"It will be, when you come to the Land which HaShem your God gives you as an inheritance, and you will inherit it and you shall dwell within it - then you shall take from the first of every fruit of the ground that you will bring from your Land which HaShem your God gives you, and you shall place it in the basket, and you shall go to the place which HaShem your God shall choose to cause His Name to dwell therein." (Deuteronomy 26:1-2)
This is the mitzvah of bikkurim (first fruits), which are to be brought to the Holy Temple in Jerusalem ("the place
If one Jew is not yet settled in his inheritance, then the entire nation is defective.
which HaShem your God shall choose to cause His Name to dwell therein"); obviously, for the 440-year period between entering the Land and King Solomon building the Holy Temple (I Kings 6:1), all the offerings were brought to the Tabernacle, which resided for 14 years in Gilgal - for the seven years that it took us to conquer the Land and the seven subsequent years that it took to divide the Land up between the twelve tribes; then, 369 years in Shiloh, and finally 57 years in Nob and Gibeon.
These verses are laden with meaning - and specifically, with the unbreakable connexion between the Land of Israel, the nation of Israel, the Torah of Israel, and the God of Israel. Rashi comments here, sweetly and simply: "This teaches that they were not obligated to bring the first fruits [as an offering] until they had conquered the Land and divided it up [between the tribes]." Until the entire nation was dwelling securely in its Land, no individual Jew, no single tribe, could offer their first fruits to God in the Tabernacle; evidently, then, the bikkurim were never brought to the Tabernacle in Gilgal. The Torah, the Land, and the nation are all indivisible: if one letter is missing from the Torah scroll, then the entire scroll is defective; and if one Jew is not yet settled in his inheritance, then the entire nation is defective.
Rabbi Meir Kahane (H.y.d.) comments on the first verse: "This is our right and our claim to the Land - that HaShem our God gave it to us.... There is an obligation here: you are obligated to inherit the Land and to dwell therein, because God took it from the nations for the sole purpose that you would dwell within it and fulfill the mitzvot, and elevate yourself to holiness in the midst of the Holy Land." (Peirush HaMacabbee, Deuteronomy 26:1)
The inference appears to be that by not dwelling in Israel, the Jew not only spurns God's gift and evades His commandments, he also sins against the nations who were dwelling here before. God expelled them to give the Land to us, and if we refuse to inherit this Land, then all those nations were uprooted from their homes and sent into exile in vain.
The previous parasha, Ki Teitze, concludes with the mitzvah to exterminate Amalek:
"Remember what Amalek did to you when you were on your way out of Egypt - how he came upon you on the way, and attacked all the weak ones who were straggling behind you, and you were tired and weary, and he did not fear God. So it will be, when HaShem your God will grant you respite from all your surrounding enemies, in the Land that HaShem your God gives you as an inheritance to inherit it, wipe out the memory of Amalek from beneath the heavens; do not forget." (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)
The Ibn Ezra (Spain, Morocco, Israel, England, and France, 1092-1167) links these adjacent mitzvot - those of inheriting the Land and of offering the bikkurim, and the immediately preceding mitzvah to exterminate Amalek: "After He said 'when HaShem your God will grant you respite' (Deuteronomy 25:19), God then said that there are mitzvot that apply even before He 'will grant you respite', as soon as 'you come to the Land'; and these are the mitzvot of bikkurim , tithes [v.12-15], inscribing the Torah on the stones , building the Altar [v.5-7], and declaiming the blessings and the curses from the two mountains [v.11-26]."
The Ba'al HaTurim (Rabbi Ya'akov ben Asher, Germany and Spain c.1275-1343) makes the same link, albeit with a different understanding: "Immediately preceding is the mitzvah, 'Wipe out the memory of Amalek', and then immediately following is the mitzvah, 'when you come to the Land', because they were commanded to wipe out the memory of Amalek immediately upon their entering the Land."
What connexion is there between the mitzvah to eradicate Amalek, and the mitzvah to bring the first fruits?
The obvious question, then, is: What connexion is there between the mitzvah to eradicate Amalek, and the mitzvah to bring the first fruits as an offering to the Holy Temple?
