Lech Lecha: The War Against the Four Kings (Part One)

Tonight: a study of the first world war in the Torah. It is in chapter 14. Here arises the problem of the war in which Avraham is entangled, whether he wishes it or not. When all is said and done, however much we philosophize about war, we all long for peace — but if we long for peace, it is because there is tension, because there is a war beforehand. Must one pass through war to arrive at peace? It seems so; it does seem so. So much has been philosophized about the problem of peace: why, after all, do animals not devour one another when it is a matter of their own species, while human beings do? It is because, in man, an instinct of domination comes into play — the will to reduce the other to one’s service, to profit from the other’s goods. And the other, when he wants — despite his attitude, despite his limited means — to defend his patch of land, to defend what he has, becomes the object of pursuit; and all this because he wants to keep what he managed to obtain by his own strength, or what destiny bestowed on him.

That is why the idea is to create a dependence of one party on the other, of one state on another — a dependence such that each must avoid war. Not necessarily live in peace, but avoid war, because there are economic interests at stake, and one must always weigh the losses a war would cause against the economic advantages to be drawn from a state of non-war. But you all know what Nietzsche thought: that war is something good. It sets history moving again, it rebuilds things, it puts them in order. We will not go that far. I would recall, all the same, that in the morning we cite, among the attributes of G-d, that He is Ba’al Milchamot, Master of wars.

He is the Master of wars, He is the One who brings them about — but right after that, what do we say? Zorea tzedakot, matzmiach yeshu’ot: it is thereby that He sows righteousness and charity, and thereby that He brings forth salvation. So what attitude should we adopt? This first war — and it is Avraham, in truth, who will give us the answer. War is not indispensable; but when deep convictions are at stake — concerning the foundation of justice and the sanctification of the moral order — there is reason to wage it. Because, like it or not, however much one wishes to reach peace treaties or economic agreements, there will always be factions, extremists within the nations, who will want to pull the blanket to their side, sow terror and seize power by force.

These things — these wars, in a sense — are the doing of man, who is inhabited by jealousy, by the instinct of domination, by ga’avah, that pride in oneself […]. Now, there is the Sefer Milchamot Hashem, the “Book of the Wars of Hashem”: the Eternal declares that it is He who directs them, He who manages them. This is the answer that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave to the nations who claimed that everything they did, everything they accomplished in their lives and in their history, was for the benefit of the Jewish people, so that it might devote itself more fully to its spiritual cause. And He says to them: you sought only your own interest; every battle you fought, you fought in order to profit as much as possible […].

Let us see, then, what the text of this first war says — the war in which Avraham is involved only indirectly, for it is not Avraham who wages the battle, but the four kings: Amrafel, Arioch, Kedorlaomer and Tidal. Amrafel, our sages say, is Nimrod. Nimrod, you will remember, is the one who had Avraham thrown into the fiery furnace, to silence the whole campaign he was conducting in the name of his faith in one G-d. You see the link between Amrafel and amar-pol: the one who “said” (amar) to Avraham, “throw yourself” (pol) into the blazing furnace. From the outset, the text already situates us in an ideological context, a context of faith: a rejection of G-d’s hold over His creation, a rejection of faith in divine providence — and this rejection has had its followers.

Now, who started first? You know — I have already said this about the first verse of Bereshit, or rather the second: “Veha’aretz hayetah tohu vavohu, vechoshech al penei tehom, veru’ach Elokim merachefet al penei hamayim” — “And the earth was formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of G-d hovered upon the face of the waters.” Our sages said that here already were the seeds of a messianic war: that of Babylon, which drove the Jewish people from its land — the one that seized Israel’s power and substituted itself for Israel; that of Media, which likewise sought to destroy the Jewish people in the days of Haman; that of Greece, Yavan — “darkness upon the face” is Yavan — which sought to substitute itself for the genius of the Jewish people. And finally, “upon the face of the deep,” tehom — what is it? It is Rome. Rome is the sum of them all: melech goyim, “king of nations.”

Here, the king of nations means the king of all the peoples — a conglomerate of nations that inherited from Babylon, from Media, from Greece and from Persia, and fused it all together — in which every ferment is gathered: the rejection of Avraham’s world, the challenge to it, the refusal to recognize it, and the will to silence Avraham’s voice. For that voice of Avraham disturbs. It disturbs because it refuses outright to yield, to open itself to concessions, to reforms, to accessory beliefs — if you like — which belong rather to the religions that succeeded one another. For, just as there is nefesh, ruach and neshamah — a living soul, a spirit and a higher soul — in man, so there are the same three on the other side, among our enemies.

