A Thought on Parshas Lech Lecha

"...va'heh'emin b'HaShem va'yach'shav'eha lo tzedaka..." "...and he trusted HaShem, and He considered that righteousness..." (15:6) The flow of this passage requires explanation. HaShem tells Avram not to fear anymore. He promises him great rewards in the form of a homeland, and then promises him innumerable descendants. Avram trusts in HaShem, and then the verse says that "HaShem considered that to be righteousness" on Avram's part. Then, HaShem instructs Avram to bring forth offerings. He does, the sun sets, he gets sleepy, then gets scared. The sequence here needs clarification. Avram is told not to be afraid, but he ends up getting afraid. HaShem promises him things, and he believes HaShem, and for this, HaShem considers him righteous. But then, Avram gets scared. The Gan ponders what appear to be, at first, inconsistencies and paradoxes here. First, in our verse, he asks, why would HaShem regard Avram's trust in Him as a display of righteousness - isn't it easy to believe the One Whom one believes in?! Second, whenever HaShem speaks to Avram, we do not find that Avram ever gets scared. Even as he is encountering a vision, a dialogue with, HaShem, he is not scared. When he obeys HaShem's instructions to bring offerings and then big predatory birds swoop in, Avram shoos them away and is not scared. Then, it gets dark, he gets sleepy, and Avram gets scared? Surely he wasn't scared of the dark! If he was righteous for trusting in HaShem, why the sudden fear when sun sets? Avram is not even afraid after his old-age circumcision, despite the danger and pain that he was in. Why be scared now? The Gan offers this interpretation: "He considered that righteousness" is not a reference to HaShem, but is a reference to Avraham. The verse means he, Avram, not He, HaShem. Avraham accepted HaShem's pledge to reward him with a homeland and bless him with descendants, and he considered that promise a righteous covenant. Tzedaka can mean just, and it can be charitable. The charity was that Avram would be granted children despite his old age. The justice was that they would then be able to survive as a people, and endure through having a land of their own. So, although some other commentaries (see Rashi) interpret the verse as " He (HaShem) considered Avram's trust a righteous act", the Gan reverses the object and the subject here, and sees it as a reference to Avram's perception of HaShem's promises to him. Now for the fear. The Gan suggests that all went well, as Avram brought forth the offerings, until the birds showed up and he shooed them away. That unexpected event triggered a feeling in him that although he trusted that he would have descendants and that they would inherit a homeland, there would also come a time when they, and their land, would be threatened. He saw in the appearance of the predatory birds a symbol of future threats. While still trusting and not worried about himself, he projected ahead with worry for the welfare of his future progeny. He did not want his eventual children to suffer! He did not want them to experience threat and danger. This worry, writes the Gan, led to Avram feeling faint. Although it was still daylight, his world began to darken. That dark pallor evoked more worry in him, for now he felt that his own ability to think clearly and to interpret the events around him was fading. The passage then explains his subsequent prophecy, wherein HaShem structures the symbolic meaning of the predators' appearance, as well as the symbolic meaning of Avram succeeding in shooing them away. There would indeed come a time when his descendants would be threatened yet that would be temporary. The Jewish nation would later ascend and arise victorious. For Avram, the worry and fear were not born out of doubt, but out of a momentary sense of uneasiness over how to understand the vision which he had apprehended. Not being able to think clearly troubles the heart, the mind and the soul. When a person cannot make sense of his experiences, especially when he knows that HaShem intends for those experiences to convey a message, one's inner world looses its luminosity. What greater shock to a prophet than to find that he cannot make sense of a prophecy! It must be worse than a radiologist seeing chiaroscuro shadows but no shapes. So, HaShem provided Avram with the interpretative meaning of those confusing symbols, which was also an act of righteousness from Above. Good Shabbos, D Fox