Exodus 14,19. “The angel of G’d who had been traveling in front of the camp of the Israelites moved to their back and took up position behind them.”It is a known fact that the angels are spiritually superior to Israel due to their inherent holiness. However, whenever G’d displays His love for His people, the Israelites become transported to a spiritually higher stature than the angels. At the time when G’d split the sea of reeds, the Israelites ascended to a higher level of holiness than even the highest ranking angels.
This is the deeper meaning of the line that whereas at the beginning of the Israelites’ journey the angel traveled “ahead of them,” by the time they had reached the shores of the sea of reeds the angel of G’d took up his position behind them. Exodus 14,21. “Moses inclined his hand above the sea, etc;” there is a statement in Sh’mot Rabbah 21,6 according to which Moses commanded the sea in the name of G’d to divide itself so as to let the Israelites march through; the sea demurred, saying to him: “son of Amram, I am greater than you, etc.,’”Naturally, the Midrash is an allegory, but we must understand what the author of the Midrash is trying to convey to us.
G’d has assigned nature its tasks in broad outlines, and one of the rules by which the sea is governed is to perform its task loyally. In the course of the thousands of years that nature performs its task, which is mostly to act as an agent of G’d’s largesse for the benefit of mankind, nature tends to forget that what it does is no more than to carry out the will of the Creator, and it begins to think of itself as an independent, sovereign force. When the Creator becomes aware of this, He decides to remind nature that He is the “boss,” and that had it not been for Him, nature would be completely impotent.
If at the time when Moses addressed the sea in the name of G’d, the sea would have responded immediately, it would not have had to humble itself beyond a minimum and have to be turned into dry land, as it did after having insisted that seeing it had been created on the third day of creation whereas man was only created on the sixth day, man had no authority to issue orders to it even in the name of the Creator.[This commentary is presumably inspired by G’d having told Moses already in verse 16 to perform this miracle, whereas only in verse 22 does it begin to occur, and G’d Himself is involved, in addition to Moses‘ “hand.”
Ed.]According to the midrash, (Sh’mot Rabbah 23,14) the opening line in Moses’ שירת הים, Song of thanksgiving after the crossing of the sea, (Exodus 15,1) which contains the words: כי גאה גאה, “For He is highly exalted,” was inspired by the haughty response the sea had used to deny Moses’ initial command to divide its waters to permit the Israelites to cross. This is also alluded to in Exodus 14,21 ויולך ה' את הים ברוח קדים עזה כל הלילה וגו', “Hashem made the sea travel all night long driven by a strong easterly wind, etc;” this was the punishment for the sea that had boasted to Moses that it considered itself as greater than he.
The expression עזה instead of חזק which would be the customary word used for a “strong” wind, suggests that the sea was being repaid measure for measure for its arrogance. Due to G’d making use of this strong easterly wind, the sea was forced not only to split, but to turn its bed into dry land. G’d wished to prove to the sea how quickly it could be turned into its very opposite. The “greater” something in this material world of ours, the easier and the more utterly can it be destroyed with one fell swoop. A word or two about the name of G’d containing 72 letters.
We know that when G’d created the universe He related to it by “showering” it with His largesse. Another word for this “largesse” of G’d is אור ישר, “direct light,” as opposed to אור חוזר, “reflected light.” When the creatures (both the living and the inert) boast of serving their Creator, this is called אור חוזר. The term implies that the creatures, as an expression of gratitude to their Creator “pay back” with adulation for their Creator.
They turn to their roots, origin, hence the expression חוזר, “return, reflect.” When the Torah writes three successive verses each containing 72 letters, the first verse commencing with the word ויסע, the second with the word ויבא, and the third with the word ויט, (Exodus 14,19-21) when these are written letter for letter above each other, the topmost verse from right to left, and the middle verse from left to right, the result will be 72 three lettered names of G’d. [The subject is dealt with in the prayer Book of the Ari’zal in connection with the קריאת שמע.]
Accordingly, the first verse is to be understood as an activity initiated by G’d, or אור ישר. The second verse commencing with the word ויבא, represents the response of the recipient of the אור ישר, the אור חוזר, the response by the creature. This is why this verse is to be understood as having been written from left to right, i.e. using the alphabet backwards, or the sages phrase it, as תשרק.
The third verse, read in the customary mode from right to left, represents אור ישר, again. In other words, when the creature has responded to G’d’s “direct light” positively, it qualifies for G’d’s performing supernatural miracles for such a creature or creatures. In this case, when the sea had responded appropriately, it was allowed to revert to its former, normal, state. Having understood this concept, we will also understand why the manna was not allowed to descend to earth on the Sabbath, whereas G’d did not interrupt the growth of crops that originated from the earth during the Sabbath.
Our author refers us to the commentary of Rabbi Moshe Alshich commenting on Exodus 20,11 כי ששת ימים עשה ה' את השמים ואת הארץ, “for during six days G’d made the heaven and the earth, etc,” that this refers to the אור הישר used by G’d. The seventh day that followed is to be viewed as the response by the creatures to having received such abundant blessings during the preceding six days.
In other words, the day is used to show G’d our positive response to His generosity, the response being called the אור החוזר the “reflected light.” The words ויכל אלוקים ביום השביעי (Genesis 2,1) are understood by the Midrash as the creatures emulating G’d on the Sabbath in rejoicing and abstaining from “creative” activities, thus “sending back to their Creator the message (reflected light)” that they appreciate the “direct light” they had been the beneficiaries of during the preceding six days. We must also consider that the manna having originated in the heavenly spheres, was originally not something tangible, although upon entering the atmosphere, it had to become garbed in a manner compatible with other earthly phenomena. Having it descend on the Sabbath would have negated the concept of the creation which commences with something intangible and converts it into something tangible, but retaining elements of: “direct light.”
Earth grown crops never originated in celestial domains in the first place, so that there was no reason to interrupt their growth. On the contrary, according to the Kabbalists, eating and drinking by human beings is not an end itself, but the food is meant to help us to devote more time and effort to spiritual pursuits, i.e. to come closer to the completely disembodied essence of the Creator.
On the Sabbath when we are free from the burden of having to secure our livelihood, we return the largesse of G’d experienced during the six preceding days, by commencing a journey in the opposite direction coming closer to the regions from which the manna originated. To summarize: the Sabbath itself is symbolic of the אור החוזר, “reflected light.” Exodus 14,27. “towards morning the sea reverted to its permanent state.”
Having seen how pleased its Creator had been with its having been split, something that had resulted in the Israelites breaking out in song of thanksgiving and admiration for Hashem, the sea had not wanted to turn into water again, believing that by remaining dry land the Israelites would regularly offer such songs of praises to their Creator. [The author views the word איתנו as a variant of the word תנאי, condition. Ed.]The sea conditioned its resuming its natural state on only Moses being allowed to command it in the future.
When we consider this exegesis, the question raised by the author of the Orach Chayim what was so special about the sea being split seeing that the Jordan has been split also, but not at the command of Moses but of Joshua, and according to the Talmud Chulin. 7, the river Ginnai split at the command of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair, is easily answered. Since the Jordan and the river Ginnai had already noticed how pleased G’d had been when the sea divided itself, they did not deserve special credit for their conduct.
The sea of reeds, however, had been the first body of water that had negated its normal status in order to please the Lord, did deserve laudatory mention. When the sea split it had not yet been aware that its action would be so pleasing to its Creator. Sh’mot Rabbah 19,6 comments on Isaiah 52,12 כי בחפזון יצאת ממצרים, “for you left Egypt in haste,” i.e. during the night, contrasts this with the promise of the prophet that the redemption in the future will not be in haste or at night, like thieves feeling during the night.
On the face of it, this Midrash appears to directly contradict the statement of the Torah that the Israelites did not depart during the night but בעצם היום הזה: “in the middle of this day, i.e. in full daylight.” (Exodus 12,17) The Midrash, however was not concerned with the physical darkness or daylight, but with the mental state of the Jewish people, who, at the time of the Exodus from Egypt, were as if in spiritual darkness. (Compare to the scenario painted by the prophet Isaiah of how spiritually enlightened the Jewish people in the future would be when the redemption would come).We also read in the Yalkut Reuveni on this portion, [who subscribes to the optimistic view that the redemption in the future will be due to our having accumulated the necessary merits. Ed.] that there will not be an opportunity for the protective angel of the people oppressing us to accuse us of worshipping idols, as did the protective angel of the Egyptians at the time of that Exodus.
This is why the above quoted verse from Isaiah concludes with the words: ומאסיפכם אלוקי ישראל, “and the Lord your G’d, will gather you in.” Exodus 14,30. “On that day Hashem delivered Israel from the hands of the Egyptians;” The author feels that the words: “on that day,” require further analysis. Seeing that, -as he has told us repeatedly,- the various universes have been created only for the sake of the Jewish people, as Rashi already commented on the opening words of the Torah, בראשית ברא, it follows that when, G’d forbid, hard times hit the Jewish people, the “days” themselves must come to the assistance of the Jewish people and point out good deeds of this people to G’d, as, if we were G’d forbid to disappear, so would these “days,” i.e. all of the world’s history would disappear with the Jewish people.
The expression ביום ההוא, “on that day” in our verse, therefore refers to the “day” on which the collective soul of the universe praised the Jewish people to forestall its defeat at the hands of the Egyptians. Another interpretation of the words: ביום ההוא. We know that the word: הוא, “he or it,” as a form of indirect speech, is the opposite of זה or זאת, “this.” The former referred to something or somebody not present, concealed, whereas the latter refers to something or somebody in plain view, present.
When referring to miracles, we distinguish between overt and covert miracles, i.e. covert miracles such as the events in the Purim story which did not involve G’d’s interfering with what we know as “natural processes.” The salvation of the Israelites from the dangers of annihilation described in the Torah, required direct interference by the Almighty of a supernatural manner. The Torah calls this interference as יום ההוא, “resorting to hidden elements in the universe, parts of the universe not normally accessible to us.”
The Zohar, in commenting on Numbers 18,23 ועבד הלוי הוא, a most unusual construction where the word הוא appears superfluous, writes that the word הוא, refers to the hidden domain of the universe, the celestial regions, and that it is the Levite’s function to repair any imbalance caused in those regions through improper actions by Jews on earth. The word יום, always refers to light, as we know from the story of creation.
The expression: ביום ההוא, therefore refers to the day on which hitherto hidden light was used by G’d to deliver the Jewish people from mortal danger. Or, briefly, the Torah states that of the various days on which G’d has revealed Himself more than on others by showering the Jewish people with his largesse, that day as part of the Exodus was the day on which He did so more than on any other day. “Israel saw the Egyptians’ corpses dead on the beaches of the sea.”
