This month shall be to you the head of the months;

to you it shall be the first of the months of the

year.

(Shemot

12:2)

This month

shall be to you the head of the months – By way of

example: A son was born to a king, and the king made a celebration. The son was

taken into captivity for many years. Eventually he was redeemed, and the king

made for him a royal party. Before the Israelites went down into Egypt,

they would count by the servitude; after they had gone down and were enslaved

there, the Holy One performed miracles for them and they were redeemed. They

then began to count by months, as is written, This

month shall be to you the head of the months.

(Shemot

Rabba 15)

Therefore, in the Land of Egypt, in the the land

of the most consistent paganism, in the land in which this pagan immutability

extended even into the state system of social life and created the chains of

caste, in Egypt God called the future leader of His people out into the open,

showed him the narrow crescent of the moon struggling out of complete darkness

into new light, and said, "This is to be your model." Just as it,

bound by physical laws, rejuvenates itself, so are you, but of your own free

will, to create your own rejuvenations. Whenever it occurs it is to remind you

of your own possibilities of rejuvenation, and inasmuch as I rejuvenate you and

you rejuvenate yourselves, you are – moon-like – to pass across the night sky

of the nations and proclaim everywhere the teaching of rejuvenation, this

teaching that God has given man the possibility of always been able to start

afresh, that his whole moral and physical fate is entirely in his own hands.

(Rabbi

S.R. Hirsch Shemot 12:1-2, Levi translation)

Three Days' Journey and Borrowing Vessels

Ariel Stollman

In our parasha, immediately following the plague of arov,

Pharaoh suggests that the Israelites offer sacrifices within the land of Egypt. Moses rejects the proposal and then

demands: We shall travel a three days' journey (Shemot 8:23). Soon

before the actual Exodus, God asks Moses: Please, speak into the ears of the

friend, silver vessels and golden vessels (Shemot 11:2). I would like to focus on these two

items, the three days' journey and the borrowing of vessels. They seem

to lack any connection with each other, but the link between them will become

clear upon deeper inspection.

Moses' demand that the Israelites be allowed to make a

three days' journey instantly suggests a question: what would the

Israelites have done if Pharaoh had conceded this minimal request? Would they

have been good to their word and returned to Egypt,

or would they have taken advantage of Pharaoh's "generosity" by continuing

their trek all the way to Canaan? Why didn't

Moses and Aaron simply make their ultimate demand to leave Egypt for good? After ten plagues,

wouldn't Pharaoh have freed the Israelites even without such trickery?

Similar questions can be asked in connection with the

borrowing of vessels. True, by borrowing the vessels the Israelites saw the fulfillment

of the ancient promise made by God to Abraham at the Brit ben Habtarim,

that his descendants would leave their land of exile with much property. Furthermore,

the book of Devarim tells us that a Hebrew slave who completes the period of

his servitude has rights to a grant from his master. According to that principle,

the Israelites deserved a grant from the Egyptians for their long period of

servitude.

Despite all this, it remains unclear why the Israelites had

to resort to deception. Even if the weak can be justified in their use of

deceit to gain what is theirs by right, why would this be necessary in the case

of the Exodus, which was entirely miraculous and involved the immediate

revelation of God?

We can find the answers to these questions later when the

Exodus story reaches its climax with the splitting of the Red

Sea.

The standard reading of the story of the Red

Sea has it that God saved the Israelites from their Egyptian

pursuers by drowning the latter in the sea. However, a deeper investigation

reveals a different course of events.

First of all, according to Scripture the entire situation was

staged. God asked Moses to maneuver the people in such a way as to convince

Pharaoh that they had lost their way in the wilderness. He also promised to

"strengthen" Pharaoh's heart so that he would chase after the

Israelites; otherwise, the Israelites would have left Egypt unimpeded – making it strange

to call this a "rescue":

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the children of Israel, and let them turn back and

Lord And they did so. (Shemot 14:1-4)

Secondly, take note that the sea trapped the Egyptians when

they were already fleeing the great commotion and were on their way home

to Egypt.

By that point, the Israelites were in no danger at all, as is clearly implied

by the relevant verses (I have written on this at length in my article "Iyyun

Bekriyat yam Suf" in Alon Shevut 130):

It came about in the morning watch that the Lord looked

Egyptians Thereupon, the Lord said to

the Egyptians were fleeing toward it. (Shemot

14: 24-27)

If so, one must conclude that the splitting of the Red Sea

and especially the drowning of Pharaoh and his troops were not secondary

consequences of Israel's

rescue. They were purely punitive, just like the Ten Plagues.

I shall now demonstrate that the request that the Israelites

be allowed to make a three days' journey and the borrowing of vessels

were also aimed at getting Pharaoh and his people to chase the Israelites to

the Red Sea – where they would find their

deaths.

The plain meaning of Scripture (as opposed to popular opinion)

has it that even after the deaths of the firstborn, Pharaoh only agreed to

release the Israelites for a short time (and certainly not permanently) in

order for them to worship God in the wilderness:

and he said, "Get up and get out from among my

as you have spoken. Take also your

also bless me." (Shemot 12:31-32)

Take note of the expression as you have spoken; it

implies that Pharaoh acquiesced to the original demand. In contrast to the

previous instances in which he tried to keep the entire people from leaving and

suggested that only the men would leave, here he is prepared to allow everyone

to go. However, he is still referring to the original demand, i.e., a three

days' journey. Let us recall that Moses never actually asked that the

Israelites leave for good. We can also understand the continuation of the verse

in this light: It was reported to the King of Egypt that the people had fled.

The people could be thought of as having run away since they did not return as

required by the agreement. Ibn Ezra explains the passage precisely along these

lines:

…Pharoah thought, based on what Moses said about a three

days' journey, that they would go and then return to Egypt… it seems

to me that this was said for two reasons. First, so that they would give them

vessels of silver and gold, since if they knew they would not return, they

would not have given them. And secondly, so that Pharaoh and his troops would

drown. For if they had left with his permission, and he had no thought of their

returning, he would not have chased them. The proof is [in the verse] It was

that the people had fled. (Ibn Ezra Perush HaKatzar Shemot 11:4)

That is to say: the request to leave for only three days

(rather than forever) was aimed at getting Pharaoh to chase after the

Israelites in order for him to get his punishment.

The issue of the "borrowing" of vessels invites a

similar explanation. Of course the Israelites deserved payment and a

"grant" for all their years of servitude in Egypt, but that could have been

taken by force rather than through deception. The reason why the Israelites

were commanded to borrow the vessels (rather than take them outright) was to

later convince the Egyptians to join Pharaoh in his pursuit of the Israelites. Hizkuni

(Shemot 11:2)

explains:

and let them borrow, each man: by this God's promise

was fulfilled: and afterwards they shall leave with much property (Bereishit 15:14). As

for it being borrowed rather than an outright gift, this was in order that the

Egyptians be incensed to chase after them.

Seforno uses this idea to explain why God used the word na