No Turning Back
The Torah quotes G-d as saying to Moses before the crossing of the sea: "Why
do you cry out to Me, speak to the children of Israel,
and they will start moving!" (Ex. 14:15) Rashi, quoting ancient sources, says that
this verse teaches that while G-d spoke to him, Moses was engaged in lengthy
prayer. G-d reprimanded Moses for
spending all this time in prayer at a time when the Jewish people were in
distress. This seems exceedingly strange. The Psalmist tells us, "On the day of my
distress I call upon You, so that You will answer me."
(Ps. 86:7)
Had it not been for Rashi's comment, we would
not have experienced any difficulty. We
would simply have understood G-d as telling Moses that there was no need for
prayer since G-d had already assured Israel of His help when He said "I
shall deal severely with Pharaoh and his entire army" (Ex. 14:4). All Moses had to ask was how best to go about
defeating Pharaoh. Nachmanides follows
this approach in his commentary.
We must assume, however, that the word which troubled Rashi in that
verse was the word "to Me!" Who else would Moses have cried out to? Why did G-d have to add this word? Would Moses have addressed the angels Michael
and Gabriel? Surely not!
Moses had to induce the Jewish people to leave Egypt…
Another difficulty is the very reply of G-d. How could G-d tell Moses that the Jewish
people would (or should) march when the sea which they faced prevented them
from doing just that? Maybe G-d should
have said: "Tell the Jewish people if they get moving I shall split the
sea for them!"
If we are to explain the plain meaning of the text we must keep in mind
the preceding verses and pay close attention to them. Regarding the expression "The children
of Israel cried
out to G-d" (Ex. 14:10), our sages
in the Mechilta comment that they did the same time-honored
thing their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had done when in trouble. The Talmud adds that there were four
different groups of Israelites, each of whom reacted differently to the problems
they faced.
Verse 11 seems to contain unnecessary verbiage: The Israelites are portrayed as sarcastic in
lambasting Moses complaining that, since there was no
suitable burial sites in Egypt,
why did they have to come thus far only to be buried? And after that they ask, apparently for a
second time, "What did you do for us to take us out of Egypt?" Rashi attempts to explain the repetition by
saying they asked Moses in a different language, maybe Egyptian when they
asked, "Did you take us out to bury us?" He seems to exchange the usual meaning of the
word "you took us" for "you have seduced us". His reason maybe that man is first and
foremost propelled by his intellect. It
follows that the word "takes", does not really fit when applied to
human beings. One "takes"
objects or animals, but not human beings.
The truth is therefore that Moses had to induce the Jewish people to
leave Egypt by
promising to bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey.
This still leaves the question why the Israelites did not say "why
did you lead us out" instead of saying "you took us". After all,
they did use the verb "to lead us" at the end of the same verse when
they said "to lead us out from Egypt." The very words "what is this you have
done to us" seem to be a repetition.
When Moses answers them at length, saying a) "do not fear," b)
"stand upright," c) "watch the salvation of G-d," plus the
words "the way you see Egypt this day you will never see Egypt again,"
this surely appears an unnecessarily long answer! Besides, the last statement is not a
clear-cut promise, but could be interpreted in exactly the reverse manner!
In fact, in the days of Jeremiah, the Israelites who fled from the land
of Israel after the ruin of the Temple
turned to Egypt
for succor! Moreover, the Torah (see Deut.
28:68) describes Israel's
return to Egypt
as one of the curses in store for them for not observing the Torah! For all
these reasons our sages did not view this latter statement of Moses "you
will never see them again" as a promise, but construed it as a prohibition
not to settle in the land of Egypt
(Jerusalem Talmud, Sotah 5, 5).
This was surely not the time and the place to teach Israel
never again to settle Egypt!...
Even so, how can the historical period under discussion be related to what happened a millennium later to permit a
distorted text at this point! This was
surely not the time and the place to teach Israel
never again to settle Egypt!
At this time the only thing that mattered was a timely prayer! This is why G-d said to Moses: "Israel
is in distress and you indulge in overly long prayer!"
Our sages explain that the words "And here Israel
saw Egypt
traveling behind them" (Ex. 14:10)
refer to the celestial minister of Egypt. This is the reason the Torah speaks about Egypt
instead of about Egyptians. When the
Israelites saw this, they were assailed by great doubts. At the time of the slaying of every
first-born in Egypt they had believed that G-d personally was in their midst
and that all these miracles had not been orchestrated with the help of angels,
etc., but had been performed by G-d in His capacity as the four-lettered
ineffable Name. They had been convinced
that the first-born highest-ranking celestial minister of Egypt
had also been defeated and no longer existed.
They had believed that G-d had disposed of that force because no one but
G-d Himself was able to accomplish this!
