T

wenty-two years have 
passed since Jacob fled 
his brother, penniless 
and alone; 22 years have passed 
since Esau swore his revenge 
for what he saw as the theft of 
his blessing. Now 
the brothers are 
about to meet 
again. It is a 
fraught encoun-
ter. Once, Esau 
had sworn to kill 
Jacob. Will he do 
so now — or has 
time healed the wound? 
 Jacob sends messengers to let 
his brother know he is coming. 
They return, saying that Esau 
is coming to meet Jacob with a 
force of 400 men — a contin-
gent so large it suggests to Jacob 
that Esau is intent on violence. 
Jacob’s response is immediate 
and intense: “Then Jacob was 
greatly afraid and distressed.
” 
Gen. 32:8
The fear is understandable, 
but his response contains an 
enigma. Why the duplication 
of verbs? What is the difference 
between fear and distress? To 
this, a Midrash gives a profound 
answer:
Rabbi Judah bar Ilai said: Are 
not fear and distress identical? 

The meaning, however, is that 
“he was afraid” that he might 
be killed; “he was distressed” 
that he might kill. For Jacob 
thought: If he prevails against 
me, will he not kill me; while if 
I prevail against him, will I not 
kill him? That is the meaning of 
“he was afraid” — lest he should 
be killed; “and distressed” — 
lest he should kill. 
The difference between being 
afraid and distressed, according 
to the Midrash, is that the first 
is a physical anxiety, the second 
a moral one. It is one thing 
to fear one’s own death, quite 
another to contemplate being 
the cause of someone else’s. 
Jacob’s emotion, then, was two-
fold, encompassing the physical 
and psychological, the moral 
and the material.
However, this raises a fur-
ther question. Self-defense is 
permitted in Jewish law. If Esau 
were to try to kill Jacob, Jacob 
would be justified in fighting 
back, if necessary at the cost of 
Esau’s life. Why then should this 
possibility raise moral qualms? 
This is the issue addressed by 
Rabbi Shabbetai Bass, author of 
the commentary on Rashi, Siftei 
Chachamim:
“One might argue that Jacob 

should surely not be distressed 
about the possibility of killing 
Esau, for there is an explicit 
rule: ‘If someone comes to kill 
you, forestall it by killing him.
’ 
Nonetheless, Jacob did have 
qualms, fearing that in the 
course of the fight he might kill 
some of Esau’s men, who were 
not themselves intent on killing 
him but merely on fighting his 
men. And even though Esau’s 
men were pursuing Jacob’s men, 
and every person has the right 
to save the life of the pursued 
at the cost of the life of the 
pursuer, nonetheless there is a 
condition: “If the pursued could 
have been saved by maiming a 
limb of the pursuer, but instead 
the rescuer killed the pursuer, 
the rescuer is liable to capital 
punishment on that account.
’” 
Hence Jacob feared that, 
in the confusion of battle, he 
might kill some of Esau’s men 
when he might have restrained 
them by merely inflicting injury 
on them. 
The principle at stake, 
according to the Siftei 
Chachamim, is the minimum 
use of force. The rules of 
defense and self-defense are 
not an open-ended permission 
to kill. There are laws restrict-

ing what is nowadays called 
“collateral damage,
” the killing 
of innocent civilians even if 
undertaken in the course of 
self-defense. Jacob was dis-
tressed at the possibility that in 
the heat of conflict he might kill 
some of the combatants when 
injury alone might have been all 
that was necessary to defend the 
lives of those — including him-
self — who were under attack.
A similar idea is found in the 
Midrash’s interpretation of the 
opening sentence of Genesis 
15. Abraham had just fought a 
victorious war against the four 
kings, undertaken to rescue 
his nephew Lot, when God 
suddenly appeared to him and 
said: “Do not be afraid, Abram, 
I am your shield. Your reward 
will be very great’” (Gen. 15:1). 
The verse implies that Abraham 
was afraid, but of what? He had 
just triumphed in the military 
encounter. The battle was over. 
There was no cause for anxiety. 
On this, the Midrash comments:
Another reason for Abram’s 
fear after killing the kings in 
battle was his sudden realiza-
tion: “Perhaps I violated the 
divine commandment that the 
Holy One, blessed be He, com-
manded the children of Noah, 
‘He who sheds the blood of 
man, by man shall his blood be 
shed.
’ For how many people I 
killed in battle.
” 
Or, as another Midrash puts it:
Abraham was filled with 
misgiving, thinking to himself, 
“Maybe there was a righteous or 
God-fearing man among those 
troops which I slew.
” 
There is, however, a second 
possible explanation for Jacob’s 
fear — namely that the Midrash 
means what it says, no more, no 
less: Jacob was distressed at the 
possibility of being forced to kill 
even if it were entirely justified.

MORAL DILEMMAS
What we are encountering here 
is the concept of a moral dilem-
ma. This phrase is often used 

Physical Fear, 
 Moral Distress 

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks 

56 | DECEMBER 8 • 2022 

