Thursday, November 22, 2018

parshanut torah comment - "Shelach Lecha": What is "Lecha"?



In the 2nd verse in Shelach, it says שלח לך (Shelach Lecha), which Rashi explains as " לדעתך, אני איני מצוה לך". Why don't we give the same explanation the other places in the Torah it says לך. E.g. in Parshas Lech Lecha, or by the Ketores (קח לך)?



Answer



It has to do with the fact that in this case, the same incident recorded later in the Torah, seems to tell us that it was Moshe's own decision (and the populace's initiative) to send the mission. We do not have such exceptional circumstances in the other cases you mentioned.




Edit: Actually, this only answers why Rash"i does comment here. The truth about why he doesn't comment elsewhere is probably just because a verb with a purposeful prepositional pronoun is a standard way to express a certain type of imperative in Tana"ch. See this interesting hirhurim post on the "polite imperative" as a description of this form.


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