“I will remember for their benefit the covenant with the ancients, etc.” VaYikra 26:45
After the Torah had mentioned the word וזכרתי in verse 42 referring to the three elder patriarchs who are already in the celestial regions, the Torah now applies the same wording to the covenants concluded with the people at Mount Sinai both in connection with the first and the second set of Tablets; it assures the Jewish people that the promises inherent in those covenants will also not be nullified by G’d entirely. The latter covenants are the ones concluded with the יוצאי מצרים, the participants in the Exodus from Egypt as opposed to the “earlier” ones referred to as ראשונים. This is why the Torah added here: 'אשר הוצאתי אותם מארץ מצרים לעיני הגוים להיות להם לאלוהים אני ה', “whom I took out of the land of Egypt in full view of all the nations, in order to be and remain their G’d, I am the Lord.” it is as if the Torah had added: “and in order to say to them at Mount Sinai: “I am the Lord your G’d who has taken you out of Egypt from the house of bondage, etc.” (Exodus 20,2).
A kabbalistic approach: the words ברית ראשונים, refer to the covenant with the first three emanations, the “first” ones compared to the following seven emanations. Grammatically, this is a construction similar to the one in Job 15,7 הראשון אדם תולד, “are you the first human being ever born?” [The point is that the word ראשון does not have to mean the objectively first, but is a word used relative to other, even identical phenomena which become manifest later in time. Ed.] Seeing that the Torah had mentioned the three “elder” patriarchs not in their genealogical order (compare verse 42) and I had explained that though three patriarchs are mentioned by name that the verse spoke of seven different attributes (emanations), now that the Torah again uses the term וזכרתי, “I will remember,” it refers to the fact that there had been a previous “remembrance” of the patriarchs in order to complete the בנין, the structure [of the six emanations חסד, גבורה, תפארת, נצח ,הוד ,יסוד, which had been not yet been accounted for in the first וזכרתי].
Furthermore, the attribute of Mercy which was alluded to in the extra letter ו in the spelling of the name יעקוב, which is part of the seven attributes alluded to in that verse, is an aspect of the attribute of Mercy which also contains part of the attribute of Justice. In order to reassure the people in exile, G’d promises here that He will particularly remember the first set of “remembrance” in which the attribute of Mercy was portrayed as “self-sufficient,” not diluted through incorporating part of the attribute of Justice. Such an assurance was deemed necessary at this point seeing that the attribute which took the people out of Egypt was the attribute אני, a form of the attribute of Justice, and the declared objective was “to be their אלוהים, G’d,” as the attribute of Justice.
27,8-23: והעמידו לפני הכהן, והעריך אותו הכהן, יעריכנו הכהן. (יב) והעריך הכהן. כערכך הכהן. (יד) והעריכו הכהן, כאשר יערוך אותו הכהן. (יח) וחשב לו הכהן. (כא) לכהן תהיה אחוזתו. (כג) וחשב לו הכהן.
The word הכהן, “the Priest,” occurs a total of ten times in the course of these verses. Our sages in Megillah 23 say that actually that just as when you redeem land you need a quorum of ten people to be present at that occasion, one of whom is a Priest, in order to make the valuation of that piece of land legally valid, so the same applies to the valuation of people (when they had donated the equivalent of their monetary value to the Temple Treasury, as opposed to ערכין where the Torah stipulated the same valuation for people of a certain age group). The Talmud arrives at that ruling by saying that out of the ten times the word הכהן appears here, the first time it is needed to establish the principle that a Priest has an indispensable function here. The other times are all meant to exclude something. We have a principle that if there is more than one exclusion, i.e. if the word which serves as an exclusion occurs more times than necessary this exclusion turns into an inclusion. This is why the Talmud concludes that the nine extra times the word הכהן appears here includes up to nine ordinary Israelites as admissible in that quorum of ten Jews one of whom must be a Priest.