The most obvious connexion, perhaps, is the concept of reishit ("beginning"). In his commentary to the first verse of the Torah, Rashi (loosely based on Genesis Rabbah 1:1, 4) explains the word bereishit ("in the beginning") to mean bishvil reishit ("for the sake of the beginning"): God created the universe "for the sake of the Torah, which is called reishit, 'the beginning of His way' (Proverbs 8:22); and for the sake of Israel, who are called reishit, 'the beginning of His harvest' (Jeremiah 2:3)."
Rabbeinu Bechayye (late 13th century-1340, Spain) develops this theme: "The Torah speaks of the first fruits, which are called reishit , and obligated Israel, who are called reishit, to go to the place that is reishit, the beginning of the beauty of the world, as it says, 'Zion, the epitome of beauty' (Psalms 50:1), there to give to the kohen who is the beginning of the Divine Service, the first of those who serve in sanctity, and to bring to him the bikkurim, of the beginning of all the fruits of the ground." (Rabbeinu Bechayye, introduction to parashat Ki Tavo)
Intriguingly, Amalek is also called reishit by the heathen prophet, Balaam: "Reishit [the beginning] of the nations is Amalek - though his end will be eternal annihilation." (Numbers 24:20) This reference to Amalek as reishit alludes to the fact that Amalek was the first nation to fight against Israel (Targum Onkelos, Targum Yonatan, Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra). And Amalek's annihilation represents God's and Israel's final triumph over all evil, which in turn heralds the greatest rejoicing in history. As long as Amalek still exists in the world - though he be powerless, anonymous, unknown - God's sovereignty is defective: after Israel's victory over Amalek in the initial desert skirmish, Moses built an altar, saying, "For the hand is on the Throne of HaShem." (Exodus 17:16) Two words in this phrase are deficient: "throne" appears as kes (kaf-samekh), instead of kisse (kaf-samekh-alef); and HaShem appears as yud-heh, instead of yud-heh-vav-heh. "God swore that His Name is incomplete and His Throne is incomplete until Amalek's name be entirely eradicated; and when his name will be eradicated, then His Name will be complete and His Throne will be complete." (Rashi on Exodus 17:16; Tosafot, Brachot 3a, s.v. v'onin yehey shmeih hagadol mevorakh) "Yours, O HaShem, is the Kingdom" (1 Chronicles 29:11) - "This refers to Amalek" (Brachot 58a), on which Rashi comments: "By means of HaShem's war against Amalek, His Throne becomes exalted."
King David described the messianic age with the words, "HaShem reigns - exult, O earth! Rejoice, multitude of islands!" (Psalms 97:1), on which Rashi comments: "HaShem reigns – when he takes the kingship away from Amalek." Rashi's comment seems to echo Midrash Tehillim (loc. cit.):
"This teaches that there is no rejoicing in the world so long as Edomite reign continues; and God's Name is incomplete and His Throne is incomplete, as it says, 'For the hand is on the throne (kes) of HaShem (yud-heh)'. And as soon as God will reign in the midst of the fourth exile [i.e., Edomite/Roman exile, the one that is currently drawing to its close], then immediately 'HaShem will become King over the whole world - on that day HaShem will be one and His Name will be one.' (Zechariah 14:9)"
So the extermination of the reishit - Amalek, the first among nations - demonstrates God's sovereignty over the world, and that is the greatest cause for rejoicing.
We perfect the world, we bring Mashiach and final redemption closer.
And this links in directly with the mitzvah of bikkurim: when the farmer sees the first fruits of the season's harvest ripen, after having tilled the land, sown the seeds, watered the shoots, nurtured his crops, watched them mature and bloom - he can easily be moved to arrogance, to the feeling that he has achieved this miraculous sprouting of nature. By bringing the first fruits - the choicest of his crop - to the Holy Temple and offering them on the altar to God, he recognizes and demonstrates God's mastery and sovereignty over the natural world.
These two mitzvot - exterminating Amalek and sacrificing the bikkurim on the altar - both demonstrate recognition of God's control over the world. True, offering the first fruits on the altar is far less dramatic, and demands far less self-sacrifice, than going to war to hunt down Amalek and destroy all physical and spiritual traces of him; but by juxtaposing these two mitzvot, as Ibn Ezra and the Ba'al HaTurim note, the Torah subtly reinforces the notion that we perfect the world, we bring Mashiach and final redemption closer, not only through dramatic and epoch-making acts, but also through the quiet, day-to-day actions that the Jew is required to carry out to demonstrate his unflinching faith in the God Who created and governs the world.