The need for the Torah to write this verse has been explained by our sages in Sanhedrin 67 as follows. “The reason why sorcerers, magicians, are called מכשפים in Hebrew, is that they ‘weaken’ G’d’s entourage in the celestial regions” [their very existence and apparent power seems to contradict the absolute power of G’d. Ed.] It is a known fact that there are two methods of defeating one’s fellow man.
Either one accuses him outright of being evil and thus ruins his reputation, or one praises him to high heaven, thus making others jealous of him and causing the opponents of the righteous total frustration thereby. This is the meaning of our sages when they said that “the sorcerers weaken the entourage of the Almighty.” The so-called פמליא של מעלה, are the “opposite.”[If I were asked to explain this very briefly, I would say that the very existence of forces that are clearly part of a supernatural realm. i.e. the forces that enable a false prophet to perform miracles, appears to contradict the concept of אין עוד מלבדו, “there is no real force other than G’d Himself.”
G’d obviously had His reasons for creating such forces, but to the uninitiated human being such forces pose a serious challenge to his faith in the uniqueness of G’d. In other words, this “divine” entourage undermines rather than strengthens our belief in the exclusivity of G’d. Rabbi Mordechai Elon has an excellent article on this entitled ואשא אתכם על כנפי נשרים, on Parshat Yitro and Mishpatim.
Ed.] The author of Or Hachayim questions a Midrash according to which the sea at first refused to wash up these bodies on the shores of the sea, until being given a hint by the Creator Himself to accept these bodies.I believe that with G’d’s help I have been enabled to understand the reason for the sea’s initial reluctance to “vomit” these bodies on the shore. Death itself was introduced to earth only through Adam having eaten from the tree of knowledge in defiance of G’d’s warning not to do so on pain of his becoming mortal.
Seeing that the oceans had no part in that sin, they naturally resented being associated with death, as dead bodies reflect negatively on the one assisting in their concealment, as we know from the earth being cursed for having hidden Hevel’s body. (Genesis 4,11)The ocean not having been part of Adam’s sin at all, resulted in it experiencing a sense of revulsion at the sight of dead bodies.
The definition of דבר מת, is: “something that had been alive but has ceased to be so.” The wicked do not feel revulsion when coming into contact with dead bodies, as they themselves are considered as “dead” even while walking around on earth. (Compare B’rachot 18) The visible unnatural and painful death of the wicked affords their souls a certain spiritual elevation, as the manner in which their bodies had died confirmed the surviving G’d fearing people in their belief that G’d is alive and reigns in this universe.
This is why we explained the verse (31) וירא ישראל את היד הגדולה, “Israel saw the great hand, etc,” which at first glance is hard to understand, as the Israelites were busy running away from the Egyptians and an impenetrable wall of fire was behind them. Also the Ari’zal’s commentary that the words היד הגדולה, “the great hand,” are an allusion to G’d’s attribute of chessed, “loving kindness,” appear difficult to understand.
However, when you consider our exegesis that the Israelites’ faith was reinforced when they realized that even in death G’d had given these Egyptians an opportunity to be מקדש את השם, to aggrandize His name through their dead bodies inspiring faith in G’d, this can all be understood without difficulty. It was the very fact that G’d had smitten their long time oppressors that opened the Israelites’ mental eyes to G’d’s greatness.
As a result they not only believed more strongly in G’d but also in His prophet Moses, absolutely. They realized that G’d had used the Egyptians as an instrument to inspire belief in Him. Having appreciated this, we can also answer the question of the Or Hachayim mentioned earlier. The reason that the oceans had been able to tolerate these dead Egyptian bodies in their midst was that they had now become symbols of G’d’s greatness, not of His failure in educating man. These Egyptians had finally “come alive” through the manner in which they had died, as they now inspired others to believe in the One and only Creator and His Power.
Moses alluded to all this when he sang about מרכבות פרעה וחילו רמה בים ומבחר שלישיו טבעו בים וגו', “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has flung into the sea; and the choicest of his officers are drowned in the sea of reeds.”Exodus 15,6. “Your right hand, O G’d, glorious in power; Your right hand shatters the enemy.” Moses is aware of the fact that G’d’s “right hand” symbolizes חסד, loving kindness, and he expresses his awareness that in shattering the enemy, Egypt in this instance, He did not resort to גבורה, the attribute of Justice.
As proof of this he describes the manner in which the choicest of Pharaoh’s captains went deep down, something that is the reverse of what normally occurs in drowning, as the sea, as we pointed out, basically rejects dead bodies. It follows that by their very death these captains of Pharaoh’s chariots actually “lived,” i.e. made a worthwhile contribution to their having existed on earth previous to this.
Their contribution, of course, was a passive one, recognition of G’d’s greatness not having been their conscious intent when dying a painful “death.” The Israelites realized what had happened, and that is why the Torah describes them as וירא ישראל את היד הגדול אשר עשה ה' במצרים וגו', “Israel saw the great hand which G’d had brought to bear on the Egyptians, etc.” The word: במצרים, usually understood as “in Egypt,” is somewhat difficult, seeing that G’d’s crowning achievement was the destruction of the entire Egyptian military might at the sea of reeds. Accordingly, we would have expected the Torah to have written: היד הגדולה בקריעת ים סוף, “the great hand G’d had demonstrated by the splitting of the sea.”
Furthermore, the expression היד הגדולה, instead of היד החזקה, “the strong, powerful hand,” is what we would have expected, seeing that G’d had told Moses already in Exodus 3,19 that Pharaoh would not release the Israelites until He would intervene with יד חזקה, “a strong hand.” In light of our exegesis there is no problem with these verses. G’d performed a great act of loving kindness for the Egyptians who had been allowed to serve as G’d’s instrument to induce faith in the Lord by both the Israelites, and many gentiles who heard about what had transpired at the sea of reeds. [Compare Rahav in Joshua 2,9.
Ed.] This is what happened at the sea. On the other hand, in Egypt, G’d had used יד חזקה, “a strong hand,” i.e. the attribute of Justice in order to discipline the Egyptians. The true sanctification of G’d’s name occurred at the sea of reeds, where His “great” name was sanctified, hence the reference to היד הגדולה, instead of היד החזקה.When someone has attained an advanced level in his spiritual development, he has no need to watch miracles as proof of G’d’s power in order to strengthen his faith in Him as we have explained on previous occasions.
Anyone who possesses an average amount of intelligence is aware of the existence of a Creator who has created this universe. Only people of less than average intelligence require miracles to bring home to them that there is a Creator, who, seeing that the universe is His, is able to wreak havoc with laws of nature, i.e. laws which He Himself had established. We need to understand the reason why the song of thanksgiving, sung (composed) by Moses on this occasion is called שירה in the feminine mode, whereas a similar song that will be composed after the final redemption by the Messiah is always referred to in the masculine mode, i.e. שיר.
According to Sh’mot Rabbah 23,11 the reason is that the song of thanksgiving in the future will have been evoked exclusively from feelings of joy by those who have been redeemed, whereas any thanksgiving song prior to that will have come about at least in part by G’d having had to invoke miracles in order for some of the people to learn to fully acknowledge Him. “The people feared the Lord; they had faith in the Lord as well as in Moses His servant.”,Seeing that the common people at this point had achieved such stature that an ordinary maid was able to experience visions superior even to those described by the prophet Ezekiel, (Mechilta B’shalach 2) they could believe that any human being had the potential of ascending the spiritual ladder no less than Moses himself. Exodus 15,1.“then Moses and the Children of Israel sang this song and they said: saying;” first we must understand that the essence of joy is what a person feels in his heart; seeing that this is so, what need is there to express these feelings in speech and song or poetry at the time of his joy?The reason is that joy in one’s heart, unless formulated in word and song is bound to subside and cease altogether in short order.
By giving verbal expression to one’s joy and composing a song and writing poetry one prolongs and intensifies this feeling of joy. The Israelites were aware of this psychological axiom, and this is why they yearned to give proper expression to their joy. They yearned to share their joy with the Creator, Who had been the architect enabling them to harbour such joyous feelings in their breasts.
This is the reason why the Torah adds the words: ויאמרו לאמור “they said, saying;” the word לאמור presumably refers to extraneous words, not included in the actual song that follows; if this were not so, who was there that they could have spoken to about this other than their peers who had all experienced the same salvation? Another reason for the need of the word לאמור to appear in the verse under discussion: We have a tradition that every word in the Torah preceded the historical events described in the Torah, so much so that they were recorded even before the universe had been created.
We must therefore fall back on the statement of the Kabbalists that, essentially, the written Torah is nothing but a record of the various names of the Creator. The letters in His names have been written in a manner that conceals, so that it required “dressing up” before being released into our “lower” universe, as otherwise we would have been completely stymied in our efforts to unravel the Torah’s meaning.
Only a very few people have been privileged to understand the words of the Torah as they are presented to us on a level that transcends their superficial meaning, the peshat. [However, being G’d’s words, also the peshat is not to be belittled, of course. Ed.] When the Torah adds the apparently unnecessary word לאמור, whenever the Torah writes: וידבר ה' אל משה לאמור, “Hashem spoke to Moses, leymor”, this is like giving the reader notice that G’d told Moses to rephrase His words in a manner that the common people should be able to understand.
At the same time this word לאמור, served notice that the elite of the people were encouraged to look for more than the plain meaning of the text. The same applies when Moses commenced the song of thanksgiving for the salvation of the Israelites from the last and most dangerous threat of the Egyptians. We are to examine this text in order to discover hidden meanings Yet another meaning of the word לאמור before Moses commenced with the text of the song; we have explained elsewhere that the pinnacle of human pleasure consists in our ability to serve our Creator in a manner that compares favorably with the service of the Lord performed on an ongoing basis by the various categories of angels in the celestial spheres.
In this instance, Moses and the people emphasize their great pleasure in being able to please the Lord by formulating their feelings of gratitude in words of admiration and adulation, i.e. לאמור. Another allegorical approach sees in the word אז an allusion to the number seven=ז. Up until this time the number seven had been a symbol of excellence, superiority, as for instance the seventh day being the holiest day, the seventh layer of the heavens being the most holy, etc;.
In one’s ascent to a true unity with the One and only Creator, one has to ascend just beyond the seven levels beneath this. Moses hinted that the joy experienced at this moment brought him and the Jewish people with him to this point of the א, i.e. this level beyond the seven levels that both the people and he had already scaled in their pursuit of that union. Their joy at this moment was therefore truly transcendental in essence. At this point the author introduces an interpretation of psalms 121,5 by the Baal Shem Tov of blessed memory, which he feels is relevant to our verse.
The psalmist there says: ה' צלך על יד ימינך, “the Lord is your shadow (protection) at your right hand.” According to the Baal Shem Tov, the meaning of these words is that the manner in which G’d protects and guides man’s fate is similar to the shadow that accompanies man at all times. It follows that when the Jewish people recited the song after their salvation from the Egyptian armies, G’d, “their shadow” did likewise.
