Q&A: Settling the Land
Settling the Land
Question
Is it possible to explain Maimonides’ omission of settling the Land as a commandment by saying that in the Eight Chapters, regarding the commandment of marriage, he writes that a commandment cannot be derived from a curse, and therefore marriage was not decreed from that? And regarding settling the Land it says, “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you shall soon utterly perish from off the land.”
Answer
That does not sound plausible to me. First, because there is evidence that this is in fact a commandment, so the question is what he does with that. Second, because the Torah is not predicting what will happen, but threatening what will happen if we do not do what is good in God’s eyes. Third, because there are periods when this is relevant, and only in certain periods is it not. If so, it is similar to the commandments of sacrifices, which ceased with the exile, yet they are still commandments in every sense.
In my opinion, the simple explanation in Maimonides is that, in his view, settling the Land of Israel is an instrument for a commandment (for the commandments dependent on the Land) and not a commandment in itself.
Discussion on Answer
Regarding the second answer you wrote: I didn’t write that the Torah is predicting; rather, even if it is a threat, there still cannot be choice about the thing itself. And regarding the third answer, it is not like sacrifices, where technically it would be possible to offer them even today, or even in exile. There is no direct threat about that; it is only a result of the matter. But regarding the Land of Israel itself, the threat exists about it directly.
I hope you yourself understood what you wrote. I didn’t.
It seems to me that according to Maimonides, the whole commandment of settling the Land and the prohibition against leaving it apply only when the Temple is standing.
There is no commandment of settling the Land. Just as there is no commandment to get to Heaven.
It is a reward.
There is a prohibition against returning to Egypt. And today, even though we are physically in the Land, spiritually we are in Egypt. That is what one should be asking about.