HIS WIFE LOOKED BEHIND HIM AND SHE THEREUPON TURNED INTO A PILLAR OF

SALT.

(Bereishit 19:26)

His wife looked behind him – behind Lot.

And she thereupon turned into a pillar

of salt

– By salt she had sinned and by salt she was punished. He [Lot] said to her

"Do you mean to introduce this bad custom, also, into our city?"

(Rashi ad loc, Silbermann

translation)

Now as to the

significance of the prohibition of looking, Rashi

said: "You have sinned with them but are saved through the merit of

Abraham. You are not permitted to see their doom."

There is yet

another matter. Looking upon the atmosphere of a plague and all contagious

diseases is very harmful. Therefore, the leper is isolated and dwells alone. Similarly,

those who have been bitten by mad animals such as a mad dog and other animals

besides, when they look into the water or any mirror, they behold in them the

likeness of the offender, and as a result of this, they did just as the Rabbis

have said in the Tractate Yoma 84a, and as the

students of nature have mentioned. It was for this reason that Lot's wife turned

into a pillar of salt for the plague entered her mind when she saw the

brimstone and salt which descended upon them from heaven, and it cleaved to

her.

I am inclined

to say that when God destroyed these cities the destroying angel stood

between the earth and heaven (I Chronicles 21:16) appearing in a flame of fire,

as did the destroying angel whom David saw. Therefore, he prohibited them from

looking.

In Pirkei d'Rabbi Eliezer (25) there is a similar text: "The

angels said to them, 'Do not look behind you since the Divine Presence of the

Holy One, blessed be He, has descended to rain brimstone and fire upon Sodom

and Gomorrah.' The compassion of Edis, Lot's wife, welled

up for her married daughters who were in Sodom, and she

looked behind her to see if they were following her. She thereupon saw the back

of the Divine Presence, and she became a pillar of salt.

(RaMBaN loc cit, Chavel

translation)

Hagar is Keturah?

Amirah Ilan

Parashat VaYeirah describes several peak moments – both positive and

negative – in Abraham's behavior. One of these is the expulsion of Ishmael,

which has been referred to as the Akedah of Ishmael. Could

it be that Hagar disappears, never to return, from the biblical narrative?

In

next week's parasha, Hayyei

Sarah, we will read that in his twilight years, after burying his wife Sarah

and marrying off his son Isaac to Rivkah, Abraham

returned to married life, this time with Keturah. The

Torah tells us nothing about Keturah – not about

where she came from, nor about her ethnic origin, not

about her appearance, nor about her personality and behavior. The commentators

and darshanim took over where the Torah

remained silent. Study of several excerpts from their works will help reveal

their exegetical considerations as well as their literary and ideological

purposes. My article is concerned with these issues.

As

early as the midrash Bereishit Rabbah we

already find contrasting opinions regarding Keturah's

identity. Was she Hagar? That view would raise the question of why she was

referred to by a different name in the parshiyot

preceding Hayyei Sarah. Or perhaps she was a

different woman, leaving us to wonder why she was called Keturah.

Remember that the names of many of the characters mentioned in the first parshiyot of the Torah are explicitly explained, adding to

our interest in an explanation of Keturah's name. The

midrashic disagreement demonstrates the ambiguity of

the first verse of chapter twenty-five, and that it invites more than one

interpretation.

The

name Keturah is explained along two principle lines. The

first is that "she is fragrant [mekuteret]

with commandments and good deeds." According to this midrash, the name Keturah

is close in meaning to ketoret [incense]

which exudes a pleasant odor. Indeed, the Tanhumah's

version states that "Her actions were as pleasing as incense," while Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer says, "She was perfumed [mekuteret] with all manner of perfumes." The

other view has it that she is like "one who seals up a store and finds it

sealed and knotted," an allusive way of saying that from the moment

Abraham expelled Hagar to the wilderness, she kept herself from having sexual

relations with other men. Later midrashim

replaced Bereishit Rabbah's euphemisms with plainer

language. In Midrash Aggadah,

a late medieval work produced by the school of one of Rashi's

teachers, R. Moshe HaDarshan, we read: "She was

perfumed with purity, for no other man ever came unto her." It is a short

jump to Rashi's own combined formulation: "She

was called Keturah because her deeds were as pleasing

as incense and because she tied up her opening, – from the day she left

Abraham, she did not couple with any man." The Targum

attributed to Yonatan ben Uziel expresses this idea in stronger language: "She

was Hagar, who was bound to him from the start."

Before

leaving this line of interpretation, let us momentarily turn our attention to Bereishit Rabbah's claim that Isaac was the one who

brought Hagar back home to his father after Sarah's death. This midrash does not express hatred,

or resentment, or alienation, or vengeance, or rejection, or any other negative

attitude. Rather, it expresses appreciation and legitimization, and it deserves

to be the subject of an entire separate discussion!

Not

everyone identified Keturah with Hagar. Besides the

alternative view recorded in Bereishit Rabbah, some of the leading medieval exegetes,

including RaShBaM, RaMBaN,

and Ibn Ezra, rejected the Hagar equals Keturah equation. They based their interpretations upon

careful readings of the verses in question. Everyone is invited to study their

comments and decide whether their arguments are convincing.

What

are the implications of my discussion so far?

First

of all, Abraham is portrayed as a man who remains virile into his old age – it

is only then that he most fully realizes the blessing of offspring that he had

received several times in the course of his life. Second, the midrashic tendency to identify unknown characters with

known characters comes to the fore. Third, beyond the possible identification

of Keturah as Hagar, there develop two clear lines of

praise for her – for what she avoided doing and for what she chose to do. In

any case, she is described as a positive character. Actually, these two lines

of praise do not teach us about Keturah, but rather

about the moral world-view of the darshanim

and exegetes. A positive woman is one who remains faithful to her first

husband, even if she is treated terribly, e.g., she is expelled from the home;

or she is a woman who diligently performs the commandments and other good

deeds. Her strength is mostly practical rather than intellectual. Fourth, did

Abraham begin a new cycle of marital life, or did he return to an earlier wife?

Again, we do not have an historical recreation before us, but rather a literary

shaping of the biblical characters. It seems to me to reflect – in part

consciously and in part unconsciously – the values and concepts of the exegetes

more than the actual content of the biblical text.

It

seems to me that all of the darshanim and

commentators agree in viewing Abraham's marriage to Keturah

in a positive light and as a legitimate relationship. More than that: they

engage, in one way or another, in an open exegetical effort to develop a

flattering description of Keturah's personality. Finally,

when they identified Keturah with Hagar, in effect

they made Hagar's expulsion into a more serious affair. Could it be that a

woman who was so faithful to Abraham, or one so involved in the performance of

commandments and other good deeds, be deserving of an expulsion that was

tantamount to a death sentence? There is more than a pinch of criticism of

Abraham and Sarah hiding here.

If

Keturah was Hagar, her marriage to Abraham

constituted a kind of tikkun [repair] of the

terrible deed that Abraham perpetrated against her in parashat

VaYeirah – expulsion to the wilderness, which

amounted to sending her to her death! Since we are not dealing with an

historical record but rather with a literary reading, it is clear that those

who adopted this line of interpretation would think that Abraham was in need of

such a tikkun. It turns out that

disappointment with Abraham's role in Hagar's expulsion was so deep that it

welled up in the interpretation of other sections of the book of Bereishit.

Amirah Ilan is a veteran landscape architect and a guide for

overseas tours

And you shall walk in his ways – He is…, so you should be

Let Me go down and I shall see – From this

verse it seems as if He did not yet know the extent of the wickedness of the people

of Sodom, since it says that He will go

down to see if they have acted on their intentions yet or not. It is forbidden

to think this, for the blessed Lord probes the heart and searches the mind

Rather, the

truth of the matter is this: The blessed Lord undoubtedly knew that the people

of Sodom were greatly

wicked and sinful to the Lord, and that no measures intended to

return them to the good would be of any help or usefulness. However, despite

all of that, He saw with His wisdom that He should give them another chance

before destroying them, for several reasons:

A) In order

that Abraham be aroused to pray for

them when he hears that their fate is not sealed.

B) In order

that all the peoples of the earth

know that God does not desire the death of the wicked man, but rather that he

return from his ways, and so He offered an opportunity of repentance for those

who might be interested.

C) In order to

teach judges not to find defendants

guilty before investigating the matter, as the Tanhuma

says regarding the verse, And the Lord went down to see the town.

D) In order

that Lot understand how

he had sinned by associating with corrupt people. This test will make him

recognize their evil, and as is implied by the other reasons.

The test

consisted of sending the two angels to Sodom, disguised as guests to see

whether they would be greeted with joy or whether they would be treated cruelly

and [the people of Sodom would] try to do them great harm. Their fate would be

sealed in accordance with their deeds. That is why God said to Abraham that

despite His knowing the magnitude of Sodom's outcry and

sins, He still wanted to test them again… I will go down and see whether or

not they persist with their evil deeds and continue to treat those guests

wickedly, inflicting great abominations, as in their outcry that came to Me. If

I see that everyone is dross, altogether foul (Psalms

53:4),

I will completely destroy them, and if not, I will know what to do with them

and perhaps have mercy upon them.

(Rabbi

Y"S Reggio on Bereishit

18:21)

Then the elder said to the younger: "Our

father is old and there is not a man on earth to consort with us in the way of all the world."

(Bereishit 19:31)

She who began

the harlotry would end with harlotry – Their mother began the harlotry, [as it

is written] Then the elder said to the younger: "Let us serve our

father drink…".

The next day came and the elder sister told the younger… – She taught

her harlotry. That is why God took pity on the younger and did not make her

known [as someone who slept with her father], but only [wrote] she lay with him, while regarding the elder it is written, she lay with her father. That one began the

harlotry, and her daughters continued after her, for it is said, Then the

people began to whore after the daughters of Moav.