The word ישיר in the opening verse of the song is in a causative mode, hiphil, so that the appropriate translation of the words: אז ישיר משה, would be: “at that time Moses would cause Him to sing.” Through Israel’s singing a song, G’d too would be prompted to join in. When viewed in this way the word: לאמור, makes perfect sense in the traditional manner in which it is understood elsewhere.Having recorded these details prepared the ground for G’d Himself to join in the shirah, the song that Moses is about to intone after the people are credited with having absolute faith in him.
The word: לאמור in 15,1 is an allusion to G’d joining in this song. Another interpretation of the song introduced by the Torah with the word: אז, “then;” we have a general rule that the word אז, does not necessarily refer only to the past, but also includes references to the future. This is alluded to by the use of the future mode of the verb ישיר “will sing,” instead of the past tense, שר, “he sang,” that we would have expected to be written here. This principle has already been mentioned in Sanhedrin 91.
The Talmud derives from the future mode of the words אז ישיר, proof from the written Torah that there will be a resurrection of the bodies of the souls deserving this.Based on the exegesis of psalms 68,28 שם בנימין צעיר רדם שרי יהודה רגמתם, “there is little Binyamin who rules them,” (the word רדם being read as if it had been written רד ים, “descended into the sea,”) it appears that the tribes of Binyamin and Yehudah, the latter represented by its leader Nachschon ben Aminadav, were possessed of enough faith to wade into the sea neck deep before it split for them.
The miracle therefore was the result of the extraordinary faith displayed by these tribal leaders. (Mechilta Beshalach 14,22 and Talmud Sotah 36/37) One may see in the words אז ישיר an allusion to these leaders of Yehudah and Binyamin (either or, according to a divergence of opinion in the Talmud) had possessed the faith that the sea would split for them before the event, and that is why Yehudah was awarded the hereditary position of king. (The Davidic dynasty) In other words: the words אז ישיר refer to what occurred prior to the splitting of the sea, whereas the words: אשירה לה', refer to what occurred after the successful crossing. Another explanation of the words אז ישיר comes to mind when we look at Rashi’s commentary who justifies the future tense, by saying that the word אז and the word ישיר should not be read together without a slight pause.
The meaning is that אז, “then, when Moses had seen the great miracle,” ישיר משה “Moses decided to compose a suitable poem (song) to pay tribute to this event.”We have a psychological rule that when a person has seen the greatness of the Creator he will first react with awe and trembling and cannot really enjoy the fact that the phenomenon that he has just witnessed also spells a great salvation for him.
Only a little while later will such a person understand that what he had witnessed a short while ago was a display of G’d’s largesse orchestrated on his behalf. At that point he begins to enjoy the spectacle he had witnessed and it then occurs to him to express his gratitude in a form appropriate to the overwhelming nature of the miracle he had been allowed to witness. This is basically what Rashi, wished to convey to us in the first few words of his commentary on 15,1. Alternatively, we can try and view the words: אז ישיר משה as reflecting on the fact that in the Creator’s domain there are no measurements (horizontal or vertical) nor are there measurements in “time” such as “before” or “after.”
This is natural as He knows no “boundaries.” On the other hand, attributes such as love exist in His domain, and in G’d’s domain when the “flame” of love has been lit, He “extends” it like ripples on the surface of a body of water. The original thought “preceding” any other was one of love for His as yet non existent creatures. This was followed by the “desire” to create a universe, (not a material one as yet).
Once the disembodied universe had come into existence G’d could display His being G’d to all the creatures which populate this spiritual domain we call “heaven,” for want of a better word. This was followed by G’d “imagining” the physical universe and all its components. G’d had a complete vision of how the completed physical universe would look to the creatures that inhabited it before He translated His vision into what we call “reality,” again for want of a better word.
Whereas the disembodied part of the universe is known to our sages as עולם הבריאה, the physical universe is generally known as עולם היצירה “the universe of shapes and forms,” seeing that it contains physical rather than metaphysical components though these physical components have not yet been finalized, i.e. become part of the עולם העשיה, “the completed universe.” At this point, not unlike an artist or architect, G’d had a complete and detailed picture of the eventual universe in His mind, however, instead of committing His vision to paper or a drawing board, it remained hidden within Him.
At that point G’d had still left open for further consideration such details as the colour scheme in which certain regions of the universe would find their ultimate expression. Having allowed Himself to leave open such “minor” details, meant that G’d had reserved the right to “re-arrange” even the “lives” of basic components of the earth such as fire and water, if and when the need should arise for this. Doing this involved “taking away” the respective “basic component’s “life,” temporarily.
At the end of the period that the sea had split in order to allow the Israelites to cross comfortably, G’d “resurrected” the sea. Moses’ song was inspired by the immensity of the miracle that he and the people had witnessed at the time. They had witnessed the “death” and “resurrection” of the universe, albeit in miniature. If the letter ז is symbolic of the עולם העשיה, the universe after its completion on the seventh day, the letter א is symbolic of the very beginning of creation, so that Moses alluded to the process of a reversal in the creative process as having occurred as part of the miracle they had witnessed at that time.
It is not accidental that in the Torah scroll instead of writing the שירה, “song” in the normal fashion, the lines are broken, interrupted so as to convey the manner in which bricks are laid, not one exactly above the other, but in a pattern that enables the wall to survive sudden impacts. This is true even of stone walls that are not joined by cement.At this point the author allegorically describes חיות, the essence of “life” as the word of G’d which was the cement that holds together the different parts of the universe, all of which came into existence by His ten oral directives enumerated in the first chapter of Genesis.
The empty spaces between the letters (words) are an allusion to the part of the world where this miracle occurred having retreated toward its origin before the definite contours of that universe had been finalized. The line: ימינך ה' נאדרי בכח, is also a step back into the early part of creation when G’d had looked upon all His work with a smiling face, a time when He had been “dressed” exclusively in garments exuding love.
By the time the extermination of the Jewish people had become a real threat, He had been forced to don garments reflecting His attribute of גבורה, the power needed to execute judgments on the wicked. In the line just quoted Moses referred to both these aspects of the Creator at the time when He performed these miracles, i.e. ימין, referring to His attribute of love, and כח the symbol of the power needed to crush His opposition.The author sees in the letters of the tetragam, i.e. י-ה-ו-ה a historical allusion to the first two letters alluding to what preceded the ���עולם הבריאה and that world; the letter ו being an allusion to the עולם היצירה with the last letter ה alluding to the final stage of creation, the עולם העשיה.
Now, when the process of creation had been “rolled up,” backwards to its origin during the period of the “splitting” of the sea of reeds, [i.e. separating H2O into its constituent parts, Ed.] it is as if history had been rolled back to the hours of the slaughtering of the Passover, the first day of the festival of Passover, so that after this miracle had been successfully concluded, Passover had another day added, the seventh day, a day on which in the future all manner of mundane labour is also prohibited. [I have altered the words of the author a little at the end.
The important thing is that the reader understands why in the parlance of our sages, the festival of Passover, the first in the year commencing with the month of Nissan, was first, as it represents a חידוש העולם, a renewal of the process of creation. Ed.] We read the following in Sh’mot Rabbah 23,1 concerning psalms 93,2 where the psalmist describes G’d’s throne as having been firmly established since “אז,” that Rabbi Berechyah, citing Rabbi Avahu says as follows:” what the psalmist has in mind is that You (the Lord) have never sat securely on Your throne, and Your Name has not become a byword amongst mankind until after Your children, the Jewish people, aggrandized Your Name in song and poetry, i.e. with the song commencing with אז ישיר.
The sages in the Midrash explain that a king, until he has won impressive victories in battle, may be a king in name only. Once he has won impressive victories he is no longer referred to only as “king,” but as “Emperor.” The Israelites conveyed this idea in the shirah, by recalling that prior to the experience at the sea of reeds, G’d was perceived like a king who is standing upright, measuring the contours of the earth [compare Chabakuk 3,6).
Now that He had won impressive victories, He is perceived as sitting on His throne, [resting on His laurels. Ed.] The song that the Israelites sang after the Egyptians had been drowned may be viewed as an accolade to the newly revealed aspect of G’d the Creator.What precisely was the new aspect of G’d that the people had experienced so that the Torah described it as:וירא ישראל את היד הגדולה....ויאמינו בה' ובמשה עבדו, “Israel saw the great hand of the Lord, etc,….and they had faith in the Lord and in His servant Moses?”
After all, they had already witnessed the splitting of the sea, the marching through the sea’s bed as if marching on dry land, the sea’s reversing direction and drowning their enemies.” What new dimension was revealed to them as a result of which they decided to break out in song?Surely, the word אז, “then,” as well as the word: ישיר in the future mode must contain the answer to our question!
Nowhere else in the Torah has the word אז been coupled with an event in the future! [not quite correct, compare Leviticus 26,34 where the Torah predicts, אז תרצה, then the land will rest” after the many shmittah years which have been disregarded, neglected by the Jewish people. Compare also Deut.4,41 אז יבדיל, Ed.] We assume that the reader is familiar with how the sages explained psalms 114,2 היתה יהודה לקדשו ישראל ממשלותיו, “Yehudah became His holy one, Israel His dominion.”
I mentioned earlier that the leader of the tribe of Yehudah, Nachshon ben Aminadav, earned this merit when he fearlessly entered the sea of reeds up to his neck before it split. At that time he appealed for help from G’d saying that the level of the water was about to cause him to drown therein.Yehudah’s entering the sea may have been prompted by one of two considerations. 1) Seeing G’d had commanded Moses to order the Israelites to proceed forward, he felt that it was his duty to risk his life in order to fulfill G’d’s commandment.
He knew that it was his duty to proceed even if it were to cost him his life. 2) His act was simply a demonstration of his faith in G’d; he jumped into the sea convinced that G’d would save him. He had absolutely no doubt that he would survive. He realized that it would take a miracle to save him, but he was convinced that G’d would perform such a miracle. He was also convinced that in response to this miracle that G’d was about to perform, the people would break out in a song of thanksgiving immediately after the event.This latter facet of Yehudah’s action is in line with what Rashi, basing himself on the Mechilta, writes on 15,20: ותקח מרים אחות אהרן את התף בידה ותצאנה וגו', “Miriam, Aaron’s sister took the drum in her hand and led the women in song.”
He writes that the righteous women in Miriam’s time were all convinced that G’d would perform miracles for them in their life time, and this is the reason why they burdened themselves with taking drums out of Egypt. They had already planned to use these drums when singing songs of thanksgiving to the Lord. On Samuel II 22,4 מהלל אקרא ה' ומאויבי אושע, Rashi explains that David too announced that he would praise the name of the Lord as soon as G’d would deliver him from his enemies.
