Sidrah
Parashah of the week: Lech Lecha
“Look around from where you are, to the north and the south, to the east and the west, for all the land that you see I am giving to you and your descendants forever” Genesis 13:14-15
October 30, 2025 11:23
“Look around from where you are, to the north and the south, to the east and the west, for all the land that you see I am giving to you and your descendants forever” Genesis 13:14-15
October 30, 2025 11:23The Promised Land takes centre stage in this week’s portion. At least six times in Lech Lecha, Abram/Abraham receives Divine assurance that the land has been granted to him and his descendants. This promise has dominated mindsets and headlines ever since.
But what is being promised, and what does the promise mean? Is it conditional or absolute? And how is it be fulfilled? One of these declarations comes just after Lot has been offered first choice in a negotiation involving territorial compromise.
The instruction to “look around” is curious. If read literally, it implies that Abram is to be granted all that he can see. If Abram only had a restricted view, or if he was suffering from a migraine or myopia, would he only receive a limited swathe of territory?
For someone raised in Britain in the 1970s, the immediate association that comes to mind is The Generation Game. At the end of each episode of this quiz show, a competitor would be shown a range of attractive gifts paraded on a conveyor belt, and they were allowed to keep any they could remember. Abram in the first Hebrew generation is offered a version of the Generation Game: you can keep what you manage to see.
The Zohar, the central text of the Jewish esoteric tradition, is troubled by this “Could it be that Abraham was granted land according to his visual capacity? After all, how far can a person see?” (1:115b).
It solves the problem by suggesting that by looking in each direction, Abraham was offered a panoramic view beyond his normal optical range.
Another reading of our verse presents itself in these dramatic days. Perhaps it can be interpreted to say: in order to be worthy of the promise of the Land, Abram and all his descendants are commanded to see it – its promise and its peril; its worth and its warts; all its inhabitants, including those deemed inconvenient or unwelcome.
All any of us can ever do is to look at the land “from where we are”, with our own ideological and religious orientations. But the biblical promise on offer is conditional on straining our eyes and stretching our imaginations. Increasingly, divisions over Israel are informed not only by what we believe, but by the pictures we are prepared to see.
This week, we are reminded that if we want to share in the promise of Israel, we may need to expand our viewing preferences. We may cover our eyes when reciting “Hear, O Israel”, but the Abrahamic promise can only be fulfilled by striving to see beyond our preconceptions.
Image: Abraham's journey from Ur to Canaan by József Moinár, 1850 (Wikimedia Commons)
To get more from judaism, click here to sign up for our free daily newsletter.