The opening verses of this
Parasha reiterate what we read recently in Parashat Va’yigash; namely, the
names of the sons of Yisrael who had gone down to
According to Nehama Leibowitz[1], by
their settling and establishing a foothold in
"The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete”. “Yet” (in the
above quote) is "ad heh'na", literally "thus far".
In Vayikra (Leviticus) 18:25 we read: "For the land is defiled; therefore
I visit the punishment of its iniquity upon it, and the land vomits out its
inhabitants". From the time YHVH made His declaration to Avraham it took
well over 600 years for the Amorites’ (a generic name for the Canaanite people
groups) iniquity to be "sha'lem", “complete”. The 'quota of their iniquity' was only made full
when the Children of Yisrael entered the
Let us return now to the present situation in
Thus, to counter this (hypothetical) danger of a population explosion,
the king takes a number of measures, all of which are expressed in verbs
denoting suffering, suppression and servitude (ref. 1:11-14). However, these
measures are not taken before Par’oh declares his intention to “deal shrewdly”
with this people. “Shrewdly” – nitchakma - rooted in ch.ch.m (chet, chaf, mem)
which is “wise” or “wisdom”. However, the particular conjugation used here
implies the misuse of wisdom for the purpose of outsmarting or taking
advantage. Thus, an evil plan is devised. First they "set over them"
“sa'rey mi’sim” - tax collecting princes - to (literally) "afflict them with suffering". But
"the more they afflicted
them, the more they multiplied and grew” (v. 12). The verb "grew"
is "yifrotz", of the root p.r.tz which we examined in Parashat
Va’yeshev (Gen. 38:29), where we noted that it means "to break forth". This caused the Egyptians "to loath" or "abhore"
(“va’yakutzu”) them, and in turn they made them do rigorous labor (“va'ya'vidu” - a.v.d. - labor, work;
while “eh’ved” is “slave”). "And they made their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of work in the field. All their work in which they made them work
with rigor" (v. 14 italics
added). In verses 13-14 the root a.v.d (ayin, vet, dalet) - work, labor, slave
- occurs five times, impressing upon the reader the sense of perpetual toil.
The commentator Benno Jacob [2]
observes that the initiators of the acts of ritual enslavement are always
mentioned (in their acts of harassment) in the plural, whereas the Israelites
are referred to as a singular entity (in 1:10-12 each reference to the
Israelites reads "he", although not translated that way in English). The
commentator goes on to say, "
The only two
characters singled out here are the midwives (who are mentioned by name). They
were assigned the heinous task of doing away with every Hebrew male newborn. The
Hebrew reads: “me’yaldot ha’eev’riyot”, which may be read as “the Hebrew
midwives” or the “midwives of the Hebrew (women)”, thus calling into question
the identity of the midwives: were they Israelites or Egyptian? Their defiance
of the king's edict (1:17) results in Yisrael becoming even more numerous
and mighy – rav and atzum (the same term we notved above, stemming
from the root a.tz.m, v. 20b). These two Elohim-fearing
women testify of the full involvement of Yisrael's Elohim with His People, even
at a time when the Nation was under conditions of bondage and forgetfulness. However,
whereas "am Yisrael" as a whole was occupied with endless and huge
building projects for their taskmasters, it says about the midwives that Elohim
established their "batim" – 1:21 literally “homes,
houses" and also “families, dynasties” (translated
“households”)!
The subjugating process gathers
momentum; taxing turns into hard labor (1:11),
then to enslavement (vs. 13, 14) and to 'limited' infanticide (v. 16), which
finally becomes an imposition on the entire Egyptian nation, compelling it to
engage in a full-blown genocide by exterminating every newborn male (v. 22).
Thus, the mere 22 verses of Sh’mot’s first chapter recount a long and eventful span
of time.
The next chapter reports a sudden development. Nehama Leibowitz comments,
"One family, father, mother, and daughter emerge from the gloom of this
faceless mass".[3] The
anonymity is only gradually broken, though, as the protagonists of this first
part of the chapter remain nameless, albeit distinct. The only specific name in
this narrative is the name that Par’oh's daughter gives the baby whom she finds:
It is to be Moshe, "because I drew him out of the
water" (2:10 emphasis added). And as we observed in Parashat Miketz (Gen.
41-44:17), this name is probably an Egyptian one, as "mes" or
"mesu" in ancient Egyptian mean "child" or "son",
[4] yet the Hebrew language adapts to foreign
terms by employing puns or a 'play on words' (such as the in the name
"Bavel," Gen. 11:9). There is, however, one other instance in
Scripture where the root m.sh.h (mem,
shin, hey) is used: "He drew me out - yimsheni - of many waters", intones
King David (2nd Sam. 22:17; Ps. 18:16), being an apt description of
Moshe’s current condition, and also of his future role, when he will lead his
people out of a large body of water. The basket that baby Moshe was put in is
called "tey'va", the identical term used for Noach's ark! The
gigantic structure and the little basket, both, were havens of safety and
protection ‘upon the waters’ that, spelt ultimate deliverance with large-scale
ramifications.
