Rabbi's Parsha Shiur
RABBI'S PARSHA
SHABBAT BESHALACH
And the Lord turned the people toward the desert road to the Sea of Reeds, and the Children of Israel emerged in a state of readiness from the land of Egypt. (13:18)
Rashi explains that “in a state of readiness” means fully armed. If so, asks the Chasam Sofer, why didn’t G-d command them to fight the Egyptians at the Sea of Reeds? Surely He could have engineered a Jewish victory without needing to change the course of nature by tearing open the sea and bringing it down on Pharaoh and his army?
The Chasam Sofer answers that it would have been ethically improper for the Jewish people to take up arms against their erstwhile hosts. For the very same reason, G-d commanded (Devarim 23:8), “You shall not despise the Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his land” –a person should not cast stones into the well from which he has drunk. Therefore, rather than command the Jewish people to fight the Egyptians directly, G-d had them enter the sea with the Egyptians in pursuit, where they then drowned on their own.
This is why the Torah makes a point in informing us that the Jewish people emerged fully armed –to teach us this ethical lesson, that a person should never turn on his former host.
Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra asks the same question in a slightly different form: How is it that such a vast host as the emerging Jewish people, who numbered in the millions, were afraid of the pursuing Egyptian army? Why didn’t they defend themselves and their children?
The answer goes to the heart of the master-slave relationship. The Egyptians had been masters of the Jews for many years. Having grown up under the yoke of Egyptian slavery, they were abused and downtrodden. How then could they be expected to fight against their former masters? And what is more, though they carried weapons, they were no warriors in any event.
That this was so can be seen from subsequent events in the desert as well. They would have fallen victim even to a small raiding party of Amalekites, had not G-d wrought a special miracle for them. This is also why He ordered events in such a manner that the entire generation which left Egypt would expire in the desert. The conquest of Canaan could not have been accomplished by these people, only by a new generation of spirited Jews, born and raised in the desert.
Rabbi Yaacov Neiman offers a different solution to the Ibn Ezra’s question. The Holy One, Blessed Is He, did not want the Jewish people to wage war and win, lest they fall prey to the attitude of kochi v’otzem yadi, imagining that their own military prowess had carried the day. They would then be lacking in their faith in G-d as a “Man of War.” To prevent such an eventuality, G-d wished to implant in their hearts the realization that it is He who fights their battles. This was accomplished at the splitting of the sea: G-d did battle with the Egyptians, while the children of Israel stood by silently. All this had a profound and lasting effect on the Jewish people, as is written (14:31), “the people feared G-d, and they believed in G-d and in Moses, His servant.”
The Mechilta (on 15:2) tells us that the spectacle witnessed by a simple maidservant at the sea far surpassed the visions of the prophet Ezekiel; even young children pointed with their fingers and said, “This is my G-d, and I will beautify Him.”
Only afterward did G-d permit the Jewish people to wage war with Amalek. Having seen what they had at the sea, they would certainly acknowledge G-d’s power, instead of attributing their military successes to their own martial skills.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jonathan Horowitz
Wed, February 12 2025
14 Shevat 5785
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