They met Moses and Aaron standing before them when they came out from Pharaoh's presence. And they said to them, "May the Lord look upon you and judge, for you have brought us into foul odor in the eyes of Pharaoh and in the eyes of his servants, to place a sword into their hand[s] to kill us."

(Shemot 5:20-21)

 

And judge every man charitably...

May the Lord look upon you and judge - He will see the violence inflicted upon us, and it is upon you for you caused it, for it is because of you that we have become disgusting and stinking to Pharaoh like a foul odor. He will make judgment between us, for He is the God of Judgment and will not make promises He will not keep. We also believe that God looks upon you, but you did not speak properly to Pharaoh for you caused him to be angry with us as if you placed a sword in his hand to kill us. And he said in the eyes in conjunction with smell because the five senses replace each other, as in, light is sweet (Kohelet 11:7). The officers spoke this way because of shortness of breath and their minds could not engage in sustained thought; however, it was not because of a lack of faith.

(R. Shmuel Yitzhak Reggio Shemot 5:21)

 

One cannot blame these men who took on their own backs the strokes intended for their brethren - and thereby became the prototypes of those noble men of the future centuries of Galut, who, as elders of the community went to the stake on behalf of their persecuted brethren - one cannot blame them if they lost faith in the mission of Moses and Aaron.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch Shemot 5:21, Levy translation)

 

 

In honor of my daughter Be'er

Upon her birthday

From Assimilation to Rescue - The Visionary of the Exodus from Egypt

Ronen Ahituv

The episode of the inn is one of the most mysterious passages in the Torah. We shall attempt to decipher some of its secrets.

Moses went and returned to Jethro, his father in law, and he said to him, "Let me go now and return to my brothers who are in Egypt, and let me see whether they are still alive." So Jethro said to Moses, "Go in peace." The Lord said to Moses in Midian, "Go, return to Egypt, for all the people who sought your life have died." So Moses took his wife and his sons, mounted them upon the donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt, and Moses took the staff of God in his hand. The Lord said to Moses, "When you go to return to Egypt, see all the signs that I have placed in your hand and perform them before Pharaoh, but I will strengthen his heart, and he will not send out the people. 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.'

Now he was on the way, in an inn, that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. So Zipporah took a sharp stone and severed her son's foreskin and cast it to his feet, and she said, "For you are a bridegroom of blood to me." So He released him. Then she said, "A bridegroom of blood concerning the circumcision." The Lord said to Aaron, "Go toward Moses, to the desert." So he went and met him on the mount of God, and he kissed him. (Shemot 4:18-27)

The Sages, and all of the traditional biblical commentators in their wake, bisect this passage as we have in reproducing the text above, creating two distinct parts: Moses' mission to Egypt, and the story of the bridegroom of blood in the inn. The strange episode in the latter section when God tries to kill either Moses or his son is understood as a punishment for the postponement of the son's circumcision. Its connection with the mission to Egypt is, accordingly, then viewed as weak and marginal: "R. Yehoshua ben Karha says, great is circumcision, for righteous Moses was not afforded even a full hour to postpone it." (Mishnah Nedarim 3:11, and see the accompanying Gemara 31b). There are two difficulties with this line of interpretation. First of all, the sin of postponing circumcision is not explicitly mentioned in the text. Secondly, it is difficult to ignore the connection between the two parts of the passage - between Pharaoh's threat and the danger faced by Moses. We shall presently attempt to treat the entire passage as a single unit.

We have already mentioned the obvious difficulties posed by the second section. It turns out, however, that the first section also offers its share of substantial difficulties, most of which result from its lack of congruence with other stories of Moses and his family. Moses leaves for Egypt, but in the end he meets Aaron in the Mountain of God in the wilderness. We are not told what became of the planned journey to Egypt. Our parasha creates the impression that Zipporah and her children reached Egypt and that it may be assumed that they later left it together with Moses. However, we find in parashat Yitro that Moses had sent his wife away to stay in her father's home. When they eventually reunite at the Mountain of God in the wilderness, we read:

So Moses' father in law, Jethro, took Zipporah, Moses' wife, after she had been sent away, and her two sons, one of whom was named Gershom, because he [Moses] said, "I was a stranger in a foreign land," and one who was named Eliezer, because [Moses said,] "The God of my father came to my aid and rescued me from Pharaoh's sword." Now Moses' father in law, Jethro, and his [Moses'] sons and his wife came to Moses, to the desert where he was encamped, to the mountain of God. (Shemot 18:2-5)

The repeated use of the words derived from the root shin-vav-bet in the beginning of this passage is striking. Moses returns [shav] to Midian and asks to return [lashuv] to Egypt, to his brothers or to the Land of Egypt. The foci of Moses' identity are thus revealed: his family in Midian, his brothers in Egypt, and the Land of Egypt itself. Against these foci, which call for Moses to return to them, stands the mission assigned to him by God, a mission that, far from requiring Moses' return, actually demands that he strike out on a new path. The passage thus offers three reasons for Moses' journey from Midian to Egypt, each of which places the nature of that journey in a different light:

1) Moses wants to meet his brothers in Egypt and to see if they are still alive. This suggests Moses will travel alone for a short visit to Egypt.

