MOSES WAS PASTURING THE FLOCKS OF JETHRO, HIS FATHER IN LAW, THE CHIEF OF MIDIAN, AND HE LED THE FLOCKS AFTER THE FREE PASTURELAND, AND HE CAME TO THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD, TO HOREB.

AN ANGEL OF THE LORD APPEARED TO HIM IN A FLAME OF FIRE FROM WITHIN THE THORN BUSH, AND BEHOLD, THE THORN BUSH WAS BURNING WITH FIRE, BUT THE THORN BUSH WAS NOT BEING CONSUMED.

SO MOSES SAID, "LET ME TURN NOW AND SEE THIS GREAT SPECTACLE WHY DOES THE THORN BUSH NOT BURN UP?"

THE LORD SAW THAT HE HAD TURNED TO SEE, AND GOD CALLED TO HIM FROM WITHIN THE THORN BUSH, AND HE SAID, "MOSES, MOSES!" AND HE SAID, "HERE I AM!"

AND HE SAID, "DO NOT DRAW NEAR HERE. TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF YOUR FEET, BECAUSE THE PLACE UPON WHICH YOU STAND IS HOLY SOIL."

(Shemot 3:1-5)

 

Taking off one's shoes expresses giving oneself up entirely to the meaning of a place, to let your personality get its standing and take up its position entirely and directly on it without any intermediary. So the priests in the Temple had always to function barefooted, and nothing was allowed to be hotzetz, to intervene between their feet and the ground, or between their hands and the holy vessels during the service, or between the priestly garments and their body. Nothing in the Temple was mere gaudy show, man-designed to impress and have effect on the eye of the beholder. Everything was to work back on the personality of the ministrant, and if one wished to act in the service of the Temple one had to identify oneself directly with it, and become sanctified by it, and be a part of it. "The floor sanctifies" (Zevahim 24a) - the holy soil sanctifies the priest.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch, Shemot 3:5, Levi translation)

 

 

Pharaoh as the Sitra Ahra

Ronen Ahituv

In honor of my daughter Be'er

Upon her bat mitzvah

From her we shall draw

Torah and salvation

Two birth stories are woven into the beginning of our parasha: the birth of the Israelite nation, and immediately afterwards - the birth of Moses.

Besides the parents, each birth scene is accompanied by additional benevolent figures: Moses is saved by Pharaoh's daughter, and the midwives try to save the People Israel.

A further figure, threatening and dangerous, lurks behind the benevolent characters: Pharaoh, the "new" king. It was Pharaoh who established the framework in which the People Israel and their savior Moses were born. He ordered the midwives - and later, his fellow Egyptians - to cast the newborns into the Nile. In a way, Moses' mother obeyed the royal decree; she did cast her son into the Nile (and not elsewhere) - but only after placing him inside a basket.

Pharaoh is described as being the enemy of the People Israel, and later in the parasha he also becomes Moses' personal enemy and seeks his death.

The chilling colors in which Pharaoh is depicted serve as background to the positive descriptions of the other characters of the parasha. Pharaoh is the ultimate villain, and all evil is drained into him (as hinted by his name, which contains the Hebrew word ro'a - evil), allowing the other participants in the story to demonstrate their compassion and good-heartedness. Pharaoh is important and necessary for the story's structure, counterbalancing all the other human characters.

Later in the Torah, Pharaoh's deeds remain important and give rise to positive consequences: when the Holy One blessed be He requests the faithfulness and absolute submission of the Israelites, He presents Himself as having taken you out of the Land of Egypt, from the house of bondage (Shemot 20:2). The Exodus constitutes the Israelites' bill of servitude to God: for they are My servants whom I took out of the Land of Egypt (Vayikra 25:42). At the time of the Exodus, enslavement to Pharaoh was switched for servitude to God. Could God have proclaimed for they are My servants if Pharaoh had not enslaved the Israelites earlier?

A comparison between the passage describing the Israelite enslavement and the story of the Tower of Babel reveals their reversed parallelism:

 

 

Salient similarities and contrasts are evident in both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the table.

In the vertical, we find the opposition between lest they increase and so did they multiply and between lest we be scattered and the Lord scattered them, and between had built/ what they have commenced to do and they ceased building. The Sages addressed these two sets of contrasts in each passage.

In the horizontal dimension, we find similarity between Behold [hinei], the people of the children of Israel and Lo [hen]! [they are] one people. The word go [Hebrew: hava] is also used by both God and Pharaoh.

The similarities between the two passages are not merely linguistic. They both involve an individual ruler who speaks in the plural and who faces the children of Israel/children of Adam and wants to use clever tactics against them. In the Babel passage, God stops the city's construction by scattering its inhabitants; in our parasha Pharaoh tries to contain the break-away growth of the Israelite population by forcing them to build a city.

Differences between the two passages include, among others: that the Israelites in Egypt were mute [until their sighing-crying in the end of chapter 2] while the humans of Babel take the initiative and stand up to God. Another obvious difference is Pharaoh's failure compared to God's success. Nonetheless, the linguistic and thematic similarities between Pharaoh's intentions and God's deed cry out for our attention.

There are additional aspects in which Pharaoh's deeds echo those of God: God grants life and death, and Pharaoh wants to grant life and death: If he is a boy, kill him; but if she is a girl, let her live. God makes Israel His servant, and so does Pharaoh. There is significance to the fact that Pharaoh's magicians toiled to reproduce the plagues that Moses produced in God's name, and that the Holy One blessed be He, speaking through Moses, addresses Pharaoh on equal terms: And you shall say to Pharaoh, 'So said the Lord, "My firstborn son is Israel. 'So I say to you, send out My son so that he will worship Me, but if you refuse to send him out, behold, I am going to slay your firstborn son" (Shemot 4:22-3). Just as the People Israel - God's son - is equal to Pharaoh's son, God and Pharaoh are - so to speak - equals.

