44 | DECEMBER 12 • 2024

J

acob, on his way home after
an absence of 22 years, hears
that Esau is coming to meet
him with a force of 400 men. He is
terrified. He knows
that many years earlier,
his brother was merely
waiting for Isaac to die
before he took revenge.
His approach with
so large a contingent
suggested to Jacob that
Esau was intent on
violence. He prepares
himself. As the Sages noted, he made
three types of preparation. First, he
made provisions for war, dividing his
household into two camps in the hope
that one at least would survive. Then
he prayed to God to protect him.
Then he sent gifts, hoping to allay
Esau’s anger.
One sentence in particular caught the
attention of the Sages: “Jacob was very
afraid and distressed.
” Genesis 32:7

One of these two phrases is surely
superfluous. If Jacob was afraid, he
was distressed; if he was distressed, he
was afraid. Why use two descriptions
if one would do? This provided the
springboard for a highly significant
Midrash:
“Jacob was very afraid — lest he be
killed. He was distressed — lest he
kill.” Rashi
Jacob’s fear was physical — the
fear of death. His distress, though,
was moral — the fear that he himself
might be forced to kill his brother. But
this, as the commentators note, is puz-
zling. There is a rule in Jewish law that
if someone comes to kill you, you may
kill him first (Sanhedrin 72a). This is a
basic principle of self-defense, without
which there can be no right to life.
Why then was Jacob distressed
lest he kill? If, in the struggle, he was
forced to kill Esau to protect his own
life, he would be acting fully within
his rights. This is the profound answer

suggested by Rabbi Shabbatai Bass
(Siftei Chachamim):
One might argue that Jacob surely
should have had no qualms about
killing Esau, for [the Talmud] states
explicitly: “If one comes to kill you,
forestall it by killing him.
”
Nonetheless, Jacob did indeed
have qualms. He feared that in the
fray he might kill some of the Esau’s
men, who were not intent on killing
Jacob but were merely fighting against
Jacob’s 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 provision: 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 was rightly
distressed about the possibility that, in
the confusion of battle, he might kill

some of Esau’s men outright when he
might instead have restrained them by
merely inflicting an injury.
The rules of defense and self-
defense are not an open-ended
permission to kill. One is limited
to the minimum force needed to
protect yourself or another from
danger. Jacob’s distress was that he
might kill someone when mere injury
would have sufficed. This is the law
restricting what is nowadays called
“collateral damage,
” the killing of
innocent civilians even if undertaken
in the course of self-defense.
The Sages heard something similar
in the opening sentence of Genesis
15. The previous chapter describes
Abraham’s victorious war against the
four kings, undertaken to rescue his
nephew Lot. We then read:
“
After this, the word of God came to
Abram in a vision. He said, “Do not be
afraid, Abram, I am your shield. Your
reward will be very great.
” Genesis 15:1

Moral Dilemmas

Rabbi Lord
Jonathan
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH