Devarim

Shabbat Chazon

God said to me: “Do not press Moab and do not let yourself come into warfare with him, for I will give you no inheritance from his land, for to the sons of Lot have I given Ar as an inheritance.” Formerly the Emim dwelt there, a great and numerous people and tall like Anakites…The Horim formerly dwelt in Seir, when the sons of Esav were to drive them away. They destroyed them from before them and settled down in their place, just as Israel had already done with the land of its inheritance that God had given them.

2:11 - 13

1.

The description of who had been living in those parts previously is meant to demonstrate to the people that if at present there were Edomites and Moabites or Ammonites, this was only because these lands had been assigned to these nations as an inheritance by God to the descendants of Esau and Lot…

Moshe Alshich(16^th Century)

2.

Esau and Moab both destroyed and laid waste more territory than they needed for their own settlement, in order to destroy all those who dwelt there previouvsly and deter them from rising up and reclaiming the land. Both Moab and Esau did not settle the entire (original) area of the Horites and the Emim whom they had destroyed…

Sforno (15^th Century)

3.

Moses admonished the Jewish people when he himself was close to death, even though he had taught and admonished them on a daily basis during all the years he had led them. Every leader of subsequent generations ought to model himself and after Moses in this regard. ..it is not by accident that all the Torah scholars of (other) generations left home, i.e. exiled themselves in order to study.

Shney Luchot Habrit (16^th Century)

4.

What is the meaning of these reports on the history of other nations, of those that conquered other lands and of one nation displacing another? This is to indicate that Israel’s uniqueness does not consist of historical events. All of human history – the history of Israel and the history of the other nations – is either a matter of history taking its course or else one of Divine direction. And if Israel is special, it is not because of its having conquered the land, or having inherited it or having taken the place of other nations, for whom, too, God displaced other nations, so that they might inherit their lands. There is, therefore, profound significance in the fact that this passage is read on Shabbat Chazon, before the 9^th of Av.

Yeshayahu Leibowitz (contemporary)

5.

Beginning a new book of Torah is a good time to begin a new page in our own spiritual journey. Identifying “religious” with just one section of Jewish opinion that they are unable to believe can only alienate thoughtful Jews from their own heritage. Torah speaks in human language, so that we may understand it, say our Rabbis. It also speaks in different ways to different people, in the hope that no one who studies Torah with serious religious intent should have to say, “The Torah does not speak to me at all.”

Lawrency Hoffman (Contemporary)