He understood that verse as David’s absolute faith that G’d would deliver him from his enemies. He was so certain that he already composed the song of thanksgiving before he had been delivered.What occurred to the Israelites at the sea of reeds was similar to David’s experience related in Samuel II 22,4. The Israelites, and Nachshon ben Aminadav as a leader of the tribe of Yehudah, especially, were so convinced that G’d would split the sea for them and lead them across in complete safety, that they already prepared the song of thanksgiving in preparation to thanking Him for their salvation.
This absolute confidence is reflected in the word ישיר in the future mode, at the beginning of Moses’ song, poem. Nachshon’s jumping into the sea reflected the faith of the collective Jewish soul. This is also reflected in Rashi’s commentary on Exodus 14,15 where G’d appears to chide Moses for crying out to Him for help when He said to Him: מה תצעק אלי? דבר אל בני ישראל ויסעו, “why are you crying out to Me?
Tell the Children of Israel to keep moving!” According to Rashi on the last words, G’d told Moses that the merit of their forefathers coupled with their own faith would suffice for the sea to split and to allow them passage. G’d told Moses that He was aware of the people’s basic faith that He would split the sea for them. This awareness of G’d stemmed from His knowing that they had already formulated in their minds the words of the song of thanksgiving that they would sing after completing their safe crossing of the sea.
This is also what Rashi means when he says on psalms 114,2 היתה יהודה לקדשו ישראל ממשלותיו, “Yehudah became His holy one, Israel His dominion.” The psalmist refers to Nachshon’s act of faith in jumping into the sea. Because the Israelites’ faith was so strong they were able to formulate the words of the song even before the miracle of their deliverance had occurred. It is well known that it is G’d’s intention to confer blessings and benefits on His creatures; however, there are times when the benefits remain in the realm of the celestial regions, never reaching its addressees, whereas on other occasions these benefits are executed so that they become visible and felt by its recipients.
The Baal Shem tov of blessed memory dwelled on this when he explained the verse ה' צלך על יד ימינך, “the Lord is your shadow, always on your right.” (psalms 121,5) He explained that just as the shadow reflects its owner’s movements, so G’d’s dealings with His creatures reflect these creatures’ deeds. If man emulates G’d’s attribute of Mercy in dealing with his fellow man, G’d can be depended upon to deal similarly with that creature also.
The Talmud Shabbat 151 phrases it thus: כל המרחם עם הבריות מרחמין עליו, “anyone who has shown mercy to the creatures will experience that when called for G’d will deal mercifully with him.” If man practices the advice of the sages to be משמח בחלקו, “to accept always with good cheer what fate has in store for him,” he will find that G’d will respond to his virtues in kind. This is what the Midrash says on the verse in psalms 121,5.
It follows that when man possesses the faith that G’d will help him through some major problem that faces him, he can rest assured that G’d will indeed do so [if G’d feels that this is for this person’s benefit. We do not always know what is good for us. Ed.] If a person forever worries about where his parnassah, livelihood, will come from, he is liable to experience that “G’d, acting like a shadow, shares in his worries, rather than provides the solution.”[The author continues with exegesis of the verse in psalms 121,5 at length.
As this is very repetitious and germane primarily to someone writing a commentary on psalms, I have decided to omit this. Ed.] Exodus 15:1 “let me raise my voice in song to the Lord, Who is most triumphant, He has flung horse and rider into the sea.” According to Onkelos, the words גאה גאה mean that Hashem is more exalted than any exalted creature anywhere. The very concept of exaltation is His.
Moses attempts to rationalize why The Creator, Who is so far above any of His creatures that in a confrontation between Him and His adversaries the onlookers would think that the combatants are so unevenly matched that the Creator would not have to resort to deeds that impress, as He could blow away His opponent with the mere breath of his mouth. When we read the “song,” it sounds like an accolade for the victor who had exerted himself in order to overcome a powerful opponent, something that is simply not so.
Having heard the prophet Isaiah 40,17 proclaim a basic truth, that כל הגוים כאין נגדו, “all the nations of the world (combined) are as nothing when arraigned against Him,” why does Moses portray G’d’s victory of the Egyptians as such a heroic deed? The rhetorical question just posed has already been voiced by the liturgist in one of his poems on the eighth day of Passover. The answer given there is that G’d appeared to exert Himself, taking with Him myriads of angels in order to show the Israelites how much He loved them.
Had He blown the Egyptians away with the mere breath of His mouth, the Israelites would not have been impressed. While the Israelites would not have been impressed, the gentiles, instead of being profoundly impressed with the power of our G’d, would have denied that the disappearance without a trace of the armed might of Egypt had been due to the interference in history by an Eternal Creator altogether.
Moses expresses his thanks to Hashem for having gone to so much trouble to accomplish what He could have accomplished in the fraction of a second without ”grandstanding.” Grandstanding when it is intended for the benefit of the spectator, as opposed to when it is meant to show off the party setting it in motion, is a valuable tool in the hands of the Creator, and not to be denigrated as it should be when displayed by one of G’d’s creatures. Exodus 16:1 “He flung horse and its rider high into the sea.”
We need to understand why Moses described the “tossing” of the Egyptian cavalry into the sea by using a word referring to an upward motion of G’d’s arm, instead of simply writing הפיל בים, “He dropped them into the sea.” Besides, seeing that in verse 4 Moses describes Hashem as מרכבות פרעה וחילו ירה בים, “G’d threw (same word as “he shot,”) the chariots of Pharaoh and his army into the sea,” why did Moses choose the word רמה in verse 1?
Since the only kind of shooting in those days was the shooting of arrows, it was mandatory that the trajectory first involve the rising of the arrow before it could descend and hit its target, so that there was no reason for Moses not to have used the customary word for “shooting.”Our sages in the Mishnah Sanhedrin 6,4 describe the platform or the “house,” בית הסקילה, from which the penalty of stoning to death was carried out as being two stories (the height of two average sized persons) high.
From that platform the criminal or sinner convicted to death by stoning would be pushed down. The “stoning” would commence after the fall if it had not been fatal. The wording in the Torah is: סקול יסקל או ירה יירה, “he will surely be stoned or shot,” (Exodus 19,13). The word ירה alone therefore might have been misleading.Another expression which poses a difficulty in our verse is: ומבחר שלישיו טבעו בים, “and the choicest of his officers drowned in the sea.”
It would have sufficed to state that “his officers drowned;” that would have included both the junior and the senior officers.The answer to these questions may be gleaned from the words of the Midrash (Yalkut Reuveni, B’shalach) where the protective angel, שר, of the Egyptians is quoted as having complained that seeing that both the Israelites and the Egyptians had been idol worshippers, why would the Egyptians be singled out for such harsh punishment. We further need to understand why G’d resorted to the stratagem of encouraging the Egyptians to pursue the Israelites through commanding the Israelites to turn back at Baal Tzefon (Exodus 14,2), after they had already left Egypt and both politically and economically, the Super Power Egypt had suffered a lethal blow.
Had G’d not found an excuse that misled the Egyptians to believe that their deity had frightened the Israelites, the entire pursuit of the Israelites and the resultant drowning of the Egyptian army would never have taken place. We must therefore conclude that G’d paid heed to the complaint of the protective angel of the Egyptians, and had to show him that his protégées were totally wicked, having reneged on their not only having released the Israelites but having expelled them. (Exodus 12,33 and 39).
The words רמה בים, may be understood as a reference to the illusion that the Egyptians harboured that they might succeed due to favourable astrological constellations at the sea where they had failed on land. Secondly, the word מבחר, instead of being a reference to the choicest of the Egyptian officers, is an allusion to the freedom of choice, בחירה, that G’d gave the Egyptians at that time, i.e. they had brought their death upon themselves by having made the wrong choice in pursuing the Israelites, even after witnessing that the G’d of the Israelites had split the sea for them.
After having seen this, even the protective angel of the Egyptians no longer had any complaint against G’d. Exodus 15,2. “The Lord is my strength and might; He has become my deliverance.” Moses describes the process as being that the Children of Israel by dint of their prayers “awakened” the attribute of Mercy including all the largesse that G’d is willing and capable of putting at His creatures’ disposal.
We must never lose sight of the fact that even when we carry out G’d’s will and desires, we would never be able to do even this unless we enjoyed a measure of Divine assistance. This is what the Talmud in Kiddushin 30 taught us when it states that without the ongoing assistance by G’d we could never stand up successfully against the evil urge. If this is so, it follows that even our good deeds are the product of Divine assistance, so how can our good deeds and prayers “awaken” the attribute of Mercy?My revered and saintly teacher Rabbi Dov Baer, has provided us with one of his “pearls” of Torah insights by means of a parable.
Let us say that a father is trying to teach his son a difficult lesson. He keeps trying but the son remains unresponsive, does not understand what is expected of him. What does the father do? He provides his son with some clue to the solution of the problem he had posed.
Seeing that his father is actively helping him, the son is encouraged and redoubles his efforts to find the missing parts of the puzzle with which this father had confronted him. G’d, our Father in heaven, deals similarly with us. Realising that unless He helps us we might, G’d forbid, become the victims of the evil urge, He furnishes us with clues. An alternate way of explaining this verse is that Moses acknowledges that the first step in attaining a level of אהבת ה', a relationship with G’d based on our love for Him, is the acquisition of an appropriate amount of יראת ה', awe and reverence for G’d.
The word עזי represent this יראה, awe, reverence, it concludes with the personal pronoun “ee”, chirik, “mine,” alluding to our input in this relationship, whereas the word זמרת in the genitive mode to the word Hashem alludes to G’d’s contribution to that relationship. Exodus 15,3.“The Lord is a man of war, nonetheless His name is Hashem, i.e. the Merciful One.” The author refers to a commentary of his on psalms 90,1 תפלה למשה איש האלוקים, “a prayer by Moses, the man of G’d.”
He repeats a theme he has dwelled on repeatedly, that it is the primary effort of the righteous during all of their lives to make their contribution to G’d dispensing the maximum amount of His largesse for His creature. The prayers of the righteous are not concerned with asking for their personal well being, but with asking for the well being of the community within which they live. We perceive of G’d as “garbing” Himself in the mantle woven by the prayers of the righteous.
This explains why Moses referred to G’d as איש, “man.” A righteous person in our time is comparable to Moses in his time. The Talmud in Shabbat 101 confirms this by saying that every righteous person in our time may be called “Moses,” hence the commencement of psalm 90 with the words תפלה למשה, do not refer only to the original Moses. The message of the psalm is that the prayers of the righteous in our generation are as effective in their effect on G’d as the prayers of Moses in his time.
