Death of Devorah

 Short thought on Vayishlach

A trivia question was recently presented to me: Name 7 women whose personal deaths are recorded in the Torah (in other words not as part of a group). Most of them are in the book of Bereishis (two are in the book of Bamidbar) and two of them are in our parsha. 

 While the death of Rachel is certainly tragic, one wonders about the death of Devorah, Rivkah’s “nurse” (35:8). In all likelihood she was very old, certainly even older than Sarah was at her death. And, her being a secondary character, it seems odd that her death would be recorded altogether in the Torah. The most common interpretations is that Devorah was sent to tell Yaakov to come home, or that Devorah was sent to tell Yaakov of the death of Rivkah. 

 But Midrash Aggadah suggests that Devorah was actually Rivkah’s mother, presumably accompanying Yaakov (at a very old age!) to hopefully see her daughter before her death. 

 And Midrash Sechel Tov indicates the significance of her being buried at the side of the road under a tree. To this latter idea perhaps it was a way of laying the groundwork (no pun intended) for the coming burial of Rachel, after Yaakov’s children had already seen that when someone dies while you’re traveling, you tend to burial needs right away. In this way, when Yaakov later needs to explain to Yosef from his sickbed in Egypt why he buried Rachel where he did, he need not go into heavy explanations because he knows Yosef saw how he had buried Devorah. 

 The lesson of respecting the dead was therefore well learned.