(Tanhuma Balak 26)

It could be

that Lot's daughters

were naïve and unthinking, both because of their youth and because they

had been born in Sodom and never left

it. The people of Sodom were not

hospitable to visitors; they had nothing to do with anyone else, leaving Lot's daughters

ignorant of geography and of the existence of other nations under heaven. When

they saw the great destruction of Sodom and its

satellite towns, and that they had to flee Tzoar as

well, they believed that the entire world had been destroyed in a flood of

fire. That is why they thought their father had hidden in a cave – because no

city of refuge survived. And so, they did what they did out of good intentions,

in order to preserve life on earth. The Sages praised their deed, and said:

"A person

should always hasten to perform a commandment. In reward for having preceded

her younger sister by one night, the elder merited [having her descendant]

become king over Israel four

generations before her [sister's descendent became king over Israel]" (Nazir 23b-24a).

(Reggio ad loc)

And raise him up there as a burnt

offering – Divine Will,

the Test and its Intention

It is as the

prophet spoke to Israel: Is there

no balm in Gilead is there no

cure there? (Jeremiah 8). And it is

written: Which I did not command, and of which I did not speak, and which

did not enter my mind (Jeremiah 19). Which I

did not command – that is the son of Misha, King

of Moav, for it is said, and he took his firstborn

son who was to rule after him, and offered him up as a burnt offering (II

Kings 3);

and of which I did not speak – that was Yiftah;

and which did not enter my mind – that is Abraham's son Isaac.

(Ta'anit 4a)

If the

intention of this command had been that he slaughter his son and burn him up,

it would have said ve'ha'aleihu sham olah [and offer him up their as a burnt offering]

as Yiftah had spoken ve'ha'alitihu

olah [and I shall offer it up as a burnt

offering] (Judges 11:38), for it was his intention to slaughter

whatever left the entrance to his home… these [Yoftah

and Misha King of Moav] are

the only two instances of the expression offering up a burnt offering that

we find referring to human beings. In both cases the verb alah

case of animal sacrifices, we often find the verb alah

connected with the letter lamed appearing as a prepositional prefix

(e.g., habakar le'olah

– cattle for a burnt offering, etc.) This is because there is no mistaking the

fact that an animal is only brought up on the altar in order for it to be

burned. However, it is possible that a human being is brought up to a high

place for some other purpose, as we shall explain. Thus, the phrase ve'ha'aleihu sham le'olah

may be understood in two different ways:

The first is

that he actually slaughter his son to make of him a

burnt offering. The second, that he bring him up the

mountain for the sake of the burnt offering that Abraham will make there. That

is to say, Abraham will take his son Isaac with him so that he can attend the

sacrifice and learn how to perform offerings honoring God. That is what the

letter lamed is used for in connection with sacrifices, as in and he

sacrifice [la'zevah]

(I

Samuel 16:5)…

so too here, the word le'olah

– for the sake of the burnt offering that you will make there in Isaac's

presence in order to teach him about how it is done.

The blessed

Lord did not command him to sacrifice his son, God forbid, since such a

sacrifice would be a great abomination in the Lord's eyes, for He is

compassionate and merciful and hates acts of cruelty, as the Torah states: You

daughters in fire to their gods (Devarim

12:31),

and as the prophet cried out: and they built high places…to burn up their

sons and their daughters in fire, which I did not command and which did

not enter my mind (Jeremiah 7:31). The Sage said: which I did not

command – to Abraham. However, in His wisdom He saw fit to hide the

intention of the command in ambiguous language in order to impose a great trial

upon Abraham. That is, since Abraham knew the Lord and His ways and loved the

Lord fiercely, and because of this he wanted to imitate Him in His ways of

kindness, forgivingness, and mercifulness, since he knew that these ways were

beloved of the Lord, but at the same time he despised the abominations of his

father's house, since they would attribute all kinds of wicked and cruel deeds

to them, and now he was suddenly commanded – as he understood it – to slaughter

his son, how could he not be shocked to hear this from the mouth of the

merciful Father! His heart would not allow him to perform such an act of

cruelty, an act contrary to nature and reason, without questioning the Lord's

ways. However, our father Abraham did not only love the Lord very much – he

also greatly feared the Lord. One who has fixed this quality in his heart will

not set his thoughts free to investigate with his mind and understanding things

which are mysteries to him. Rather, he drapes the veil of modesty upon his

soul, and will not think about them, even if they contradict his own judgment…These

things are deep and broad and this is not the place to deal with them at

length. Rather, just to say that the purpose of the trial was to actualize the

fear of the Lord that dwelled in his soul in its potentiality. Abraham, in his

greatness, stood this test and perfected that virtue, as Scripture testifies; Now I know that you are one who fears the Lord.

(Rabbi

Y. S.H. Reggio ad loc)

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