G’d garbing Himself with the prayers of the righteous is something that is the case only when the result (G’d’s largesse) is to become manifest immediately as beneficial. When G’d responds negatively to our prayers He is never referred to as איש. Hence the meaning of Bileam’s blessing in Numbers 23,19 לא איש א-ל ויכזב, “G’s is not like man who deceives,” teaches that the negative virtue of deceiving is called כזב.
We never find the term איש applied to G’d when He is active in His attribute of Justice, decreeing punishment on His people. This remains true even if in answer to the prayers of the righteous He decrees judgment on our adversaries. In such instances He may be referred to as גבור, Warrior, or some other name depicting His attribute of Justice. [This is the difference between G’d as איש מלחמה and elsewhere as גבור מלחמה, (Isaiah 3,2; psalms 24,8) To make the distinction clear, Moses, repeats ה' שמו, His name, predominantly is Hashem, the Merciful One]. Exodus 15,8.“at the blast of Your nostrils the waters piled up;” Onkelos translated the words נערמו מים as: “the waters acted intelligently.”
This may be understood with the help of Proverbs 8,12: אני חכמה שכנתי ערמה, “I, wisdom, live with prudence;” we have discussed that if a person wishes to gain an understanding of the superior nature of G’d, he must first of all divest himself of all the materialistic “garments” that are part of his daily outfits. This is the first step in approaching the degree of awe and reverence. Having reached that degree, he may consider himself as possessing some חכמה, wisdom. This is also the meaning of Job 28,28: הן יראת אד-ני היא חכמה וסור מרע בינה, ”See fear of the Lord is wisdom; to shun evil is understanding.”
The root of the word נערמו in the verse quoted at the beginning of this paragraph is ערום,” intelligent, smart, as in Genesis 3,1 where the serpent is described as the smartest of all the creatures of the field. The sea possessed awe and reverence for G’d, being eager to fulfill the will of the Creator; this is what Onkelos wished to convey when he translated the “sea” as being intelligent, smart. [Possibly, as opposed to the earth, which had buried the blood of Hevel, thereby hiding a monstrous sin by Kayin.
Ed.] It is also possible to understand the line: ורוח אפיך נערמו מים as reflecting a statement in the Talmud Tamid 32 where the rhetorical question of “who can be described as truly wise?” is answered by “whoever can see what has come into existence.” We must not lose sight of the general rule that G’d created the universe in order to take a delight in Israel, and in order to have Mercy on them when the situation called for this, as our sages have said (not found source) that man, respectively the righteous Israelite, was meant to call upon G’d’s mercy.
The relationship between G’d and man, and man and G’d respectively, is reciprocal from the bottom up and from the top down. This was demonstrated to Yaakov in his dream of the ladder where the angels moved in both directions. It is a constant reminder to us when we look at the first letter of the aleph bet where there are two letters yud, one pointing upwards, the other downward. They are linked by a diagonal line to alert us to this relationship between heaven and earth being reciprocal.
When the sages in the Talmud (Avot 2,9) teaches that איזהו חכם הרואה את הנולד, “who is wise? He who looks intelligently at all existing phenomena,” they mean that an intelligent appraisal of the entire universe leads us to the conclusion that the universe was only created with a view to the Jewish people and their tasks. When we do this, we fulfill G’d’s will. At the point in time under discussion in our verse, it had been demonstrated that it was G’d’s will for the sea to be split for the benefit of Moses and Israel.
True wisdom is shown by G’d’s creatures when they draw these conclusions from miracles they perceive. The sea of reeds had demonstrated such wisdom by complying with G’d’s desires. It had “looked”, i.e. reflected at its own origins and had realized what its purpose was at a given moment. By not merely dissolving into oxygen and hydrogen, but arranging itself into a “wall,” so that the Israelites could walk alongside it, the sea had demonstrated its wisdom and obedience to its Creator. [The last paragraph contained wording of my own, but I am confident that by using these words I have explained the author’s meaning better. Ed.] Exodus 15,11.“Who is comparable to You among the divinities O Lord?”
G’d’s intention in splitting the sea had been to humble the idol worshippers and to reveal their idols as impotent. The Egyptians’ major deity had been the river Nile (since it was the source of their economic survival) According to our sages in Sh’mot Rabbah 21,6) at the time of the splitting of the sea of reeds all bodies of water, world wide, experienced a similar “splitting.” The Midrash derives this from the words ויבקעו המים: “the waters split, (plural mode) instead of ויבקע המים singular mode. (Compare 14,21) If all the waters that had been created during the six days of creation split, the waters of the river Nile were included.
What better way was there to prove to the Egyptians (and other nations) that there is only one Creator of all the phenomena in the universe? Another approach to the line: מי כמוך באלים ה'...נורא תהלות עושה פלא, “Who is like You o Lord, among the celestials, …awesome in splendour, working wonders!” It is an accepted criterion of our faith that when a person denies his ego the way is paved to his becoming wise.
This concept is spelled out in Job 33,33: אם אין אתה, שמע לי החרש ואאלפך חכמה, “if you are (prepared to be) ‘nothing’, listen to Me, and be still, and I will teach you wisdom.” As the author has mentioned several times, חכמה, true wisdom, is the result of divesting oneself totally of one’s “ego;” as we know from another verse in Job 28,12 והחכמה מאין תמצא, “and wisdom you will find through negating “ego”, becoming “nought,” i.e. אין.
A closer look at the word אלף which symbolizes the beginning of everything in our world, will show you that when read backwards it reads פלא, “something transcendental, miraculous.” Moses alludes to this when describing G’d as the source of פלא, “wonders.” What we have previously described as אין, is also a reference to בינה, insight, which, as the word indicates, is something internal, therefore invisible, hidden, another aspect of the root פלא or מופלא.
Negation of self, of ego, results in one’s becoming privy to the hidden insights, פלא.The author sees in Exodus 31,14, ושמרתם את השבת כי קודש היא לכם, “you shall “observe” the Sabbath for it is holy for you,” an allusion to our “viewing” the concept of the Sabbath as our looking at its holy origin. The word “seeing” is understood as the person who “sees” receiving an image, i.e. he is a recipient of revelations of one sort or another.
A painter cannot paint a painting until he has first seen an image which he tries to reproduce on canvas, or paper, or any other suitable surface. In the case of “observing” the Sabbath, we are privy to receiving “images” from the אין, from a dimension of the universe, the celestial dimension, that is devoid of a body and its attendant limitations. A Sabbath properly “observed,” is a day in which we distance ourselves from most of our physical needs, [except, of course, fulfilling the commandments that are prescribed and make our bodies participants in this holy experience. Ed.]. Another approach to the words: נורא תהלות עושה פלא, is found in the Talmud Niddah 31, with a slightly different wording.
The Talmud relates instances of where the person who experiences miraculous salvation at the hand of G’d was totally unaware of this. This is the case very often; in fact it is almost a necessity if we are to acquire faith in G’d in the proper manner. To quote an example from the folio quoted in the Talmud.Two colleagues set out on a business trip which also involved a voyage by sea. The first of the two stepped on a thorn and was prevented from continuing his journey.
He was very upset at what he considered a stroke of misfortune. Some time later he heard that his colleague, who had boarded the ship they were both supposed to travel on, had drowned when the ship he was on capsized in a storm, and all hands were lost. This is when he realized that what he had thought to have been a stroke of misfortune was in fact a miracle performed by G’d in order to save his life. Miracles do not necessarily consist of the laws of nature being suspended in a certain place at a certain time.
True faith in the Lord is based on our appreciating that in the eyes of G’d, as opposed to in the eyes of the human onlooker, performing a miracle such as splitting the sea does not require more effort than causing a thorn at a certain place at a certain time to penetrate the skin of the foot of a person walking on a path. A truly wise person has come to realize that to the One Who had given instructions for oil to be a potent fuel, vinegar can just as easily serve as a potent fuel if the Creator so desires. (Compare Talmud, Taanit 25) Similarly, it requires no greater effort for G’d to cause the sea to be calm than to cause it to be stormy.
If G’d nonetheless does perform “miracles” of the kind we have been reading about in the last few chapters of the Torah, this was only in order to give the beneficiaries an opportunity to express their gratitude to G’d, something they would not have been aware of in their daily lives, although it may happen repeatedly on a daily basis without the person for whom the miracle was performed noticing it.The author views the sea’s alternating between being calm or stormy, as “miracles” which alternate constantly, and therefore do not strike us as miracles. When the sea split, however, this was a different miracle, and that is why people perceived it as such.
It had the desired effect on both the Israelites and the nations of the universe. The former broke out in a song of gratitude, realizing that G’d had performed this miracle for their sake, while the nations were frightened and realized that there was One Power that towered above all the “powers” which they had been worshipping. The greatest “surprise” of the miracle was that G’d loves mortal man, Israel, so much that He performs such basic miracles upsetting basic elements of the globe, i.e. water.
This gave rise to the psalmist in psalms 107,8 to proclaim: יודו לה' חסדו ונפלאותיו לבני אדם, “let them (man) praise the Lord for His loving kindness; His wondrous deeds for mankind.” The words לבני אדם, at the end of this verse indicate that the word יודו, at the beginning of the verse is addressed to celestial beings, for whom the splitting of the sea had been an eye-opener, as even they had been unaware of the depth of Hashem’s feelings of love for His people.
As far as G’d Himself was concerned, this was no special effort at all, as we already pointed out. Still another exegesis of the words: נורא תהלות עושה פלא, “awesome in splendour performing miracles.” Every activity, project, is propelled by a “cause,” and its successful conclusion is meant to provide the person performing it with some pleasure or satisfaction. The “cause,” though experienced in the material world, originates in the spiritual world, even though it underwent many changes on its path to its eventual destination.
Its origin was the אלף, also known as אין, the “nought,” the domain totally devoid of such concepts as “ego.” Moses refers to this origin as being lofty, far removed from our means of perception, so that it is פלא, hidden from the eyes of mortal human beings. Exodus 15,13. “in Your love You lead the people You redeemed; in Your strength You guide them to Your holy abode.” Moses refers to the fact that the redemption from Egypt was not linked to any particular commandments that had to be fulfilled. [I presume that the slaughtering and eating of the Passover lamb is understood as simply saving the firstborn Israelites from dying on that night.
Ed.] Ezekiel 16,7 refers to the “nakedness” of the people at that time with the words ואת ערום ועריה , meaning that they did not enjoy the merit of having fulfilled any of G’d’s commandments. As a result, the redemption was purely an act of G’d’s loving kindness for His people. Hence Moses stresses this by saying: נחית בחסדך.
This situation, however, was limited to the original redemption. It implies that during a future redemption the Jewish people will be armed with merits, i.e. נהלת בעזך אל נוה קדשך, a veiled reference to the ultimate redemption. Exodus 15,16. “Your Terror and dread descend upon them; through the might of Your arm they are still as stone; till Your people cross over;” the holy tongue is composed of letters (consonants) and vowels.
