Then Yaakov called for his sons and said,
"Assemble yourselves and I will tell you what will befall you in the End of Days..."
[art by Yoram Raanan]
וַיְהִי יְמֵי-יַעֲקֹב שְׁנֵי חַיָּיו--שֶׁבַע שָׁנִים וְאַרְבָּעִים וּמְאַת שָׁנָה
vayehi yemei-Ya'akov shnei chayav sheva shanim ve'arba'im ume'at shanah
Ya'akov's days, the years of his life, were 147 years.
This Parsha is "closed," i.e. we do not have the customary separation of words, lines or letters between the last portion and this one. There are two reasons for this:
- The exile was about to start and the hearts of the Benei Yisrael became "closed" due to the progressively increasing difficulties in their daily lives.
- Ya'akov wanted to compensate for their feeling that a deterioration in their lives was about to take place by revealing to them the glorious future in store for them after the redemption.
However, he was unable to do so. In other words, Ya'akov's channels of communication with the celestial regions had become "closed." H had announced that he would reveal to them "what will befall you in the end of days" (49:1). When when reading what follows it becomes clear that this is not what Ya'akov announced. The "end of days" Ya'akov had in mind was the exile in which we find ourselves now, not the exile in Egypt or Bavel. Seeing that Ya'akov was the third of the patriarchs it is reasonable that his life should have foreshadowed experiences of the Jewish people during their third exile, i.e. our exile. At any rate, G-d would not let him reveal these matters and even Dani'el (Dani'el 12:9 states that these matters remained sealed secrets until the end of that exile. Chazal felt that Dani'el had known about these developments and that is why the angel had to tell him to obscure the matter (Dani'el 12;4).
Yeshayahu said something similar in Yeshayahu 9:6 where we read: לםרבה הַמִּשְׂרָה וּלְשָׁלוֹם אֵין-קֵץ. The final letter ם (mem sofit) in the middle of the word לםרבה where we should have had a regular "open" letter מ (mem). is a warning that whatever the areas in which Yisrael excels, these will not be in evidence during their exiles. The prophet seems to be saying that even attempts to hasten the redemption through Torah-study, through establishing G-d's authority on earth, etc., will not affect G-d's timetable. It is interesting that we find exactly the reverse phenomenon in Sefer Ezra (Nechemyah 2:13) where an open letter מ (mem) appears at the end of a word, i.e. בְּחוֹמֹת יְרוּשָׁלִַם אֲשֶׁר הֵמ פְּרוּצִים, "the walls of Yerushalayim which are broken down." A Midrash comments on this verse that this is an allusion that whereas when the walls of Yerushalayim which are now "open," i.e. broken down, were still "closed," i.e. intact, such as during the period of the Temple, G-d's authority which had been "closed", i.e. not in evidence during that period, will re-emerge and reassert itself as a result of the Jewish people learning their lesson during a harsh exile. Just as the two letters מ (mem) in the verses quoted from Yeshayahu and Nechemyah respectively contain allusions to maters hidden from us, so the unusual absence of a division between the two portions Vayigash and Vayechi also contain allusions to matters hidden from us, i.e. hidden from Ya'akov.
There is a Midrash according to which Ya'akov saw that the names of this twelve sons (the future Tribes of Yisrael) contained between them all the letters of the alphabet except the letters ח (chet) and ט (tet). He concluded that this was a hint that none of these sons were guilty of a sin (chet). This prompted him to reveal to them what he knew about the period preceding the final redemption. When he re-examined the letters in the names of the sons and realized that the letters ק (qof) and צ (tzadi) also did not appear in the names of any of them, he reconsidered and decided that his sons were not fit to have this information revealed to them. He therefore desisted, and this is why this portion is "closed."
May HASHEM continue to enlighten us with the Light of His Torah.
- Bachya