They sought to take away our ability to live and to flourish. They sought, too, to silence our spirit, and they assailed our neshamah, our soul: they took it and appropriated it, saying that they are Israel. The people of Israel has confronted, in different eras, these four dangers, these four trials, and has come out of them […]. This is kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of G-d’s Name: to live at any cost in order to defend moral values, spiritual values […]. On this subject our sages say that even those who may have repudiated this path of Israel, within Israel itself — from the moment they fight for the whole community of Israel, they attain a level of holiness for which many people would envy them. And that, indeed, is the case of Lot, as we shall see: Lot, who said of Avraham, “I want neither Avraham nor his G-d” — and here is Avraham, about to risk his life. Since when does one risk one’s life for such a man, when he had separated himself from Avraham and chosen another pole?

And yet one cannot, let us say, cut short every surge and deny it at its root. For of those people who at some point embraced this Jewish faith, these values, who practiced them, who fought for them — even if they later rejected them — through their children and grandchildren, one day or another the root will once again make these values sprout from the earth, the values they defended, that their ancestors defended. That is why we must under no circumstances reject, exclude or cut off. And we are in no position to judge. Now — I have talked too much. What does the text say? “Amrafel melech Shin’ar, Arioch melech Elasar, Kedorlaomer…” Four — why four? You know that on the fourth day, we are told, there were two great luminaries that could not bear to be — to live — together, because there cannot be one crown for two kings. That is the problem; I simply recall it: the sun and the moon. But paradoxically, of this Wednesday, this fourth day, we are told that it is a day on which young children are vulnerable to death by diphtheria. What is the connection? Chenek, strangling: children who are stifled, stifled because of — yes: it is the children who sometimes suffer for the wrongdoing of their parents, and we are not always attentive to all the consequences of our commitments, of our gestures, of our acts.

Indeed, we lost the Garden of Eden, and when we lost it, there came that separation into four streams — always four — toward the four corners of the earth. It is a way of telling us that the scattering had already begun with the sin of man, who also sinned out of pride, wanting to be ke-Elokim, to be like G-d. So the four kingdoms, the four empires that robbed us of that original kingship — the one we enjoyed — and condemned us to exile, are these four kings of whom the text speaks […]. Rashi says that these are peoples who prevented Israel from living once again its title of “beni bechori,” “My firstborn son” — its birthright.

That’s all. But against whom did they make war? They made war […]: Bera king of Sodom […], Birsha king of Gomorrah […], Shinav king of Admah, who indeed draws in the goods of others, the king of Bela […], and Shem’ever king of Tzevoyim. Shem’ever is the one who gives himself wings (ever, a pinion) to fly very far and pursue his prey at all costs, without leaving it any respite […].

So, who started it? Up to this point, Avraham is not in the picture; but the text teaches that we must not be indifferent to everything that happens among the nations. For the Mashiach himself emerges from the war of Gog and Magog — and Gog and Magog are not our peoples; they are peoples of the earth. It is a war between two blocs, between two ideologies, between two camps, and they do not agree on anything at all. They are four against five — we will see later what the five signifies — and four, because the Divine Name itself, the Tetragrammaton, is made of four letters. And all wars are flawed in that they fail to take into account that there is a Creator of the universe, who also cares for this universe, who cares for this extraordinary work He has made and wishes to bring it safely to harbor — through a tiny people, insignificant, yet possessing all the energy, all the potential, all the capacities to bring this divine image, this divine project, safely to harbor.

So, who provoked whom? We do not know; the text does not say. But the midrash says — and there is also a further explanation — that they had accepted, at a certain point and up to a certain limit, being the subjects of these four powers contending for the world, but afterward they no longer wanted it. They had grown up. In reality, these five kings are a few tribal chiefs — chiefs of large tribes around the Yam HaMelach, the Dead Sea — who joined together in the Valley of Siddim, which is the Dead Sea. They allied themselves. For twelve years they served Kedorlaomer, and in the thirteenth year they began with acts of rebellion.

And in the fourteenth year — what happens between Kedorlaomer and the kings with him? In the fourteenth year, Kedorlaomer, together with his kings, comes and crushes this resistance. “And they struck the Refa’im in Ashterot-Karnayim” — here we are facing other tribes: the Refa’im, the Zuzim, the Emim, the Chori, “as far as El Paran, which is by the wilderness”. But who, now, are these? The Refa’im in Ashterot-Karnayim, the Zuzim, the Emim, the Chori — what does the text want? Benno Jacob says that in reality a war was under way between one bloc and another, over which would be the great power that would dominate the world and shape the life and politics of all these peoples. But perhaps no account was taken of a few tribes that are irreducible.

