Go, for Yourself

Hashem told Avram to leave his country, his town and his father’s house and to go to a new land. Hashem did not say which land, only that He would show it to him. Avram had to trust first and see afterwards.

Why would Hashem give an instruction without giving the address? Rashi says the land was kept back on purpose, to make it all the more precious to Avram. Anyone who has changed school, or chosen a direction their friends did not choose, knows that shape: you commit first and only later find out that it was right.

The three phrases move inward and get harder as they go: your land, your birthplace, your father’s house. Rashi asks why Avram is told to leave a place he had already left with Terach, and answers that Hashem was telling him to distance himself further still. On אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ Rashi says the land was deliberately withheld, to make it beloved in his eyes and to give him reward for every word of the command. Rashi also glosses לֶךְ־לְךָ as לַהֲנָאָתְךָ וּלְטוֹבָתְךָ, go for your own benefit and your own good, while a later Chassidic reading hears לְךָ as ‘to yourself’: a journey towards the person Avram was meant to become. The two are closer than they look: what is genuinely good for you and who you actually are turn out to share a destination.

Hashem promised Avram that he would become a great nation, that he would be blessed and that his name would be known. Then Hashem added something different: be a blessing. Avram was not only going to receive good things; he was going to give them too.

Three of the four promises are things Avram gets. The last one, וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה, is phrased as an instruction: be a blessing. Rashi says the blessings were placed in Avram’s own hand, his to give. It is worth sitting with the idea that what you have been given only counts as a blessing once somebody else feels it.

Rashi notes that travel costs a person three things (children, money and reputation) and that the three promises answer them exactly: a great nation, blessing, a great name. The fourth clause breaks the pattern grammatically: וֶהְיֵה is an imperative, and Rashi reads it as הַבְּרָכוֹת נְתוּנוֹת בְּיָדְךָ, the blessings are handed over to you, yours to bestow rather than only to receive. Ramban takes it in a related but different direction: Avram becomes the formula itself, the standard by which others will be blessed. Either way the verse turns a recipient into a source, which is the pivot on which the rest of the Torah’s story of Israel turns.

Hashem promised to be good to anyone who is good to Avram. And at the end comes the biggest promise of all: every family in the whole world will get something good because of him. One man leaving home turns into good news for everybody.

It would be easy to read this as a promise that Avram’s side wins. Look more carefully: those who bless him are spoken of in the plural, and the one who curses him in the singular: the blessers are expected to be many, the hater the exception. And the verse does not end with Avram at all; it ends with all the families of the earth. Being chosen here means being useful to everyone else, which is a far harder job than being favoured.

The verse is carefully asymmetrical: מְבָרְכֶיךָ is plural while וּמְקַלֶּלְךָ is singular, and the curse is given a different verb from the blessing. On וְנִבְרְכוּ בְךָ Rashi gives the plain sense as a man saying to his son, “Be like Avraham”: Avraham becomes the language in which people wish each other well. The nifal form itself is ambiguous and has been read both as passive, they shall be blessed through you, and as reflexive, they shall bless themselves by you; the difference matters, since one makes Avraham a channel and the other a model. הָאֲדָמָה rather than הָאָרֶץ keeps the frame universal, reaching back to the ground of the opening chapters, so that narrowing to one man serves the whole human family rather than retreating from it.