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midrash session 7
(1)"On the third day Avraham lifted his eyes and he saw" -- (2) and why on the third day and not on the first day and not on the second day? (3) So that there would not be nations of the world saying: (4) He was frightened and he went and he slaughtered his son.
The grammar seems a little awkward in (3); I want this to say "so that the nations of the world would not say", but, as with building IKEA furniture, I have some parts left over if I do that.
Also in (3), the word for "nation" is not "'am" as I expected but "um". Are they just synonyms, or is there some nuance?
In (4), I'm not sure of the grammar where I have "he was frightened". The root is hei-mem-mem, so the final vav is possessive, yes? But there's no prefix, so I can't get "in his fright" -- and anyway, it seems like a verb.
New paragraph: (5) "And he saw the place from afar" -- (6) how was it
seen from afar? (7) It teaches that from the beginning the place was
low down (shallow), as soon as the Holy One blessed be he spoke
to place his Shekhina (in-dwelling presence) upon it and to make it
holy, he said: (8) there is not the path of the king [...? something
about:] in a high place uplifted and beautiful and all will see,
Let me pause here for a moment. The gist of this is that God was going to descend into this place, but is a low place, where no one will see, a suitable place for God's own spirit?
Line 5: (9) Immediately the Holy One blessed be he beckoned to gather the low place, as he (verbed... not sure) to the one place to make a place for the Shekhina. [In other words, he gathered up all the surrounding land to make a mound.] (10) He said to him Avraham to Yitzchak: do you see what I see? (11) He said to him: I see a pretty and praiseworthy mountain and a cloud connected (?) upon it. (12) He said to his boys (the servants): do you see ? (k'lum) (13) They said to him: we do not see these things. (14) He said to them: the nation resembles the donkey! (15) What the donkey sees and his eye does not know, as with them: (16) (a proof text that I can only get the gist of and don't have the citation for).
In (13) I'm not sure why it's "ein" and not "lo" (with an alef). My translation is probably not technically correct.
In (14), it says "'am", not "ha-'am", so that would be "a nation", but the next word looks like a participle and has a "ha-" prefix. I think literally this is closer to "a nation, the resemblers of the donkey!". But that doesn't flow so well.
New paragraph: (17) "And Avraham took wood of the offering and he put [it]
upon Yitzchak his son" -- (18) as soon as (?) he bore his cross on his
shoulder.
Yeah, really. Yitzchak had his cross to bear. There was a citation here to Midrash Rabbah B'reishit (which was written around 425CE), so we looked that up to see if anyone had more to say about this. We didn't find anything of note.
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