They are extremists; they want no order, they want to submit to nothing. And because they want to submit to nothing, they are capable of every action, of every act, however brutal it may be — in order to impress others and terrify them. And it is they, precisely they, who occupy the front of the stage: for when the kings had gone home and settled in, telling themselves that at last they would have peace, these are the ones who rose up. Ein Mishpat, “the spring of judgment” — a court of justice, that is — hi Kadesh, “which is Kadesh”: a policy, a path that has been laid down and that one would like to sanctify […]. And first of all they strike “all the field of the Amalekites, and also the Emori who dwelt in Chatzatzon-Tamar.”

And it is at that moment that we see the king of Sodom, the king of Amorah, the king of Admah, the king of Tzevoyim: it is now that these five kings appear, who first want to crush these revolts — and the four kings come back onto the scene. This is how Benno Jacob explains that there is a reversal of the situation, by which the four kings regain the upper hand; they force the king of Sodom to flee, and they fall into the bitumen pits that he himself had dug; and the rest flee toward the mountain. And there, they take their ochel, their provisions. What led Benno Jacob to say that this is impossible? Since this is a war between two blocs, one coming from the north and the other in the south — are we to believe that they took the provisions? The provisions would rot along the road before they could be carried all the way up north. No: these are other peoples who were nearby, but who were interested only in abduction, only in theft, and who have no real objective in this war — nothing but terrorism. They do not seek to occupy a country; they seek to take hostages and to exchange them for ransoms, and so on. And it is here that Avraham will make his appearance, because the objective is to reach Avraham somehow and to strip him of the crown he claims.

But one cannot attack Avraham head-on; so one attacks those who no longer recognize themselves in Avraham, and thereby uses them to get to Avraham. In short, our sages raised the question: did Avraham have the right to risk his life to save Lot? After all — “mai chazit dedama didach sumak tefei” — is your blood redder than the other’s? No! Then why did you do it? Well, Avraham did well: heaven does not intervene to save Lot; but here it is not an economic war, not a war of conquest — it is above all a war of values, an ideological war, a war of religion. It is Avraham who is being challenged in what he is, and on that account he must at all costs mobilize his disciples, who number three hundred and eighteen. Yes — it is the numerical value of Eliezer; these are his disciples, say our sages. And because it is the numerical value of Eliezer, there are those who say that he took only Eliezer with him. And they split into two camps at night, to try rather by cunning — because they could not have overcome these four kings — it was rather the use of a superior intelligence that allowed them to triumph over the design of these four [kings]. Of course, I raise the question: how did Avraham, one against four nations, actually triumph?

We are here today; we are the people that has survived every design of these four empires that sought to drown us, to destroy us […]. And that is what the text wished to underline in this chapter. “Vayishma Avram ki nishbah achiv” — Avraham heard that his brother had been taken captive — “vayarek et chanichav,” and he armed his trained disciples. This always raises the question of whether one should suspend the beit midrash, close the yeshivah, take the bachurim (young students) out of their Torah study to go and fight for their brother. For let us not forget that Avraham calls Lot “achiv,” his brother — when he is not his brother. Avraham heard… Since when is he his brother? He was never his brother.

He remains so because until then he had traveled a good stretch of the road with him; he did not denounce Avraham; he stayed upright with him. He did not see eye to eye with Avraham, but he did not bring others into it — he did not bring in Avraham’s enemies — and he did not sell him out. Because of this he can be considered his brother; Avraham can regard him as his brother. Vayarek et chanichav: it is said that he suspended, that he closed his school, his little beit midrash. Indeed, there is a midrash that asks why our fathers were condemned to four hundred years of slavery in Egypt — quite simply because Avraham dared to stop his pupils’ study in the beit midrash in order to draw them into his battle.

But the idea is that one wages the battle against the enemy only through […]. When people were enlisted for combat, when a war truly imposed itself, only upright people were taken — only people of conviction, people who were not gnawed by remorse for sin, not gnawed by atheistic ideas or other convictions. “Vayirdof ad Dan” — and he pursued them as far as Dan. And from there we will witness the recognition, by the other — by the king of Sodom — of what Avraham represented. For when he won his victory, he brought back his hostage, Lot, and everyone who had been with him — which tells us, perhaps, that he made no distinction between Lot and the others taken hostage. No: when he waged this battle, he waged it for all, for all who had fallen victim to this action of these kings — the women and the people as a whole. And the king of Sodom goes out to meet him, when he saw that, in the end, however much one may want to reduce this Jewish people to silence, to reduce Avraham to silence — he is there. He knows how to defend himself when he is given the chance. He knows how to impose his own values.