The very fact that the Egyptians had buried all their dead had served as
a sign for the Israelites that G-d personally had struck down every first-born
(as described in Num. 33:4). When Israel
saw that all the Egyptian first-born on earth had been slain, they naturally
assumed that their celestial minister in the upper regions had been slain also,
because we know of the principle that the spiritual counterparts of the nations
on earth suffer defeat in the celestial regions prior to the defeat of the
nations on earth whom they represent.
In this instance, however, the celestial minister of Egypt
had not yet been totally eliminated. When the Torah spoke about G-d's having struck Egypt (see
Num. 33:4), this did not mean that G-d struck a fatal blow at that time.
G-d had allowed the celestial minister to survive until the Egyptians
were drowned in the sea…
G-d had allowed the celestial minister to survive until the Egyptians
were drowned in the sea. The celestial
minister had already been weakened. The Rekanati explains that at the sea the Israelites saw that the
celestial minister of Egypt
had allied himself with Samael in order to be a real threat against Israel.
G-d allowed this celestial minister to exist in order to impress Israel
even more deeply with His miracles. Israel
was unaware of this at the time the Egyptian pursuit was in full swing. They did not yet know that G-d was going to
split the sea, save them and drown the Egyptian army in it. As a result of all this, they were beset by
doubts as to whether it had been G-d or Moses who had orchestrated the Exodus. They thought that G-d perhaps had only wanted
them to travel three days' journey into the desert, after which they were to
return to Egypt,
though not as slaves. They believed that
Moses had overstepped his authority and decided by himself that Israel
should not return to Egypt
at all. They believed that Moses had
done so in the belief that G-d carries out the wishes of His prophets. This is why they cried out to G-d to
demonstrate that He was a living G-d in their midst just as He had demonstrated
this at the time He slew the first-born.
They were angry at Moses, and this is why they accused him of taking
them into the desert to die…
…The Israelites referred to their assumption that the celestial minister
had been killed by basing themselves on their having seen the Egyptians bury
their dead. They now doubted what their
eyes had seen and implied that possibly the interment they believed they had
witnessed did not prove that the first-born Egyptians were really in their
graves. If so, instead of G-d having
taken the Jews out of Egypt,
"you Moses have taken us, acquired us instead of G-d!" The word "taken up" is used in
contrast with G-d's "And I saved you from their labor (or deity), in
Hebrew avodatam, and I took you to be My nation." Those words had implied that Israel
would be saved from the celestial minister of Egypt
who represented their deity. When the
children of Israel
said, "What have you done to us?", they
merely paraphrased Pharaoh, who had said, "What have we done - for we have
sent Israel out
of servitude." (Ex. 14:6) The word "out of servitude" (in Heberw, m'avdeinu) also
can mean "from our deity", meaning that Pharaoh regretted allowing Israel
to serve their own deity instead of that of the celestial minister of Egypt.
None of the projectiles the Egyptian army hurled at the Israelites
caused any damage…
At this point Moses revealed to them that they would not again observe
the celestial minister as he had been.
His demise was about to occur amongst tremendous miracles which they
would witness. At that moment G-d's
promise of "I will save you from their deity and take you to be My people" (a higher spiritual level by far) would be
fulfilled. As proof of its immediacy,
they would observe G-d doing the fighting on their behalf. An even more immediate proof was that none of
the projectiles the Egyptian army hurled at the Israelites caused any
damage. They were all caught by the
angel described as traveling between the camp of the Israelites and that of the
Egyptians (see Rashi on Ex. 14:19)
When G-d criticized Moses for calling out to Him at that time, He
meant that by doing so Moses only reinforced the people's suspicions that he
had acted high-handedly without consulting G-d and that he was not pleading
with G-d to come to his assistance. If
now He Himself would tell the Israelites that they should move forward they
would realize and believe that whatever Moses had done in the past was also at
G-d's behest, and that G-d personally slew the Egyptian first-born, not an
agent.
All of this message is contained in the brief
instruction to "get moving".
G-d purposely did not waste any time explaining that He would split the
sea, etc. If G-d would now reveal His plan of drowning the Egyptians it would
be perceived as a new decision by G-d and not as part of His overall plan
conceived much earlier. An allusion to this impending miracle was already
contained in the announcement of the plague of killing the first-born, when G-d
referred to "increasing My miracles" (plural,
Ex. 11:9). One of the "miracles" referred to was the slaying of the
first-born, the other the splitting of the sea and the Egyptians being drowned
in it (Rashi). G-d's entire purpose in
the sequence of events was to build up Moses' reputation amongst the
people. We know that G-d succeeded in
this because the Torah tells us, "They believed in G-d and in His servant
Moses". (Ex. 14:31) The verse in question refers to the Israelites having
seen Egypt dead
in verse 30.
The Zohar is at pains to point out that the Torah does not speak about
Egyptians being viewed as dead, but Egypt,
i.e. the celestial minister of Egypt. G-d made a point of showing the dead
celestial minister to the Israelites. I
believe that this is the plain meaning of the verses dealing with this episode.