It took the death of the king (2:23) for the Children of Yisrael to
"groan" and "cry out" -"va'yiz'aku"
- and “their cry" - "shava'atam" - went up
to Elohim. Notice that here the verb “to cry out” is different from the noun
“cry”. In other words, by the time the cry (“za’a’ka”) reached heaven,
it turned into a "sha'v'a" (sh.v.a. shin, vav, ayin), a noun
which is "akin to deliverance or salvation" (which is y.sh.a - yod,
shin, ayin) [5]. Thus, by
the time the cry ‘made its way’ to YHVH it had already formulated into His
response! Thusly, Elohim "heard", "remembered",
"looked" (or "saw"), and "acknowledged" (2:24-25)
– all of which make up the components of His response.
Chapter
3 elaborates on the implementation of the above verbs through the person of
Moshe and his mission. It will be by Moshe that YHVH will reveal Himself to His
People. Moshe spends time in the desert, "midbar",
"tending the flock of Yitro (Jethro), his father-in-law… and he led the
flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of Elohim”
(3:1). "Midbar" stems from the root d.v.r (dalet, vet/bet, resh),
meaning “speech” or “speaking”, but this root
also supplies us with “to drive” (as in “push out”) and “defeat”. It shares the
same root with "pestilence" or “plague”, and with the Holy of Holies
in Solomon's
YHVH reveals Himself to Moshe, talking to Him by the “
Elohim’s plans for His people may be elicited from some of the terms used
here. He declares that He Himself "will go down" to rescue His people from Mitzrayim (
The long
discourse that the reluctant Moshe has with YHVH is about to end when YHVH
tells him: "Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you
what you shall say" (4:12).
Similar words are repeated in verse 15, with the promise to instruct him and his
brother A’ha’ron (Aaron) as to what they will have to do. It was likewise a totally submissive Yeshua who expressed a
similar idea during His earthly ministry, "The son can do nothing by
himself, he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the
Father does, the son does also" (John 5:19, see also 8:28; 12:49; 14:10).
Moshe and A’ha’ron comply and go to see Par’oh. In 5:4 we read: “And the king of
We noted above that, possibly because of their lowly state the Hebrews
were referred to in singular person. In 4:22-23 (and 3:7-8) they are referred
to once again in this manner; but this time for an entirely different reason.
Here YHVH calls Yisrael, "My first born son". Later, when
Moshe and A’haron address Par’oh, they say to him: "The Elohim of the
Hebrews has met with us. Please, let us go three days' journey into the desert
and sacrifice to YHVH our Elohim…” (5:3). However, the non-normative spelling
of “has met with us” – nikra – can also be read as “who is named/called”, thus rendering
this excerpt as, “The Elohim of the Hebrews Who is named after us (the “us” implying
Avraham, Yitchak and Yaacov)…” Indeed in 3:15 Elohim
calls Himself the “Elohim of Avraham, the Elohim of Yitzchak, the Elohim of
Ya’acov”. (By comparison in 3:18, the same word “has met”, is spelt in the
conventional manner, with its meaning, therefore, remaining ‘plain and simple’,
unlike the above.)
Even though by the end of the Parasha the lot of the Israelites is made
(temporarily) even worse than it had been before Moshe's audience with Par'oh,
the People, who at the beginning of Sh'mot are presented as a forgotten and
maltreated mass, are now the object of YHVH's direct intervention. It is,
therefore, with these words that our Parasha ends: "Then YHVH said to
Moses, 'Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh, for with a strong
In Parashat Sh’mot we see
once again the sovereignty of YHVH over the schemes and intentions of the
enemy. Just as in the case of Yoseph, whose destiny the enemy attempted to disrupt,
yet YHVH used this very plan to catapult him into the place that He had designed
for him, so too in regards to Moshe (and in an even greater measure to Yeshua,
see 1 Cor. 2:7, 8). The very man whose command should have brought about this
infant’s death, ended being the one in whose palace this infant was protected,
raised, and groomed for leading the Israelites out and away from under his (and
his follower’s) despotic and tyrannical control and dominion.
1 New Studies in Shemot, by Nechama Leibowitz, trans.
Aryeh Newman,
Eliner Library,
2 Ibid
3 Ibid
4 The New Brown, Driver,
Briggs, Gesenius Hebrew and English Lexicon,
ed. Francis Brown,
Hendrickson Publishers,
5 Ibid
6 Ibid
