The opening
verses of this Parasha reiterate what we read recently in Parashat Va’yigash; specifically,
the names of the sons of Yisrael who had gone down to Egypt. Compared to the
first list (Gen. 46:8-25), this one is briefer and 'basic.' It is these
"names" (“sh’mot”), which lend the title to the
Parasha, as well as to the whole book. The fruitfulness promised to the Patriarchs is already starting to be evident.
"And the children
of
According to Nehama Leibowitz[1], by 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 several measures, all of which are
expressed in verbs denoting suffering, suppression, and servitude (ref. 1:11-14).
However, these steps 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 in order to outsmart or take
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 observes that the initiators of the acts of
ritual enslavement are always mentioned (in their acts of harassment) in the
plural. In contrast, 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, "Israel is pictured
here as characterless, faceless, bereft of leadership".1 Interestingly, the Parasha opens with the
names of the individuals whose descendants, in just a matter of a few verses,
are described as being submerged in a sea of suffering and oblivion (even
though, as noted above, the singular person was also used because the
Israelites were viewed as an “am” – a single nation, a people).
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 examined above, stemming from the root a.tz.m, v. 20b). These two YHVH-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 midwives' names also deserve some attention. Pu'ah is rooted p.a.h (pey, ayin, hey) with its primary meaning being "to bleat". Yisha'ya'hu 42:14 employs several verbs for the process of giving birth, one of them is "ef'eh", referring to a woman travailing in labor. The name Shifra is rooted in sh.f.r (shin, pey/fey, resh), which means to improve or make better. Psalm 16:6 speaks of "a beautiful inheritance", the adjective being "shafra". Indeed, Pu'ah, and her colleague, did receive a significant ("improved") inheritance. The "lines" that are mentioned in this very verse, Ps. 16:6, is chavalim, which can mean labor pains. Finally, in Modern Hebrew, amniotic fluid is designated as "mei - water of - shafir".
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 time span.
The next chapter reports a sudden development. Nehama
Leibowitz comments, "One family, father, mother, and daughter emerge from the
gloom of this faceless mass".[2] 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 means "child" or "son",
[3] 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, spelled 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)[4]. Thus, by
the time the cry ‘made its way’ to YHVH, it had already formulated into His
response! Thus, 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 the 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 firstborn son". Later, when Moshe and A’haron will address Par’oh, they will 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 spelled conventionally, 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, 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 up 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 followers') 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
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