The “letters” without the vowels accompanying them are lifeless; the vowels give “life” to the consonants. All subjects that are directly relevant to the “higher” worlds are alluded to in the Torah by the combination of consonants and vowels. As a result, at times when radical changes occurred in the laws of nature, such as during the splitting of the sea (waters) the “connection” between these letters and the celestial domains was interrupted, i.e. נדמו כאבן, “they were silent as stone.”
We know that אבן is also referred to as אות, letter, from the reference in the Sefer Yetzirah to שני אבנים. This is what is meant by Moses saying: בגדול זרועך, i.e. on account of Your great Arm, (performing miracles) the letters and vowels were completely silenced and paralysed. [The Sefer Yetzirah revolves around the basic significance of the letters as paths to wisdom, the letters forming a major part of these paths.
Ed.] Exodus 15,18. “the Lord will reign forever.”In psalms 146,10 David rephrases this by saying: ימלוך ה' לעולם אלוקיך, “the Lord shall reign forever, your G’d.” Moses mentions the subject first, whereas David mentions the subject’s activity, i.e. “reigning,” first. In the Zohar I 148 we find the following commentary on psalms 132,9 כהניך ילבשו צדק וחסידיך ירננו, “Your priests are clothed in righteousness, whereas Your pious ones sing for joy.”
The Zohar substitutes the word לוויך, “Your Levites,” for the word חסידיך, “Your pious ones.” He justifies this by claiming that the psalmist, David, considers himself the “entertainer” of the King (G’d). Seeing that he had become qualified to “invite the King,” i.e. selecting a site for the Temple, where G’d was to reside, he realized that it was not enough for the King to be “entertained,” i.e. hosted, by an ordinary Israelite, and thus elevated himself to the status of the Levite, as only the priests and the Levites were ministering to the King’s needs, i.e. performing service in the Temple.However, there is still another dimension to this parable.
It is that even though the good fortune was a daily routine for the rich person in our parable, he did not take his good fortune for granted or as proof of his being worthy of this, but he did not lose sight of the origin of his good fortune and remained aware that he had no claim to it. Perhaps, this is even more noteworthy than the songs presented to G’d by the poor person in our story. The rich person realized that rather than his enjoying his good fortune personally, i.e. his ego thanking the Lord, he understood that it was his task to ensure that G’d will enjoy his prayers of thanksgiving, and that he had afforded him an opportunity to provide Him with a feeling of נחת רוח, “pleasurable satisfaction” at having created the person who had the option of feeling smug about his good fortune instead. When David changed the word that we would have expected to חסידיך from לוויך, he hinted that the priests and the Levites are like the poor man in the story, i.e. they had been born as such, had not had free volition, but their lifestyles had been dictated by heredity, their respective fathers having been priests or Levites. Not so with חסידיך, who, though not compelled by fate to spend their lives in serving the Lord, had chosen to do so from their own free will.
David’s kind of serving the Lord is qualitatively higher than that of the priest and the Levite, or even than that of the man on whom good fortune has shone all his life. He had eliminated personal considerations from his service of the Lord, being concerned only with how G’d would feel when He saw that a creature of His had His feelings at heart.When applying this to the position of the word ימלוך in our verse, and the same word in psalms 146,10. we realize that David had attained a higher level of service to G’d than had the Jewish people, even the ones who were not born to the priesthood and the tribe of Levi.At the splitting of the sea the Jewish people had been at the beginning of a long spiritual journey, whereas by the time when King David prepared to erect a permanent Temple for G’d on earth, they had matured spiritually in the interval. Another way of explaining the difference in syntax between Moses “enthroning” G’d forever and David doing so, based on the Talmud in Nedarim 10, runs as follows.
The Talmud there discusses the prohibition of our formulating even a praise of the Lord by mentioning His name first. It is forbidden. For instance, when making a vow, one must not say: לה' חטאת “for the Lord a sin offering,” but must be careful to mention the words “sin offering” before adding the words: “for the Lord.” The reason for the prohibition is that if the donor were to die before completing his sentence, he would have been guilty of transgressing the third of the Ten Commandments, which warns us not to utter the name of the Lord in vain, as this is a sin that cannot be completely forgiven even if you do teshuvah.
David was conscious of this halachah and that is why he prefaced his praise of the Lord with the word: ימלוך, “may He reign.At the time when Moses intoned the song at the shores of the sea of reeds, the Israelites had become free from any ritual impurity that had contaminated them prior to that experience, so that, angel-like, they were not subject to the laws that restrict man. (Compare Sh’mot Rabbah 32,1).
After the sin of the golden calf, when ritual contamination again affected the people, the prohibition to commence a sentence with mentioning the holy name of the Lord was re-introduced. Still another approach to the difference between David’s formulation of enthroning G’d forever in psalms 146,10 and how Moses formulated the identical thought in our verse. It is incumbent upon each of us to constantly strive for cleaving to the Lord in feelings of awe and reverence.
As long as the human intelligence is still on a relatively low level, the way to compensate for this is through the performance of commandments involving various parts of our bodies. When we have reached a higher level of attachment to G’d through the performance of these commandments, we gradually attain a deeper understanding of the whole concept of G’d as the Creator and King of the universe.
David had not been present at the revelation of Mount Sinai when the Jewish people experienced this attachment to their Creator. This is why he had to content himself with first saying the word ימלוך, before continuing with mention of G’d’s name. By saying: "ימלוך", “may He reign,” he had accepted the yoke of heaven, similar to when the Israelites uttered their famous נעשה ונשמע, “we will carry out, now let’s hear the commandments,” at Mount Sinai.
At the sea, when the Torah had not yet been revealed to the Jewish people, they had to mention G’d’s name first in order to attain the minimum level of attachment to G’d before qualifying for the revelation 6 weeks later. In our daily prayers at the end of our reciting the song the Israelites had sung at the shores of the sea of reeds, we add the following line: כי לה' המלוכה ומושל בגויים ועלו מושיעים בהר ציון לשפוט את הר עשו והיתה לה' המלוכה,, “Dominion shall be the Lord’s; and He rules over the nations.
And they will go as messengers of salvation up on Mount Zion to judge the mountain of Esau and the dominion shall be G’d’s, etc.” There appears to be a repetition of the reference to G’d’s having dominion.Actually, in order to understand this we need to remember that the position of King, מלך, reflects the will of the people who have (unanimously) chosen a particular personage to be their king.
The position of מושל, ruler, by contrast, does not derive from the will of his subjects but from power possessed by the leader, possibly without the consent of his subjects, even against their approval. This is the clue to the meaning of our verse. We are told first that the dominion, מלוכה, dominion, belongs to G’d, irrespective of His creatures’ approval or dissent. Alas, at the time when the Torah was written, people were too ignorant to appreciate this.
However by this time (when the prophet Zecharyah, 14 wrote this verse, (or better, the time that he refers to in that verse,) one nation, the Jewish nation had seen “the light,” and they had accepted Him as King wholeheartedly. This is the meaning of the words: כי לה' המלוכה. “G’d is ruler by grace of Israel’s having enthroned Him.” As to His relationship with the gentile nations, He is merely מושל, a ruler, not yet having secured the voluntary acceptance of His Kingship.
In the future, however, when G’d will pronounce judgments from Mount Zion, the entire human race will acknowledge Him as their King. At that time they will “crown” Him. As to the verse from Ovadiah 1,21ועלו מושיעים בהר ציון לשפוט את הר עשו והיתה לה' המלוכה, “for liberators shall march up on Mount Zion to wreak judgment on Mount Esau; and dominion shall be the Lord’s.” The subject hinted at by the prophet has been expanded upon in the Talmud Sukkah 52.
The Talmud there draws an allegorical picture of G’d slaughtering the evil urge in the presence of both the righteous people and the wicked people. Both the righteous and the wicked are described as weeping when they witness the evil urge being slaughtered. The righteous perceive the evil urge as a tall mountain and they weep over their ability to have ascended such a high mountain. The wicked, on the other hand, weep, as the mountain appeared to them no thicker than a hair, and not high, so that they could not understand not having been able to scale it.
From this description it appears clear that in the future when G’d will perform miracles for us while the gentile nations are fighting and oppressing us, the evil urge will certainly appear to them first as an insurmountable mountain, not as if it had appeared to them as no higher than the diameter of a thin hair, as, according to their argument, had it appeared as hair-thin they would have allowed us to proceed to our homeland in the land of Israel without making strenuous efforts to prevent this.
However, seeing that in reality the evil urge was no taller than the proverbial hair, they deserve all the judgments that G’d will bring to bear on them, seeing that they had not even made an effort to overcome such a miniscule obstacle in order to serve G’d and carry out His will. This is the meaning of the verse beginning with: ועלו מושיעים בהר ציון, that at that future time the Israelites, i.e. מושיעים, will ascend Mount Zion in order to conquer the mountain still in possession of Esau, the “mountain” that appeared to the wicked as unassailable.
The righteous will have no trouble overcoming the wicked as they will realize that their “fortress” is no more than a hairbreadth’s thickness. Exodus 16,25. “eat it this day for this day is the Sabbath for G’d; this day you will not find any of it in the field.” With these words we can answer the question raised by Rabbi Moshe Alshich why the manna did not descend on the Sabbath, whereas G’d did not interfere with the continued growing and developing of crops that originate in the earth.
The fact that the manna did not descend on the Sabbath is a reminder that whereas normal crops originate from indirect largesse of G’d, i.e. His largesse making a detour via the bowels of the earth and requiring the “help” of rainfall, and the many steps a farmer must invest before he finally has a loaf of bread to show for his toil. The Sabbath is a symbol of G’d’s direct largesse, the ready made “bread” having been sent to earth already on the eve of the Sabbath, so that the spiritual dimension of the Sabbath does not need to be diminished, desecrated.
This concept has been alluded to in the Talmud Shabbat 118 where we are told: כל המענג את השבת נותנים לו משאלות לבו, “whoever will gladden the Sabbath will have his heart’s desires fulfilled.” The scholar making that statement supports it with a verse from psalms 37,4 והתענג על ה' ויתן לך משאלות לבך, “endeavour to provide pleasure for the Lord, and He will grant you the desires of your heart.”
Apparently, according to the Talmud, the principal enjoyment G’d derives from the Sabbath is the very existence of that day as such. Rav Yehudah, the author of the above quoted statement, considers the principal pleasure to be derived from the Sabbath not the additional food and drink and its superior quality, but the appreciation that G’d created such a day, a day that enables us to reflect on the fact that the purpose of our existence is not exhausted by our being able to provide for our material needs, but to enable us to intensify our link to the celestial domain in which the Creator resides.
