Parashas Lech Lecha

In this week’s parashah, we are told of the battle between the four kings and the five kings.

After introducing the kings, we are told, “כָּל אֵלֶּה חָבְרוּ אֶל עֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים הוּא יָם הַמֶּלַח, All these joined in the Valley of the Fields, this is the Dead Sea.” Rashi explains that the Valley, which was then full of fields, later became the Dead Sea.

The Torah then describes the juggernaut of the four kings as they vanquished nation after nation, until the five kings went out to wage battle with the four kings בְּעֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים in the Valley of the Fields…וְעֵמֶק הַשִּׂדִּים בֶּאֱרֹת בֶּאֱרֹת חֵמָר וַיָּנֻסוּ מֶלֶךְ סְדֹם וַעֲמֹרָה וַיִּפְּלוּ שָׁמָּה..., And the Valley of the Fields had many pits of clay, and the Kings of Sodom and Gomorah fled, and fell there…

Why does the Torah need to tell us where the kings joined together? And why is it important for us to know where they battled? And according to Rashi, the pits were empty holes from which people had previously dug out earth for use in construction. If so, the point is that the Valley had pits, why do we need to be told that they had been formed by digging out the earth for use as clay?

Perhaps this homiletical interpretation can resolve these questions:

The war between the kings was not a battle for basics, but a battle for wealth.

It wasn’t just that the kings got together at a location called The Valley of the Fields. The Torah tells us that the catalyst that brought them together was “the fields,” the draw of property and wealth.

These were fields abundant with pits of cheimar, the dangers associated with the pursuit of chumriyos, materialism.

It was this avarice that had attracted Lot to Sodom and its environs. It was this unfettered greed that defined the people there and into which the kings of Sodom and Gomora fled and fell – it would ultimately lead to their doom. 

The message is that the “Valley of Fields,” materialism, is, in reality, Yam Hamelach, the Dead Sea; a place of such utter desolation that no life can exist there. The field is the mirage that draws man to his own undoing.

May we be granted true blessing and abundance, with success and possessions and that bring life in this world and the next.

Gut Shabbos.