The title of the third parashah in the Book of Genesis opens with the words ‘Lech Lecha’ לך לך meaning ‘Go You Forth’, where Lech לך means ‘go’ and Lecha לך means ‘you yourself’. These are the instructions from God to Abram to …. Go you forth from your country, and from your family, and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you (Gen. 12:1).
The phrase is interesting, inasmuch that Lech – go – would have been sufficient and the additional Lecha, ‘you yourself’ would seem superfluous. God could have simply said the Abram Lech! ‘Go’ as a commandment, and don’t ask any questions.
The Lecha ‘you yourself’ component has strong implications, since firstly this implies possession of man’s own free will, and therefore he has a choice whether ‘to go or not to go’ (vis a vis Jonah). Secondly, the term Lecha implies an embodiment of the commandment, where God has planted the seed of an idea within the mind of Abram, and it is Abram who embeds the idea in his mind and his soul. Bearing in mind that he came from the land of Ur, that lies in the heart of the fertile crescent of Babylon, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers meet makes it the most fertile land in the known world, and where he can enjoy all the creature comforts of the then modern age, yet Abram takes the decision to uproot his entire family and to take them to a land based upon an inner feeling.
If one looks at the gematria for Lech Lechaלך לך lamed-caph, lamed-caph = 30+20= 50 and 30+20=50, one will see that it comprises the doubling of the number 50. Fifty, as described in Chapter 18, is associated with the Jubilee and the Festival of Shavuoth. Fifty means completion of a cycle, when all things return to the beginning and a new cycle begins. In the Jubilee year, all debts are repaid, land which is leased from its owner is returned to its owner, slaves are given their freedom, and a new cycle of counting begins. Fifty means ‘return’ and ‘renewal’, but return to what and renewal of what?
As indicated in parashah Noah, Abram was 58 years old when Noah died. Hence Noah symbolized the end of the Old World and Abram symbolized the beginning of the new. In accordance with the biblical text, Abram left Ur of Chaldees in Babylon and travelled to Haran together with Sarai, his wife, his father, Terah, and the family of Lot. We do not know what age Abram was when he left Ur - maybe 58 - however we do know that he was 75 years old when he left Haran and entered the Land of Canaan:
So, Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken to him; and Lot went with him; and Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran (Gen. 12:4).
Calculating 75-58=17, the entry into the land of Canaan was 17 years after the death of Noah. As we know from Part I, the number seventeen occurs frequently in biblical texts and is the gematrical number meaning ‘good’ and more significantly ‘change’. Hence, in this instance, the radical and historical change of location of Abram from Haran to the Land of Canaan which took place 17 years after the death of Noah is a subsequent event following the end of physical time that took place as a result of the flood and reflected in the name ‘Noah’.
However, this explanation does not explain why in this parasha it is written Lech Lecha, a double 50implying the concept of return and renewal. Yet if we look further to the verses of Gen. 12:7-8:
And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said unto thy seed will I give this land: and there builded he an altar unto the Lord who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Beth El, and pitched his tent, having Beth El on the west and H’Ai on the east, and there he builded an altar unto the Lord and called upon the name of the Lord.
It can be seen that the point where Abram places the altar is the mid-gematrical distance between Bethel and H’Ai where, Beth El, בת אל meaning the House of God, is spelled; beth-yod-taf-aleph-lamed, and has a gematrical value: 2+10+400+1+30 = 443, and H’Ai העי spelled: heh-ayin-yod, has a value: 5+70+10 = 85. The gematrical distance between the H’Ai and Beth El is therefore 443-85 = 358. Therefore, the mid-point where Abram’s altar was erected, between these two places is 358/2=179. This is the same gematrical value as the Garden of Eden (Gan B’Eden, גן בעדן spelled: gimmel-nun-beth-ayin-daled-nun = 3+50+2+70+4+50 = 179)[1]. Moreover, 358, which the overall gematrical distance between Bethel and Hai is the value for the Messiah, Mashiach,משיח spelled: mem-shin-yod-chet = 40+300+10+8 = 358.
Thus, the central idea of Lech Lecha is not so much to ‘Go Forth’ as implied in the English translation, but to return, meaning to return to the Garden of Eden from which Adam and Eve were evicted. The Garden of Eden was ‘the Promised Land’ given to man before forsaking that right by eating of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and now it is to be returned 2021 years and 20 generations later to Abram and his seed. The promise made by God is reiterated in the following chapter – Genesis 13:14-17 in which He tells Abraham “Lift up now your eyes, and look from the place where you are to the north, and to the south, and to the east, and to the west. For all the land which you see, to you will I give it, and to your seed forever”.
Then the question arises, what is the meaning of the second ‘50’ of Lech Lecha? It implies that not only is there the renewal and return in the form of going back to the Garden of Eden but further, the renewal in the form of the coming of the Messiah, and that this land is the land of the Messiah.
[1] Several hundred years later, at the time of the exodus, Joshua in his assault on the city of H’Ai, and after successfully conquering Jericho, finds himself in exactly the same place: ‘Joshua therefore sent them forth; and they went to the place of ambush, and stayed between Beth-El and Ai, on the west of Ai’; (Joshua 8:9). Joshua therefore also realises the implications of the place that he was about to conquer and where God had told Abram to establish his altar to be the heart of the Land of Canaan and the Garden of Eden where the Messiah will appear.