2) Those who seek Moses' death have died themselves; now Moses wants to return to his earlier life in Egypt. Here we are talking about Moses returning to Egypt in order to set up house there. This would involve his family moving to Egypt.

3) Moses is sent to Egypt by God in order to demand of Pharaoh that he send out the people and in order to strike him with plagues when he refuses. Here we are speaking of Moses making the journey by himself. He will have to leave his family behind for a substantial period of time and devote himself to the national mission.

Between the mention of the second reason and the third, we are told that Moses took his wife and children to the donkey. It seems that Moses had arrived at the decision to move his family to Egypt. In this act he expressed his wish to lead as quiet and as simple a life as possible in Egypt, his birthplace from which he had been exiled to Midian. True, he did take the Staff of God with him in order to perform the signs with it, but it seems he intended to limit himself to performing the signs before the people, leaving the Aaron or another emissary of God to negotiate with Pharaoh. This was a continuation of his earlier attempts to avoid his mission, which had reached their climax in his cry, I beseech You, O Lord, send now [Your message] with whom You would send (verse 13).

In the light of this analysis it appears that verse 23 - 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" - is not directed at Pharaoh, but rather at Moses himself! It is not only Pharaoh who refuses to send out the people, but also Moses by way of his attempts to evade the mission. Thus, the death announcement, behold, I am going to slay your first born is addressed in the first place to Moses himself; it will only affect Pharaoh at the end of the Ten Plagues. If this is correct, then it was Moses firstborn Gershom who was under threat. That child was circumcised by Zipporah, implying that Moses' sons had not been circumcised. What does all this mean? Circumcision is a recognized expression of national identity and of commitment to the covenant with God: This is My covenant, which you shall observe between Me and between you and between your seed after you, that every male among you be circumcised (Bereishit 17:10). Moses' avoidance of circumcising his sons reflects his intention to leave the fateful covenant with his brothers and their God. True, he took an interest in them and felt a certain responsibility towards them; in the past he had even struck an Egyptian who had hurt one of his brothers. Later, however, he had moved to Midian in order to distance himself from them and their fate; perhaps their betrayal of him and their reporting on him to Pharaoh had led him to make the break. He preferred to live as a stranger in a strange land, and gave his son a name expressing that preference. As we have seen, the journey to Egypt does not necessarily reflect his interest in the lot of his people; it might reflect his wish to return to Pharaoh's palace and take up residence there, in which case it would be reasonable for him to take his family with him.

The donkey and the inn are motifs which had already appeared in Bereishit 42:27. It was there that the brothers understood that the hand of God had intervened in their lives, and they ask each other, What has God done to us? (42:28). Moses and Zipporah are also supposed to infer a similar conclusion from the danger that met them in the inn, but Moses was not willing to admit his mistake. Zipporah the Midianite had to make the decision in his place. She cut her son's foreskin and decided that she and her sons were to be partners in the covenant between the People Israel and its God. By this she saved not only Gershom's life - she saved the entire mission. From here on in Moses is recruited - against his will - to the mission of national salvation which he will have to shoulder for the rest of his life. It was the sake of that mission that he had to return to Midian and leave his family there until he completed his assignment. Afterwards he took up his journey to Egypt once more, accompanied this time not by his wife and children, but by his brother Aaron, his partner in the rescue team. Moses was not a tzaddik [righteous man]; rather, he was a ba'al teshuvah [repentant]!

Dr. Yohanan Ahituv lives in Mitzpe Netufa and teaches at the Oranim College.

 

Ethical Behavior is the Criterion for Fear of God

The midwives, however, feared God; so they did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but they enabled the boys to live. So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this thing, that you have enabled the boys to live?"

...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)

 

The degree of justice in a land is measured not so much by the rights accorded to the native-born inhabitants, to the rich, or people who have, at any rate, representations or connections who look after their interests, but by what justice is meted out to the completely unprotected "stranger." The absolute equality in the eyes of the law between the native and the foreigner forms the very foundation of Jewish jurisdiction. In Jewish law it is not nationality which gives man his rights but the rights of man which give nationality! And the Torah knows no distinction between the rights of man and the rights of citizen. Everyone who acknowledged the moral laws of humanity - the seven Noahide laws - could claim the right of domicile in Judea. This principle, this respect for human beings as such, apart from all chance of birth and fate, is proclaimed everywhere in the Torah by remembrance of what was experienced in Egypt. In Egypt, the cleverly calculated lowering of the rights of the Jews on the score of their being aliens came first, the harshness and cruelty followed by itself, as it always does and will, when the basic idea of a right has been given a wrong conception.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch Shemot 1:14, Levy translation. Written in 19^th century Frankfurt, relevant for Israel in 5769)

 

And she saw him that he was good

Ibn Ezra, Sforno, RaMBaN and others explain that he was beautiful since they did not understand how it could make sense to say that a newborn baby was good. RaShBaM explains that he was born after six months, and she looked at him and saw that his form was complete and that he was viable, rather than stillborn.

I think the term good is to be understood literally; a baby is called "good" if he does not scream and cry. If he would have screamed it would have been impossible to hide him, for his voice would have been heard from afar, but since he was good she could hide him.

(ShaDaL 2:2)

 

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, but rather Moshe - one saved 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)

 

 

 

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