Parshat Devarim
Og’s Bed
The Torah highlights Og’s size by telling us the dimensions (nine cubits by four cubits) and material (iron) of his eres, a word most modern translations (using Sefaria and AlHaTorah) render bed.
Ramban gave HaKetav VeHaKabbalah the first part of his comment, Og need an iron bed because wood would not bear his thrashings while he slept. He also prefers Rashbam’s reading, the eres was his crib rather than his bed. As a baby, R. Mecklenburg thinks the verse tells us, Og would ruin wooden beds, so his caregivers made him an iron one.
His reason for assuming it was a crib suggests his beds were different from ours. While a baby’s crib might be only twice as long as wide plus an amah (nine to four), an adult bed needs to be comparatively longer. He says, where our mattresses today often are not even double the width (maybe we roll more in our sleep than in his times?).
Whatever the answer, for HaKetav VeHaKabbalah, Og had a crib of those dimensions, made of iron, showing what he was like as a baby, leaving the adult Og to our imagination.
How It Is Said Matters, Too
In Devarim 2;16-17, Moshe Rabbenu links seemingly unrelated developments, after all the men of martial age had died, Hashem spoke to me. R. Samson Raphael Hirsch starts his comment with Bava Batra 121b, Moshe was saying he had spent the previous thirty-eight years with a lower level/type of prophecy, as part of God’s aloofness from the Jewish people for their many sins, capped off by the sin of the spies.
Mechilta and Sifra took a step further, Moshe’s exclusion from his highest prophecy potential by virtue of the people’s sin shows he only received that prophecy on their behalf. As long as they were distanced from God, so was he.
Rashbam on the Gemara and Rashi on our verses agree the idea is implicit in the switch from va-yomer (earlier in Devarim) to va-yedabber. Although both mean He said, the latter seems to be a closer and fuller experience. [R. Hirsch doesn’t make the point, but to remember in other places we think of va-yedabbar as a harsher form of speech from God.]
R. Hirsch cites Korban Aharon to Torat Kohanim, who said the verb of amirah pays attention only to what was said, not how it got from speaker to listener. [In my Aruch HaShulchan weekly column, I referred to a professor who thought the first step of understanding any thinker was knowing his library; R. Hirsch, I think, deserves more credit for the expanse of his sources.]
Dibbur speaks of the movement of the lips (in a human), and when applied to Hashem means the verse reports what was said directly to Moshe (not through any intermediary). Back in Shemot 33;11, we were told when Moshe entered the Tent of Meeting, Hashem would dibber to Moshe face to face.
R. Hirsch adds there are various levels of how God’s word reaches people. For Moshe, for a long time, it took a roundabout route, until the people again merited their leader’s direct interaction with the Divine.
Teshuvah Always Helps
At the end of the first chapter, Moshe reminds the Jews of the sin of the spies. The next day, a group insisted they could atone for their error by going straight to Israel. God warned them not to go, warned they would fail. Nevertheless, they persisted, and were destroyed.
Verse forty-five, the penultimate verse of the chapter, says va-tashuvu, you returned, and cried. I have always thought the verse means they repeated their crying to Hashem (Rashi seems not to see any merit in it), but Malbim picks up Ramban’s idea, the Jews repented (did teshuvah, as it were), having seen they were wrong.
He pushes it a clever step further. In verse forty, Hashem told the people to turn towards the desert, by way of Yam Suf, the Red Sea. Malbim says the original decree would have been for them to wander throughout the thirty-eight years, a new place every year. Our verse forty-six points out they stayed in Kadesh for nineteen years, then moved a place a year (twenty moves in nineteen years).
Their repentance did not annul the decree of having to wait and wander, but reduced the burden of wandering by half. Because repentance always helps, somewhat.
The Return of R. David Tzvi Hoffmann
In his introductory remarks to the parsha, R. David Tzvi Hoffmann [whom we did not see throughout the book of Bamidbar] claims Moshe’s speech opening the book sought to drive home two points, the Jews must obey God’s mitzvot without adding or taking away (as 4;1-2 says, to sum up what has come before, R. Hoffmann thinks), and not to worship any other power, to cleave to Hashem alone [a phrase we say so often, we might have become inured to it, but I think more of us than we realize subtly believe in other powers. Let’s see how R. Hoffmann puts it].
First, he points us to 4;3-4, anyone who strayed after Ba’al Pe’or was decimated from the camp, those who stuck with God are alive today. To strengthen our awareness and memory, he says, Moshe takes us back to Sinai, where we had tangible experience of the true Divine, in a way that made clear there is no other.
It's why Moshe stresses the obligation never to forget that day, when Hashem told us the Aseret HaDibberot, but we saw nothing physical. Ideally, it would stop us from worship of any kind of physical being or representation.
Sadly, Moshe prophesied what ended up happening [but didn’t have to happen, it just was very likely, and we sadly misused our free will to fulfill the prophecy], the Jews would turn to idolatry, therefore would be exiled among other nations, where they would take up those nations’ idolatries.
[Why is it, in fact, that Jews so repeatedly accept the culture of the nation around them, including in its negative aspects, and also intermarry? A sad mystery.]
Moshe isn’t done; he also prophecies our eventual return, Hashem will accept our repentance, have compassion on us, and restore us to our Land and our good graces (4;29-31).
It stems from Hashem’s relationship with the Patriarchs, 4;37-38 stress, but can hold onto these privileges if we just keep two “small” principles, to recognize and adhere only to Hashem, and to keep all and only the mitzvot, not add or subtract.
[A personal note: this morning, a fine Jew seemed unusually despairing about the situation in Israel. I wonder-and hope for the day-when all Jews will be viscerally aware we can only win with Hashem’s help, and will engage with all the mitzvot, and only the mitzvot Hashem commanded and Chazal transmitted. Not the place, but R. Hoffmann opened the door to something I struggle with: when you consider the characteristic actions/ ways of life of Orthodox Jews, what part of that is determined by Torah law, or rabbinic law? And what part is more a matter of customs that arose over the years, which people sometimes take more seriously than actual laws? Food for thought.]
Og’s bed, Hashem finally speaking fully to Moshe, partial victories of repentance, and the prime proper focus of Jews. Parshat Devarim, through the eyes of four commentators.
