Parashat Lech Lecha opens with G-d’s first call to Avram, when he was 75 years old, telling him to leave Haran, his familiar surroundings, and his family home, and to make Aliyah. It concludes with the 99-year-old Avraham (no longer Avram) and his wife 89-year-old wife Sarah (no longer Sarai), beginning to found a family: though Sarah was still childless, her handmaid Hagar had already borne Avraham a son, Ishmael.
Much had happened in the 24 years that Parashat Lech Lecha spans, and it can be summarised in one sentence: By the end of the Parashah, the Jewish nation had come into existence.
Avram and Sarai were no longer Avram and Sarai, they were Avraham and Sarah. They were no longer a childless couple living on someone else’s country, they were living in their own country. They had experienced exile to Egypt and return to Canaan, and they had gone through a war which Avram waged in order to rescue his nephew Lot who had been snatched and was being held captive by a hostile power.
And at the end of the Parashah G-d forged His Covenant with Avram and Sarai, changing their names to Avraham and Sarah; as the physical sign of the Covenant Avraham circumcised himself and all the males of his household.
And G-d promised Avraham and Sarah that they would have a son whom they would call Yitzchak (He-will-laugh). They were on their way to founding the Hebrew nation.
The Haftarah for Parashat Lech Lecha is abstracted from Isaiah 40:27-41:16:
“Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, ‘My way is hidden from Hashem, and my justice passed over by my G-d’? Would you not have known, even had you not heard it, that the G-d of Eternity, Hashem, Creator of the ends of the earth, neither wearies nor tires? - His wisdom is beyond understanding”.
Why did our Sages choose this section as the Haftarah for Parashat Lech Lecha? The connexion is not immediately apparent, though various explanations have been given:
Rabbi Dr Joseph Hertz (Chief Rabbi of the British Empire 1913-1946) and the ArtScroll Chumash both suggest that just as Avraham was summoned by G-d and given the mission of bringing His will to fruition and His message to the nations, so too the Haftarah builds upon this theme and encourages Israel to maintain its optimistic spirit even in the face of its own failure and exile.
Rabbi Binyamin S. Moore in the Margolin Chumash offers a very different link: he suggests that the connexion is the words, “Who aroused from the east [the one whose] righteousness [was constantly] at his feet? [It was He, too, Who] placed nations before him and [let him] subjugate kings; He let his sword [slay enemies] like dust, and his bow [kill many that fell] like beaten straw. He pursued them [and] crossed [every crossing] safely, [even on] paths he had never used” (Isaiah 41:2-3).
The Talmud (Ta’anit 21a) explains this as referring to Avraham and his victory over the four kings, which is recorded in Parashat Lech Lecha (Genesis 14).
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808-1888) offers yet another reason for this Haftarah: he notes “the parallel between the fate and mission of Israel with the moves towards victory of its great ancestor Avraham”.
Rabbi Hirsch continues that “the isolation in the midst of a world which did not understand him; the long drawn-out patient endurance until even a very first beginning of the fulfilment of the promise he had received; the rock-like confidence; the glorious victory over the all-conquering kings of the nations drunk with their own victories; the still more glorious victory which shines forth from the summit of Moriah through the ages, of his self-perfection and in winning his son to the same lofty height of perfection - these are the prototype of the calling and fate of his descendants and the ultimate victory of the principle they carry through the world throughout the ages”.
These are all good, solid connexions between Sedrah and Haftarah.
But the fact that different commentators offer such different explanations demonstrates that the connexion between Parashah and Haftarah is not at all clear.
And so I venture an entirely different perspective.
And for this perspective, we have to go back 15 weeks, all the way back to Parashat Pinchas on 23rd Tammuz last year (19th July).
That was the first Shabbat of the Three Weeks, the period of mourning for our destroyed Holy Temple and stolen Land; for those three Shabbatot, the Haftarot are theתְּלָתָא דְּפֻרְעָנוּתָא - the three Haftarot of Castigation, the dire, doom-laden prophecies from Isaiah and Jeremiah, warning Israel of the horrific consequences of violating G-d’s Torah.
And then, for the next seven Shabbatot, the final seven Shabbatot of the year, the Haftarot are the שֶׁבַע דְּנֶחֱמָתָא - the seven Haftarot of Consolation, all drawn from the later chapters of Isaiah, depicting the glorious future that awaits us when we return to G-d and return to Israel. The magnificent time of Redemption, which for Isaiah was the distant future and which for us is current events.
And I suggest that the Haftarot of Consolation do not finish with the year’s end. I suggest that these Haftarot of Consolation continue for the first three Parashot of the Torah - Bereishit, Noach, and Lech Lecha.
These three Haftarot are respectively Isaiah 42:5-43:10, 54:1-55:5, and 40:27-41:16.
This means that the Prophetic consolation after the Three Weeks lasts well into the next year. We receive Isaiah’s healing message of consolation not for seven weeks, but for ten weeks.
Parashat Lech Lecha brings us into the Land of Israel, and being established in our Land is the actualisation of the consolation.
The first of the Haftarot of Consolation (Parashat Va-et’chanan) is Isaiah 40:1-26, and the direct continuation is this week’s Haftarah, Isaiah 40:27-41:16.
I suggest that it is no idle happenstance that Parashot Noach and Lech Lecha are invariably the first two Shabbatot in the month of Marcheshvan. And the Midrash (Yalkut Shimoni, 1 Kings 184) tells us that just as G-d gave the Hasmoneans to re-dedicate the second Holy Temple in the month of Kislev, so too in the future He will give us to build the third Holy Temple in the month of Marcheshvan.
This is the ultimate consolation after the Three Weeks of mourning for our plundered Land and destroyed Holy Temple.
After Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, after our sins have been forgiven, our father Avram enters the Land of Israel and we are ready for the final consolation and reconciliation with our Father Who is in Heaven.