Pharaoh's hubris, his imagining himself to be a god, receives partial confirmation from the fact that God sees him as a worthy adversary (as He had also seen the inhabitants of Babel), and defeats him, as it is written, and in order that you tell into the ears of your son and your son's son how I made a mockery of the Egyptians (10:2). The reversed similarity between Pharaoh and God informs Pharaoh's role as God's agent, and as His mirror image. As we have seen, Pharaoh does play a divine role, and not only in his defeat - his deeds also create the background for the revelation of God's presence in His world.

Dr. Ronen Ahituv lives in Mitzpei Netufa and teaches at the Midrasha in Oranim, at Kinneret College and at Western Galilee College.

 

Human Compassion Knows No Bounds - Righteous Gentiles Have a Share in the World to Come.

Pharaoh's daughter went down to bathe, to the Nile, and her maidens were walking along the Nile, and she saw the basket in the midst of the marsh, and she sent her maidservant, and she took it. She opened [it], and she saw him the child, and behold, he was a weeping lad, and she had compassion on him, and she said, "This is [one] of the children of the Hebrews." His sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call for you a wet nurse from the Hebrew women, so that she shall nurse the child for you?"

(Shemot 2:5-7)

 

Nine entered the Garden of Eden while still alive, they are: Hanokh ben Yered, Elijah, the Messiah, Abraham's servant Eliezer, King Hiram of Tzor, the Cushite king's servant, Ya'avetz son of Rabbi Yehudah ha-Nasi, Pharaoh's daughter Bitiyah, Serah daughter of Asher, and according to some, even Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi.

(Masekhet Derekh Eretz Zuta 1: 8)

 

And his Judahite wife bore Yered father of Gedor, Heber father of Soko, and Yekutiel father of Zanoah. These were the sons of Bitiyah daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered married.

(I Chronicles 4: 18)

 

These were the sons of Bitiyah daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered married Why did they call his wife a Judahite? Because she rejected idolatry, as is written: The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe in the Nile. Rabbi Yohanan said: She went down to wash herself clean of the idols of her father's house. Bore [Yered father of Soco..]? She only raised him! This teaches us that Scripture views one who raises a boy or girl orphan in his house as if he bore them. Yered is Moses, and why was he called 'Yered'? Because manna came down [yarad] for Israel in his days. [He was called] Geder [fence] because he fenced in Israel's promiscuity. [He was called] Heber because he attached [hiber] Israel to their Father in heaven. [He was called] Soko because he was like a sukkah to Israel. [He was called] Yekutiel because Israel looked [kivu] to God in his days. [He was called] Zanoah because he caused Israel's sins to be neglected [hizniah]. [The verse mentions three times] father of. father of, father of, - a father in Torah, a father in wisdom, a father in prophecy.

These were the sons of Bitiyah daughter of Pharaoh, whom Mered married- Was his name Mered? Wasn't his name Kalev?! The Holy One Blessed Be He said: Let Kalev, who rebelled [marad] against the Spies' plan come and marry the daughter of Pharaoh, who rebelled [mardah] against the idols of her father's house.

(Meggilah 13a)

 

Now Pharaoh's daughter went down to bath at the Nile... she saw the little ark... she opened it and saw him, the child, here, a boy weeping! She pitied him and she said: One of the Hebrews' children is this!... The child grew, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She called his name: Moshe/He-Who-Pulls-Out; she said: for out of the water I pulled him.

She did not call him Mashui - one drawn up from the water. Perhaps this gives us an indication of the whole tendency of the education which the Princess gave her foster- son, and of the deep impression that was made from the very beginning upon his character. By giving him this name she said to him: All his life, he is never to forget that he was thrown into the water and that I drew him out of it. Therefore all his life is he to have a soft heart for other people's troubles and always be on the alert to be a Moshe, a deliverer in times of distress. His Hebrew name always kept the consciousness of his origin awake within him. The Princess surely inquired of the mother the Hebrew term for expressing this thought, otherwise she would have given him his an Egyptian name. In all this we can see the noble humane character of Moses' savior.

(Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch, Shemot 2:10)

 

Ethical Behavior is the Criterion for Fear of God

...whoever withstands this test, willing to sacrifice his life - prepared to be killed rather than to transgress - definitely has in his heart the Lord, the Lord of truth... "Fear of God" in the Bible is a demand made of every person created in the image, and if there is no fear of God in his heart, the heart of the gentile, Scripture judges him accordingly, and he is considered to have betrayed all his duties. Abraham said: For I said that there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me for my wife.

This means that fear of God does exist among the gentiles. Whoever is suspect of not having fear of God in his heart is also suspect of all evil behavior. Of Amalek it is written: How he encountered you on the way and attacked your tail - all the beaten down ones at your rear, while you were weary and faint, and thus he did not stand in awe of God. It should be noted that in all of the four places where the gentile (including Joseph, who plays the part of the gentile) is either praised or condemned - either because of his fear of God or because of the lack of it - in all those places "fear of God" is expressed by behavior towards a member of another people, towards members of the minority. The attitude to the stranger, to the one who is powerless, who lacks protection, is the criterion of whether or not one has fear of God in his heart. Therefore, and also because of the phrase the midwives, fearing God, it would seem that the preferable explanation would be: They were Egyptians.

(Prof. N. Leibowitz: New Studies in the Book of Shemot, pp. 32-33)

 

 

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