If You Can Beat Them
If You Can Beat Them
Before his passing, Yaakov rebuked Shimon and Levi and cursed their rage, "For in their wrath they killed a man…" The Midrash (cited by Rashi) explains that the "man" that Shimon and Levi are said to have killed is actually a reference to quite a few men: the entire adult male population of Shechem. Yaakov calls all of them "a man," because before G-d, to defeat all of Shechem was as simple as defeating one man.
Why did Yaakov pay tribute to the ease with which Shimon and Levi—endowed by G-d with extraordinary strength—decimated the population of Shechem, while he was rebuking them for actions? Implied is that this extraordinary strength was in fact part of the reason for Yaakov's displeasure with Shimon and Levi's rage-driven actions.
One explanation for this is that Yaakov agreed with Shimon and Levi that it was justified to punish the people of Shechem. He was only critical of their deceitful means of doing so. They promised the people of Shechem peace if the entire male population would circumcise themselves, but then exploited the weakness and pain of the men of Shechem to attack them in violation of their agreement. Such deceitfulness was a disgrace for Yaakov and for the belief-system for which he stood.
Yaakov therefore rebuked Shimon and Levi saying that, considering their ability to wipe out the entire city with the ease of killing one man, they had no need to deceive them. They could have confronted the people of Shechem for their crimes directly and punished them honorably. "Cursed be their rage!" said Yaakov, for it blinded them from recognizing their ability to mete out punishment on the people of Shechem without resorting to trickery.
—Likkutei Sichos, vol. 5, pp. 151-152
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פליען עם ענני שמיא "Flying with the Clouds of Heaven" (Parshas Chukas, 5751)
12.23.2015
If You Can Beat Them
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