The Jewish Home | JUNE 2, 2022
108
Shavuos
The Mysterious Ancestry of David HaMelech
54
OctOber 29, 2015 | the Jewish Home
by RAbbi DAniel GlATsTein
R
av Moshe Feinstein, zt”l, tells the following story in Igros Moshe, hakdama to Chelek Ches. It was the winter of 1922. One of the baalei batim of Rav Moshe became deathly ill with a very strange sickness. His tongue became inflamed, and he felt like he was going to die. He asked for a private audience with Rav Moshe, and when Rav Moshe arrived, he explained to Rav Moshe the cause of his strange illness and why he knew it would be fatal. “The previous Shabbos,” the man said, “we read Parshas Vayeira. I was very disturbed by the story of the bnos Lot and could not comprehend how Moshiach could possibly come from them. How could they be blessed with such an incredible zechus after what they did with their father? Moav was the son of the eldest daughter of Lot, and she would ultimately have a descendent named Rus, whose great-grandson would be Dovid HaMelech, the ancestor of Moshiach. Not only did the bnos Lot perform what seems to be an incred-
ible sin with their father, but they had no embarrassment at all about what they had done! They named their sons in a manner that publicized to one and all that their father, Lot, was also the father of their sons!” This man continued to tell Rav Moshe how he had spoken about bnos Lot in a very derogatory fashion. That night, he had a dream. In his dream, he was visited by two elderly women who were dressed with tremendous tzinius. They spoke to him in his dream, telling him that they were the bnos Lot, and that, in the Olam Ha’Emes, they heard that he has ta’anos against them. They were coming to him in his dream to answer his complaints against them. They told him that after their miraculous escape from Sedom, they readily recognized that they were saved because of the zechus of Avraham Avinu. When their sons were born, they could have easily concealed the fact that Lot was the father of their sons. They could have said that they were impregnated by an
otherworldly force, and they could have started a new religion, like the Christians. However, they wanted to publicize that every single person has human parents and must come “mei’av,” from a human father. Therefore, they intentionally called their sons Amon and Moav. In the zechus of them not allowing a false Moshiach to come about, they were zocheh to be the ancestor of the Moshiach. The ailing man continued and informed Rav Moshe that it was because he spoke about the bnos Lot in a derogatory fashion that he was being punished with the strange illness he was experiencing – the same fatal illness that struck the Meraglim, who spoke lashon hara about Eretz Yisroel. When the man concluded his story, he turned his face to the wall and passed away. We see that the Ribbono Shel Olam was already sowing the seeds of Moshiach from the time of the bnos Lot.
