: the priests place the Name, Hashem places peace. And אֲבָרְכֵם is the third appearance of ב-ר-כ in the passage and the only one where Hashem is the subject in the first person.