Esav's Own Sword: Winning with His Own Mitzvah

1a“And Yaakov went out from Be'er Sheva …” It seems to me that we should begin with another verse: “And Yehoshua weakened Amalek and his people lefi charev, by the edge of the sword.”¹ The whole reason Esav has dominion over the holy people is the power of the mitzvah he kept, honoring his father. And how did he honor him? With his sword, which put game in Yitzchak's mouth.² That is why Yitzchak told him, “Al charbecha you shall live.”³ The words are usually read “By your sword you shall live,” but they mean: on account of the mitzvos you did with your sword, you will have some measure of life. That is why the verse does not say becharbecha, “with your sword,” but al, which here means “on account of.”

1bWhen Israel wants to weaken Esav's power, it need not stand against him with the power of all the 613 mitzvos that it keeps at all times. Even by the power of his own mitzvah he has no dominion over Israel, for Israel kept the mitzvah of honoring a father more fully than he did. The holy Torah makes clear that Yaakov honored his father more, as the Midrash tells: Esav could find no game to bring, so he hunted a dog and wanted to feed it to his father.⁴ So Esav is beaten with his own mitzvah, as the saying goes: “From the forest itself comes the handle for the axe.”⁵ This is “And Yehoshua weakened Amalek … lefi charev.” Lefi plainly means “by the edge of,” but here it means “according to”: according to the level and power of Amalek's own sword. The very thing on whose strength Amalek came out to fight Israel is what Yehoshua weakened him with.

2This is also the meaning of “And Yaakov went out from Be'er Sheva.” Be'er Sheva, the “well of seven,” hints at the great levels of Yaakov Avinu, who had perfected all seven middos, the seven attributes, as the holy sefarim explain. So when he had to stand up against Esav and Lavan, he did not fight⁶ them with all his great levels. Instead he went out from this level, the one called Be'er Sheva, and “went toward Charan”:⁷ he left his own strength and went with theirs, and with it he acted and succeeded against them. This is easy to understand.