This week’s Parsha contains many mitzvos, with seemingly random juxtaposition. Indeed, we need to rely on the Midrashim to understand what is going on.
One mitzvah is that of yibum, called levirate marriage. It works this way: if a married man dies without children, one of his brothers or other male relatives should marry his wife so the deceased’s name not be lost to history.
Devarim 25:6 seems rather forthright: “The first-born who shall be born shall arise in the name of the deceased brother, and his name shall not be erased from Israel.” Simply read, when the woman marries her dead husband’s brother, they are to give their first son the deceased’s name. But that is not what it means.
Chazal learn from here several laws. “First-born” teaches that the mitzva prioritizes the eldest brother for this. “Who shall be born,” relates that the woman must be able to bear children and not sterile. “His name” which is not to be lost, refers to the lands he possessed as an inheritance.
The great message here, as we approach the New Year, is that with all our experience and knowledge, we must still seek guidance from Hashem.
The Mesorah, our tradition of understanding Torah going back to Sinai, is the way to understand Hashem’s Torah, not by simply using our own ways of thinking. We shouldn’t try to figure out what G-d wants from us; we should ask.