When the sages composed the central prayer of the Sabbath service that commences with the words: תכנת שבת, “You have established the Sabbath, etc,” they arranged for the words to commence with the letters of the alphabet beginning with the last letter and concluding with the first letter. In other words, the message of the Sabbath is to take us back from a material world to the totally spiritual world that existed before G’d commenced with creating the light.
We have dwelled on the idea that a human being who is spiritually successful will “bounce back” the light that G’d created and used to illuminate the physical universe. Our author, at that time, described this “bouncing back” of “light rays” to G’d by human beings as the highest accolade we are capable of, as it proves that His light inspired us spiritually. At that time our author explained that the light created on the first day of creation is perceived as אור ישר, “direct light,” whereas the “light” bounced back by us is perceived as אור חוזר, “reflected light.”
The sages’ arrangement of the prayer תכנת שבת, reflects all this. Once we appreciate this we understand why it was natural for no manna to descend to earth on the Sabbath. The very descent of manna from heaven is an example of “direct light,” i.e. largesse descending from heaven to the material world directly, whereas the Sabbath is reserved for grateful man to “kick back” some of that light after he has “garbed” it with spiritual input of his own.The reason why normal crops continue to grow without interruption on the Sabbath is because the whole universe has been created for the benefit of the Jewish people, and all the crops that grow are meant to serve the needs of the Jewish people, first and foremost.
When the Jew eats and drinks, partaking of G’d’s largesse, he does not do so in order to indulge himself but in order to help him to better serve his Creator. The ripe crops therefore can be viewed as a microcosm of the concept of the Sabbath, i.e. they serve to refine the human being and to help him become the ideal man G’d had envisioned when He set out to create him. Ingestion of the food grown by the earth by Torah observant Israelites, not only enhances the spiritual development of the Israelite consuming it, but converts the food itself into part of the spiritually advancing Israelite himself.
The very process of the crops growing even on the Sabbath are only a stage in this “kickback” by the Israelite, or ideal man, of the now spiritually enhanced light that originally came forth when G’d created אור ישר, “direct light.”The phenomenon of the splitting of the sea may be understood in a similar manner. When the ocean was first created, this was parallel to the creation of light, i.e. an emanation of what had previously been something spiritual, i.e. something “travelling” downwards from a higher celestial domain.
When the sea was split, it travelled in the opposite direction, emanation in reverse. Since it did so by fulfilling its Creator’s directive, it made a positive contribution, just as did a human being who ingests food in order to serve his Creator. This was a strictly temporary situation, so that when it returned לאיתנו, “to its original condition,” it resumed its normal function. This is the mystical dimension of the three verses of 72 letters each, which alternately have to be read in opposite directions to enable us to read the 72-lettered name of G’d. (14,19-21) The first verse is read from right to left, the second from left to right, and the third again from right to left.
The three verses are written above one another. This same allusion is contained in our verse above, i.e. אכלוהו היום—כי שבת היום—היום לא תמצאוהו בשדה. Man’s principal enjoyment is on the Sabbath. It is the Sabbath itself, not its corollaries, therefore it does not matter that you will not find the manna in the field today. [The reader is referred to pages 365-366 where the subject of these three verses has been discussed first.
Ed.] Exodus 16,28.G’d said to Moses: “‘how long will you refuse to observe My commandments and My teachings?”Pertaining to this verse [which sounds as if G’d accuses Moses, personally, of not observing His commandments, Ed.] Rashi,; says (based on the Talmud in Baba Kamma 92) that sometimes when a farmer wishes to uproot a weed growing too close to a cabbage, he inadvertently uproots the cabbage at the same time.
What the Talmud has in mind is that sometimes keeping company with the wicked will result in the innocent becoming afflicted with the fallout of the afflictions that the wicked will be struck with.In order to understand how our sages dared to explain this verse by attributing to G’d that He would hold Moses responsible for keeping company with the wicked when Moses had been appointed as the leader of the Israelites against his will, and only after arguing about his being unsuitable for such a task for seven days, we may have to refer to another comment by Rashi on 16,22: ויבאו כל נשיאי העדה ויגידו למשה, “the princes of the entire congregation came to tell Moses.” [the fact that a double portion of manna had descended on the camp on the eve of the Sabbath.
Ed.] On this verse Rashi writes that the fact that the princes had been taken by surprise is proof that Moses had not told anyone of G’d’s command that this would occur on the Sabbath eve. G’d had told Moses about this already in verse 5 of our chapter, but Moses had withheld this information, part of which was that the people should prepare their food for the Sabbath. Rashi says there that Moses was punished in our verse for withholding this information from the people, so that he is lumped together with them as guilty of not observing G’d’s commandments.
In other words, Moses was punished for not warning the people in good time how to prepare for the Sabbath, seeing that there were numerous tasks that could not be performed on the Sabbath, including cooking, baking, etc.It is clear then that Moses was punished for not telling the people immediately about the Sabbath at the end of the week. Nonetheless, we need to understand how this failure to tell the people about the Sabbath and there being no manna on that day was such a serious act of omission that it warranted such a punishment.
Would the fact that the people had known about the absence of manna a few days earlier have made such a difference that all of them would have stayed in their tents without testing if indeed there was no manna on that day?We have read in a book called sefer yereyim, the book for the truly reverent Jews, that every commandment requires preparation before it can be performed properly, i.e. at the best possible level.
One needs to purify oneself in thought and deed before setting out to perform the commandment. The reason is that by preparing oneself for the performance of the commandment one demonstrates that one is happy to have the opportunity to perform this commandment. It shows G’d that one looks forward to the opportunity to perform the mitzvah. Having prepared oneself for performing the commandment ensures that one will do so meticulously.
One’s heart and soul will be part of the act of performance. Once we have appreciated this, we will also understand the opinion of Nachmanides who writes that it is a commandment to mention the Sabbath on each of the days preceding it. This is the reason why when we recite the daily psalm at the end of our daily morning prayers we commence with mentioning what day of the week it is by linking it to the Sabbath, i.e. “today is the first day of the Sabbath.” [We do not say: “this is the first day of the week,” for instance.
Ed.] According to Nachmanides this is the reason that the Torah writes זכור את יום השבת לקדשו, “remember the day of the Sabbath to sanctify it,” instead of merely writing: “remember the Sabbath to sanctify it.” (Exodus 20,8). The message is that we are to remember the Sabbath every day of the week, the word זכור not being in the imperative mode but in the infinitive mode. By doing so we indicate how we look forward to keeping the Sabbath at the end of the week.
Having looked forward to the Sabbath in such a fashion ensures that when the day arrives we will honour it with all our heart and will not, G’d forbid, commit any act which would desecrate its holiness. From all the above it follows that if Moses had announced the fact that the manna would not descend on the Sabbath as soon as He had been told about this by G’d, the people could have prepared themselves for this day until Friday and the desecration by some people of the Sabbath might well have been avoided.
The sudden announcement shortly before the onset of the Sabbath took everyone by surprise and resulted in some people not treating the Sabbath with the respect due to it.The word לשמור in our verse need not be understood as “to observe,” but may equally well be understood as “to await,” as it is understood in Genesis 37,11 where it describes Yaakov’s reaction to Joseph’s dream in which he saw sun and moon bowing down to him.
It means that Yaakov awaited further developments before deciding if there was any substance to Joseph’s dream. This is also how Rashi understands the word לשמור in our verse, when he writes that Moses was punished by G’d not excluding him from the accusation leveled at the community at large. He was the indirect cause of the desecration of the Sabbath by the people, as he had failed to prepare the people for the advent of the Sabbath.
They should have eagerly awaited that day, i.e. have looked forward to it with great expectations. Exodus 17,6.“Here I stand opposite you on the rock at Mount Chorev. When you will strike the rock water will come forth from it and the people will drink.” The obvious question about this verse is: ‘how is it possible to describe G’d, the Creator, as “standing” when we always perceive of Him as being present all over the universe, i.e. מלא כל הארץ כבודו, “the whole earth is filled with His glory?”
There is no spot on earth where G’d is not “present!” The wording in our verse creates the impression in the reader’s mind that at that time G’d was present only on the rock (Mount Chorev)!In order to clarify this we must revert to the Talmud in B’rachot 6 where the root of the word עמד, is defined as meaning תפלה, “prayer.” The Talmud quotes as its source psalms 106,30 ויעמוד פינחס ויפלל, “Pinchas waited and prayed before stepping forth.”
This quotation seems to reinforce the problem rather than to resolve it, seeing that in our principal daily prayer prayers, known as עמידה, “something performed while standing,” the focus seems to be on standing still. The Talmud clearly had in mind something other than the plain meaning of the words, the פשט.It appears clear therefore that our sages were not speaking about the people at large when they made the statement quoted in the Talmud B’rachot 6 that the meaning of the word עמידה refers primarily to prayer.
They had in mind only the elite of the people, the scholars and the pious. When speaking of such people the common meaning of עמידה, i.e. standing still, does not apply at all, as these people are spiritually constantly “on the move;” they keep moving from one spiritual level to the next higher one. It is what distinguishes them even from angels whom the prophet Zecharyah 2,7 described as העומדים האלה, “these spiritually stationary ones.”
When a person is on the “lookout” for his Creator in order to serve Him in the manner appropriate to His stature, he must do so and constantly keep searching until by learning how to manipulate the letters in the holy tongue he will feel that he is coming closer to G’d’s essence. The very idea of “standing still,” resting on one’s laurels, so to speak, is not part of such people’s vocabulary.
This is precisely why in the parlance of the prophets the righteous are defined as מהלכים, from the root הלך i.e. people who are constantly “on the move.” They are traversing different regions of the universe, proceeding from one “world” to another in search of their ultimate objective of דבקות, “cleaving” to G’d. When we recite what are known as the פסוקי דזמרה, sacred texts in which G’d is extolled in song and poetry, we are “travelling” through different layers of these various “worlds.”
When these psalms are recited with profound concentration, they lead the person doing so to getting insights into more and more facets of G’d’s many characteristics.In the parlance of our sages these different worlds of disembodied creatures are known collectively as the עולם האצילות, ‘the world of emanation.’ As the term indicates, this olam ha-atzilut is not yet the domain in which the King of kings resides, as “emanation” implies a certain degree of physicality in that “world,” however minute.
When one gets to reciting the עמידה, the nineteen benedictions which make up the essence of our prayers, one is supposed to have prepared oneself for facing the highest domain in which no physical matters exist, the domain whence only the אורות של אין סוף, “the brilliant light of the essence of the Creator sends forth illumination to His universe.” This light from the eyn sof surrounds a human being from all directions so that he automatically pours out his heart in front of G’d, literally.
