The Land of the Deer

And behold, the Lord was standing over him, and He said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father, and the God of Isaac; I will give you and your offspring the land on which you are lying.                                                                                       Genesis 28:13

upon which you are lying: (Chullin ad loc.) The Holy One, blessed be He, folded the entire Land of Israel under him. He hinted to him that it would be as easily conquered by his children (as four cubits, which represent the area a person takes up [when lying down]). [From Chullin 91b]The land on which you are lying: The Holy One, blessed be He, folded the entire Land of Israel under him and hinted to him that it would be as easy for his children to conquer as four cubits (the area a person takes up while lying down).

                                 Rashi, based upon Babylonian Talmud, Ḥullin 91b

            Rabbi Yehonatan Eybschutz finds a hint of an additional agadda in the Talmudic comment cited by Rashi.

            One of the appellations of the Holy Land is “Eretz haẒvi.” [Jeremiah 3:19; Ezekiel 20:6,15; Daniel 11:16] While the word “ẓvi” is variously translated as “praise” [the Aramaic translation attributed to Yonatan ben Uziel], “glory” [Radak, Ezekiel 20:6] or “splendor and beauty” [Meẓudat Ẓiyon, Ezekiel 20:6], our Sages understood the word in its typical meaning as “deer,” and teach:

The Land is called “Land of the deer;” just as the skin of the deer cannot hold its flesh (Rashi: if the deer is killed its skin shrinks), so the Land of Israel when inhabited expands but when not inhabited contracts.                                                  Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57a

That is, the Land expands or contracts as a function of the presence or absence of Israel within her.

            Rabbi Yehonatan writes that in folding the Land under Jacob, God hinted to him that the Promised Land will expand in accordance with the needs of his descendants who will settle her. In so doing, God also showed Jacob “the importance of the Land of Israel … which is a spiritual land and this is the reason Eretz Yisrael is the choicest of lands, for she is entirely a spiritual land.”

            It is clear that the Land’s ability to expand and contract is super-natural. The Ḥassidic Master of Sochotchov writes [Shem miShmuel, Parashat Sh’mot] that this quality hints that the earthly Eretz Yisrael is located opposite the Heavenly Land, as Zohar [Parashat Kedoshim 84a] comments:

There is another Eretz Yisrael, sublime and holy, which the Holy One, blessed be He, has which is also called Eretz Yisrael.

            Thus Maharal explains our Sages’ words “The skin of the deer cannot hold its flesh:”

When the skin is taken from the deer, the spirit of life is taken from it, and without life all that is left is the body and the skin can no longer hold the flesh. So it is with the Holy Land, her inhabitants being within her constitutes the vitality of the Land, (emphasis mine), which was given (to Israel) by God, and then she achieves the spiritual level of sanctity … and when her inhabitants are not within her, the spiritual level departs and the Land shrinks.

That is, the Land’s vitality is dependent upon her sons’ presence within her and when that happens, the Land’s vitality allows her to expand; when her sons are absent from her, the Land loses her vitality and necessarily shrinks. Maharal concludes his comments with the statement “These are truly deep matters.”