So a parenthesis opens: “U-Malki Tzedek melech Shalem” — Malki Tzedek, the king of tzedek. But who is this king of tzedek, this king of justice? It is said that he is Shem ben Noach, Shem the son of Noah. Shem ben Noach — that is, the one who lays claim to the heritage of Shem son of Noah, to the ethics of Noah, of Noah’s first child. Well — he was not the first […]. He remained faithful, but he lived only for himself. That is, in sum, he was melech Shalem, king of wholeness: he aspired to this path of uprightness, but he walked it alone, in total discretion — because he considered that he could not face a whole crowd. So what he lived, he lived for himself, in the most complete discretion. But when he sees Avraham triumph, then he can come out of it.

— We didn’t hear you for the last minute. — Sorry? — We didn’t hear you for the last minute. — So, my idea is that this Malki Tzedek, who is none other than the son of Noah, but who lived his moral and spiritual values in total discretion, recognizes himself in Avraham. He recognizes him as the priest of the nations — kohen le-El Elyon, priest of G-d Most High. There is a discussion among the commentators: was it Malki Tzedek who was the kohen, or is it Avraham who is the kohen? The fact is that when one reaches such a level of spirituality that the one does not claim the other’s title — whatever the one grants the other, the other grants in turn to the next — they recognize one another. We are all kohanim: there is not a kohen on one side and an am ha’aretz (an unlearned man) on the other. No: it is mamlechet kohanim, a kingdom of priests.

The Jewish people is a kingdom of priests. Even if there are kohanim who have privileges — recognized privileges — it remains that these kohanim are designated to bless the people of Israel be-ahavah, with love, with love. And when these kohanim, in sum, bless the people […], they must first turn around, to say: we are here. Even in the blessing, there is no condescension; there is only that love. And this is, in sum, a remez, an allusion to the times to come — the culmination of this first world war related in chapter 14 of Bereshit. And there is a “but.”

There is a “but”: the king of Sodom — the king of Sodom comes empty-handed. He presents himself empty-handed; he has failed, he has been held in check. He has seen that Avraham won a resounding victory, and so he says to him: “Ten li hanefesh, veharechush kach lach” — “Give me the persons, and take the goods for yourself.” It is now he who, as it were, after losing the war, asks him to keep the spoils but to give him back the people. “I did not wage this war to profit from your goods. That is not what armed my hand. I have lifted my hand to Hashem, G-d Most High, koneh shamayim va’aretz” — the One who made of heaven earth and of earth heaven, who fused the material into the spiritual and the spiritual into the material — “— that I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap.” A thread — here it is rather a cord: a head cord, a cord around the neck, a piece of jewelry.

And that is what there is in this war: “Even if I have not had the good fortune to benefit from it, I do not want you to say that you compensated me — ‘velo tomar ani he’esharti et Avram,’ ‘lest you say, I have made Avram rich’ — that I built my wealth on the money of your compensation […]. That was not my aim in this war.” In the war this people wages, there is never this will to exploit victory materially; on the level of values — you know it. Indeed, our sages said: in reward for the thread — because Avraham did not accept the thread, the cord — his children were given the mitzvah of tzitzit, the fringes, and of the blue thread of techelet within those fringes. And because he did not take even a sandal strap — and at that time the strap was made of leather — the reward, so to speak, for that sandal strap was the head tefillin. If there is truly a spoil that Avraham brought home from this war waged at a very high level, it is the privilege of wearing these tefillin and wrapping himself in his tallit — wearing these tefillin, of which it is said: “Vera’u kol amei ha’aretz ki shem Hashem nikra alecha” — “all the peoples of the earth shall see,” shall bear witness, “that the name of Hashem is called upon you.” And that envelops — that transparency, the blue of transparency that lies in the azure blue which resembles the sky. It is transparency; it is the effect of transparency that produces this blue — the accumulation of that transparency. Well: to be clothed in this transparency all one’s life. It is prayer — the prayer through which every Jew rises each morning to affirm his identity.

And that is why the milchamot, the wars […] — a recovery of all that seemed to be lost. There — I will stop here, if you have any questions.