This had not been the case previously, although he had already reached the level of olam haatzilut.People who have not even attained that level are considered as still in the אצילות העשיה, the region of the emanations in the lower levels of the ten emanations, in the region of the completed physical universe, whereas people who have attained the next higher level are considered as in the atzilut hayetzirah, the world of emanations in the part of the physical domain that is still in the formative stages.
The אצילות דבריאה, domain of the highest layers of emanations is immediately below that which is known as אצילות דאצילות, the region in which any emanation containing something approaching matter is at an absolute minimum. This is the absolutely highest level that it is possible for a mortal human being to achieve. There is no further progress from there, hence the elite of the Jewish people when having achieved that level through intensive prayer are considered as עומד “standing”. (still) If the principal daily prayer is called עמידה, suggesting “standstill,��� this is to be understood as far more than keeping one’s feet close together parallel to one another while reciting these benedictions; the word symbolized the “highest “ rung in their spiritual ascent that the person involved in praying is capable of attaining, i.e. his ultimate goal. We have explained repeatedly, that what man does in his domain in the physical universe is reflected in the celestial regions by parallel changes occurring there.
If we achieve ascending to the highest rungs of that spiritual ladder which we just described, G’d on His part will respond by “moving” in our direction, welcoming us, so to speak. The result is that G’d is able to say to Moses: הנני עומד לפניך, “Here am I, standing directly in front of you.” In response to the worshipper’s exclusive concentration on the Creator and His grandeur, the Creator in turn concentrates exclusively on the worshipper as a sign of His love for that person.The author continues to link this to the אבן השתיה, the stone that rested on the spot where the Holy Ark used to stand in the first Temple, underneath which one could connect directly to the “navel” of the globe. [This editor confesses that he has not been able to follow this sufficiently to be able to claim that he can explain it to the reader.
The gist of it seems to be that this physical location represented a “key” on earth to unlocking the source of G’d’s largesse once it had reached our domain. According to the Talmud, this was the point from which the globe was formed. Ed.] Exodus 17,9. “and G’d’s staff will be in my hand.” Moses meant that just as G’d is the “staff” of the universe, doing as He pleases with His universe, so the staff that the G’d had given him enables him to work wonders at will for benefit of his people.”
Moses alluded to what the Talmud in Moed Katan 16 stated, quoting G’d: “who rules over Me? The righteous.” The reference is to the staff G’d had entrusted to Moses, the one by means of which he performed the miracles. G’d had entrusted Moses with this staff, allowing him to use it at his discretion. Our sages in the Talmud Megillah 13 explain that the reason why Queen Esther was known as Esther (rather than as Hadassah, Esther 2,7) was that her beauty reminded people of the brilliance of the planet (star) Venus. [possibly the Talmud, which also explains her name as a reminder that she was a lady who could keep a secret, sees a dual meaning in her name, both brilliant light, and complete darkness, hiding things. Ed.]
Some of G’d’s miracles involve changes in the laws of nature such as the splitting of the sea, turning the waters of the Nile into blood and redeeming the Jewish people from Egypt. Others are the result of a combination and timing of most unlikely circumstances.Ahasverus’ taking a liking to Haman and trusting him blindly, and subsequently switching his trust to Esther who had never even revealed her nationality or religion to him, is just a minor example of this.
Haman’s choosing to request permission from Ahasverus to hang Mordechai in the middle of the night, a night when the king could not sleep and he was reminded that Mordechai had saved his life from assassins, and that Esther at the time had brought this to his attention, and that Haman planned to kill his lifesaver, etc., are just a few of these propitious coincidences that resulted in Haman’s downfall and the salvation of the Jewish people at that time.
The former kind of miracle is usually attributed to G’d in His capacity as the tetragram, י-ה-ו-ה, whereas the latter kind of miracle is attributed to G’d in His capacity as א-ד-נ-י. In the former case, G’d is “active, changing the rules of the game,” whereas in the case of the “hidden” miracle, the emphasis is on the recipient, מקבל. The difference can be compared to the difference between the sun and the moon, both of which give forth rays of light, the sun being a source of light, whereas the moon only reflects light that it had already received from the sun.
Esther therefore is compared to the moon in the story of Purim.When G’d performs supernatural miracles even the idolaters are humbled and recognize (temporarily) His mastery as we know from Exodus 18,1 where the Torah records that Yitro had heard about these great miracles and had concluded that Hashem is superior to any other force in the universe that claims the status of being a deity.Amalek was the only nation among the wicked people denying G’d’s power, who challenged G’d by attacking His people, unprovoked, on ground (Compare Yalkut Shimoni, 938, and quoted by Rashi (Deuteronomy 25,18) that did not belong to any nation.
According to Rashi, Amalek’s being the first to challenge the myth of G’d’s invincibility is compared to the first person jumping into boiling hot water of a bath tub, who, while being scalded nevertheless succeeds in cooling the water so that the next person following will hardly be scalded at all and subsequent people will feel comfortable in that tub.[While both Rashi and Yalkut Shimoni quote this analogy, Rashi could not have taken it from Yalkut Shimoni, as the author of these Midrashim lived approximately 200 years later than Rashi.
Ed.]Seeing that Amalek initiated this rebellion against G’d, the Torah commands such far reaching punishment for that nation. If G’d now commanded the Israelites to wage war against Amalek, the reason was that seeing supernatural means of humbling idolaters had not sufficed, other, better understood means, i.e. warfare on earth, had to be reverted to. It was therefore appropriate that Joshua should conduct this battle as Moses had been instrumental in performing supernatural miracles, whereas Joshua would prove that G’d is able to deal with sinners without having to resort to supernatural means.
Our sages alluded to this when they said in the Talmud Baba Batra 75 that if Moses’ face could be compared to the face of the sun, Joshua’s would be comparable to that of the moon.Allusions found in the written Torah usually refer to the celestial regions or to matters supernatural, metaphysical, whereas allusions in the oral Torah usually refer to matters in the physical universe. The relationship between the written Torah and the oral Torah is that the written Torah is the source, i.e. like the sun, whereas the oral Torah is comparable to the moon, i.e. a recipient, reflecting the origin.
Here, where nature was “repaired” by miracles similar to those experienced by Mordechai and Esther, i.e. “hidden miracles,” as described earlier, it was appropriate that we are told for the first time about parts of the written Torah to be committed to writing. [I believe the author draws a parallel between the antagonists of the Jewish people at that time, i.e. a descendant from Amalek, and the first defeat suffered by Amalek at the hands of Joshua, Ed.]
The “allusions” referred to are the words זאת and זכרון in this short paragraph, and the written record of the Purim story in Esther as described in Esther 9,29-32. (Compare Talmud Megillah 7). The words זכרון בספר refer to the written record in the Torah, whereas the word זאת refers to the oral record in the halachah. Exodus 17,16.“for as long as a hand is raised against the throne of G’d, Hashem will continue to wage war against Amalek.”
We need to understand why the “war” against Amalek is so extraordinarily difficult and long drawn out for G’d, Who could create the universe with merely 10 verbal directives. This question is also posed by the author of the Zohar, when reflecting on the ongoing struggle, מדור ודור, “from generation to generation. (Zohar II 133)It appears to me that without a doubt the Creator Who had created all the various universes could have disposed of Amalek with a single breath of His mouth.
This is especially so, in light of what G’d had already demonstrated at the sea of reeds, when He drowned a far mightier army than was at the disposal of Amalek, in a single hour. The point we must consider is that G’d at all times- even when apparently acting destructively- does in fact act for the good of mankind. The Ari z’al stresses this already in his commentary on Exodus 3,10 when G’d first appointed Moses by saying to him: לכה ואשלחך אל פרעה והוצא את עמי בני ישראל ממצרים, “come, I will send you to Pharaoh and you shall free My people the Children of Israel from Egypt.”
It is clear from this wording that G’d had hoped to accomplish the Exodus without having to impose judgments on Pharaoh and his people. It is simply not in the nature of G’d to inflict harm even on the gentile peoples of the world, if His purpose can be achieved by avoiding this.If it becomes necessary to perform miracles which at the same time afflict the people who made these miracles necessary so that they suffer from them, it is because G’d sees ultimate good in these very afflictions that He decrees on the victims.
The author refers to an article of his on the general subject of miracles where he dealt with this subject.One of the “good results” from such miracles is the fact that some of the people who are the victims will choose of their own free will to convert to Judaism and to become servants of the only G’d. In the case of Amalek, in spite of this people having witnessed the miracles which had so profoundly impressed all the other nations, no such positive outcome as people converting to Judaism resulted.
On the contrary, as Rashi had described, the Amalekites decided to put an end to such “repentance movements” among the idolaters by even risking suicide to show that G’d was not invincible and could be opposed. By doing so they threw down a gauntlet to the Creator by daring Him to destroy them immediately and thereby becoming known as a G’d Who was overly cruel to a nation that had not even harmed His people for hundreds of years as had the Egyptians, who had survived, except for their army. [Some of the words are my own, but they reflect the tenor of the words of the author. Ed.] Amalek’s conduct had shown that regardless of how many more miracles G’d would perform, this would not result in at least some of these people realizing the error of their ways and converting to monotheism after repenting.
G’d’s only recourse then was to make the judgment of Amalek look like His avenging Himself. The problem with this was that it would reflect negatively on G’d’s image as the Merciful One.The Ari’zal also writes that when G’d does decide to apply His judgments to such sinners as a form of revenge, He does not do so in a manner that directly involves any of His attributes. He entrusts this tasks to messengers, so that in this instance the first stage was waging war on the battlefield.
“War” is always perceived as an action initiated by human beings, not by G’d. This war was to be fought without G’d directly intervening in its outcome, or raining down a hail of stones as in the war for the capture of the land of the Canaanites. (Joshua 10,11) When G’d tells Moses in verse 14 כי מחה אמחה את זכר עמלק “for I will utterly destroy any remembrance of Amalek,” the word מחה has been repeated to tell us that memory of Amalek will not only be wiped out in the lower part of the universe, the area inhabited by man, but also in the celestial regions there will not remain any residue of that nation.
This absolute destruction is not found with any other nation concerning which the prophets in the Bible predict disaster at one time or another. Among all the other nations Divine judgments had resulted in some positive developments, so that their continued existence in one form or another could be justified.We have mentioned earlier that when G’d performs overt miracles His 4-lettered name י-ה-ו-ה is involved, whereas here the Torah makes a point of describing Amalek’s provocation as aimed at the throne of י-ה, i.e. not at the tetragram, as that name of G’d had not become involved with the fate of that nation.
The word יד in that verse, as always when it appears in connection with G’d is an allusion to G’d’s loving kindness. The word כס describes the Divine chariot, or “throne.” While G’d is involved in the ongoing war against Amalek, מלחמה, His attribute of חסד remains totally uninvolved.
