Kavanot: פרשת ויחי תשפ״ו

This is a re-presentation of פרשת ויחי תשע״ט and is taken almost entirely from Rabbi Yitchak Etshalom’s Ad Ki Yavo Shilo: A Proposal to the Riddle of Judah’s Blessing and Rav Yakov Medan’s Beit-El.

This is the parasha of ברכת יעקב, as he looks to the אחרית הימים, what we’ve often called “the End of History”:

And part of that is the ברכה for Yehudah:

יקה is a poetic term for “gathering”.

So that last phrase is (according to King James), “until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be”.

Who is שילה and where is he coming? And why is Yehudah the ruler עד then? The gemara says שילה is the name of the ultimate ruler of Israel, what we now call משיח:

Artscroll similarly translates this as “until Shiloh arrives”.

The assumption thoughout is that עד means what the Halacha calls “עד ועד בכלל”. It’s not that Yehudah’s rule ends כי יבא שילה, but that it continues and develops עד כי יבא שילה, and that (whatever “that” is) is the אחרית הימים, the culmination of human history.

But still, where does שילה comes from? What does it mean? Onkelos understands it as a poetic form of שֶׁלוֹ, ”his“; “Yehudah will rule until he gets what is rightfully his”:

Sforno understands it as a poetic portmanteau of two words, שׁוּל, ”margin“, and שַׁלוָה, ”peace“:

Similarly, Aryeh Kaplan’s Living Torah translates this as “the final tranquility ”.

But שילה is more familiar as a place name, where the משכן was set up after the conquest of כנען.‎ עד כי יבא שילה then means “until he comes to Shiloh”, with לו יקהת עמים referring to the twelve tribes (who are often called עמים). The question then is, who is “he”? Ibn Ezra proposes that it is a prophecy of the start of the Davidic dynasty:

Or the end of it:

Rabbi Etshalom (based on Rav Medan) feels neither of these fit the “אחרית הימים” sense of these ברכות. So he tries to understand the city of שילה:

Why Shiloh? Where is Shiloh? It’s never been mentioned before in תנ״ך (except earlier in יהושוע as a city in the tribal lands of אפרים). Rav Medan’s insight is that there is a previous “משכן” in Jewish history:

Notice that Yaakov isn’t sleeping in the city of לוז; he’s somewhere on the outskirts of town.

He builds a מזבח but not his promised בית אלקים. What happens to בית אל? Does Yaakov ever build his בית אלקים? There is one mention of בית אל as the site of the משכן:

But that “בית אל” is assumed to be the משכן in שילה, which is a different place from בית אל:

Beit El today is about 16 kilometers south of modern Shiloh, but Rav Medan assumes that we have the locations wrong:

Yaakov’s מצבה and later מזבח were outside the city of לוז. That holy place, the actual בית א־ל, is where Yehoshua would build the משכן. Similarly, Avraham built a מזבח outside the city that would later be called Beit El.

The city would get the name בית אל by association. The “Temple district”, northeast of the city, would be called שילה, presumably from Sforno’s sense of שלוה, like all the contemporary synagogues called “Beth Sholom”. In Rav Medan’s model, Yehoshua builds the משכן in the place that Yaakov built his מצבה, fulfilling Yaakov’s והאבן הזאת אשר שמתי מצבה יהיה בית אלקים.

Rabbi Etshalom proposes, in order to understand עד כי יבא שילה, that it was Yaakov who named the place שילה.‎ ברכת יעקב in this parasha is Yaakov’s vision of the future of his descendants, not a נבואה but a plan. He knows of two נבואות of what lies ahead:

Yehudah would be the leader through the darkness of גלות, and continue to lead them as they return to the Holy Land and finally build the בית אלקים that Yaakov had planned all those years ago.

The בית המקדש and the political center of the country was to be in a single, central location, called בית אל. It’s the role that, centuries later, שמואל and דוד would assign to Jerusalem.

Rabbi Etshalom (following Rav Medan) sees עד כי יבא שילה as an endpoint:

I would strongly disagree. Yaakov’s vision of Yehudah—what we would now call מלכות בית דוד—is to inaugurate the אחרית הימים, but not end there. עד כי יבא שילה‎—עד ועד בכלל.

בני ישראל would leave Egypt and settle the land under Yehudah’s leadership in peace and prosperity forever more.