פרשת כי תצא

A new thing that we're going to try this year is early in every week, someone will post some thought provoking questions about the parsha, and hopefully stimulate some interesting conversation either in the comments or by e-mail (questions@maayanot.org).


It's a little late in the week for that, but here's a thought that I'm working on now, so I'm not sure what to do with it and would love some feedback.


The first 3 topics of the parsha are eishet yefat toar - the rules of a soldier who is overcome by lust for a woman (the beautiful woman) from the enemy nation and takes her as a captive.  The Torah recognizes that humans are imperfect (דברה תורה כנגד יצר הרע) and provides regulations that he must go through before marrying her.


Second is the rule that if a man has two sons from two wives, but he loves one and hates the other.  If the older son is from the hated wife, he may not bypass him in favor of his beloved younger half-brother.  


Finally the Torah teaches the rule of a Ben Sorer u'Moreh, a good for nothing soon who is killed for his misdeeds before he can grow into an adult dangerous criminal.  The Gemara explains that this is because he is נידון על שם סופו - judged on his end.  The בן סורר ומורה is executed not for the relatively trivial crimes that he commits as a child, but for the serious crimes that he would go on to commit in the future that will now never occur.  


Understandably, many meforshim (even the midrash) see echoes of Yaakov, Rachel and Leah in this story - Rachel is called a יפת תואר, Leah and אשה שנואה, and Yaakov bypassed her בכור, and gave the double portion to מנשה & אפרים, the sons of Yosef, the בן אהובה.


Upon closer inspection, it looks more like Avraham, Sarah, Hagar, Yitzchak and Yishmael, only the Torah is commanding us to the opposite of what Avraham and Sarah did.  Sarah is the first "yefei", who actually was taken captive for the purpose of marriage.  Avraham, on Sarah's advice and Hashem's command chooses the younger ben ahuva over the bechor ben hasnua.  And finally, a ben sorer umoreh (Yishmael) is not killed al shem sofo, but saved b'asher hu sham.  
I'm not sure what to do with it, but if this is true, it's also probably not a coincidence that we read it during Elul as we ask Hashem to be judged "b'ahser hu sham".