Posts

Showing posts from November, 2020

Bereishis/Vayera - God will see

In parsha Vayera God informs Abraham about His plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with the following expression:   אֵֽרֲדָה־נָּ֣א וְאֶרְאֶ֔ה הַכְּצַעֲקָתָ֛הּ הַבָּ֥אָה אֵלַ֖י עָשׂ֣וּ ׀ כָּלָ֑ה וְאִם־לֹ֖א אֵדָֽעָה׃ I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached Me; if not, I will know” . An interesting question to ask is how exactly God intends to "go down" and "see". Isn't God everywhere, and doesn't He already see and know everything, even before it happens? What do we learn by knowing that God  intends to "go down" in order to "see" what's going on?  Upon closer observation, we notice that the concept of looking, seeing, appearing, and the like, appears throughout the parsha, beginning with the name of the parsha itself: וַיֵּרָ֤א  Vayera, meaning "appear", as in God "appeared" to Abraham. Let us now go down line by line and make a list of every sentence, where