The Journey of Avraham

God could have said lech, "go." Instead He says lech lecha, literally "go for you" or "go to you." What does the extra word add? Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, France, 1000s, the classic commentary on the Torah) answers simply: it is for your good. Here you will not have children. There you will become a great nation.

Notice the order of the verse: land, then birthplace, then father's house. If you were actually leaving, you would leave your father's house first, then your town, then your country. The Torah lists them from the widest to the closest. Each one is harder to leave than the one before. And the destination has no name at all: "the land that I will show you." Avram has to set out without knowing where he is going.

Something to think about. Many of you will spend a year far from home, maybe in Israel. Which is hardest to leave: the country, the community, or the family?

The Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah, the Jewish mystical tradition, taught in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai) reads lecha, "for yourself," more deeply. In it, Rabbi Elazar says the journey was not only to a new place. It was a journey to himself.

The Zohar then reads the rest of the verse the same way. "From your land" means from the part of the world he had been tied to. "From your birthplace" means from the astrology he had practiced, reading his future in the stars at the hour he was born. Put simply: Avram has to leave behind the person his world said he was fated to be, and become who he really is.

Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai quotes an earlier teaching about a number. לֵךְ adds up to 50 (ל is 30, ך is 20), so לֶךְ לְךָ is 100. Why does God's very first word to Avram hint at 100? Because at 100, Avraham would have his son Yitzchak.

Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook (1865 to 1935, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel) wrote about teshuvah, returning to God. He says the first step is not looking outward. It is coming back to your own soul.

Put the two side by side and they point in opposite directions that end in the same place. Avraham had to leave everything familiar to find himself. Rav Kook says the rest of us, when we are lost, find our way by coming back to ourselves. Either way, the real destination is the same: your true self, and through it, God. (Pairing them is our idea, not something either source says.)

And the destination on the map matters too. Rav Kook opens his book Orot by saying the Land of Israel is not just a useful place for the Jewish people to live. It is bound up with who the people is.

Why does the Torah spend so many verses on where Avraham walked, where he camped and where he dug wells? The Ramban (Nachmanides, Spain and the Land of Israel, 1200s) gives a rule that explains all the stories of the Avot (the forefathers).

His clearest example is Avraham's trip to Egypt. Read it next to the story of the Exodus, line by line.

The Gemara (Nedarim 32a, the Talmud's discussion) gives other reasons for the slavery in Egypt, from other moments in Avraham's life. And here is how we would read the Ramban: he is not putting Avraham down. He is saying the stories of the Avot are real stories about real people, and what they do matters, for good and for bad, for everyone who comes after them.

In Hebrew, every letter is also a number: א is 1, ב is 2, and so on up to ת, 400. This is called gematria. The Sages use it to find hints in the Torah's words. Watch what one letter does. Choose a name.

Avram is old and still has no children. God takes him outside at night. Try it yourself: tap the stars to count them.

Then God makes a covenant with Avram in the ancient way: animals are cut in half, and the parties pass between the pieces. Avram cuts a calf, a goat and a ram, but not the birds. Rashi explains: the nations that would rule over Israel are compared to bulls, rams and goats, and Israel is compared to a dove. The animals are cut, a sign that those empires will fade away. The birds are not, a sign that Israel will last forever.

Here is the problem. God says 400 years. The Torah later says the Exodus came after 430 years (Shemot 12:40). And when you add up the generations, the Jews were in Egypt for only 210. Which is it? Rashi shows that all three numbers are true. They just start counting from different points. Tap each event.

So the 400 years of "your children will be strangers" began when Avraham first had a child, not when they went down to Egypt. Yitzchak and Yaakov lived as strangers in Canaan, a land that was "not theirs" yet. The hard slavery itself was much shorter.

Four kings from the east defeat five local kings, including the king of Sedom, and carry off Avram's nephew Lot. Avram goes after them with a small force and wins.

One opinion in the Gemara (the Talmud's discussion of the Mishnah, the first written collection of Jewish law) says the 318 was really one man: his servant Eliezer, whose name adds up to 318. Choose "Eliezer = 318" in the name tool above to check the math. Rashi brings it on this verse.

After the battle, Malki-tzedek, king of Shalem (later Jerusalem) and "a priest of God Most High," comes out with bread and wine. Rashi brings the Midrash that he was Shem, Noach's son, still alive, as you can see on the Tower of Babel timeline.

Then the king of Sedom offers Avram all the captured goods. Avram refuses, "not a thread and not a shoelace," so that no one could ever say the king of Sedom made Avram rich.

The Mishnah (here, Pirkei Avot) says there were ten, but it never lists them. So the commentators had to work them out, and they do not agree. Switch between two lists.

The journey began with a promise that was not only about Avraham's family. As we read it, Avraham leaves a world that tried to make a name for itself at Babel, and God promises to make his name great, so that through him every family on earth would be blessed.