Parshat Mishpatim5 min read

Gabriel Set Egypt's Brick Beneath God's Throne

When Israel's elders climbed Sinai and looked beneath the divine throne, they saw a sapphire. The Targum says it was a brick made from the slave clay of Egypt.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Elders Climbed and Saw Something Under the Throne
  2. Why the Covenant Stood Over a Memory of Suffering
  3. The Blood That Sealed the Covenant
  4. Michael Named and Standing at the Summit

The Elders Climbed and Saw Something Under the Throne

After the blood and the altar and the twelve pillars and the reading of the covenant, Moses climbed Sinai with Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy elders of Israel. They looked up and saw the God of Israel. The Hebrew Bible describes what was under the divine feet: something like sapphire pavement, clear as the sky (Exodus 24:10). The description is majestic and opaque. Sapphire. Sky. No other explanation.

Targum Jonathan on Exodus 24, the Aramaic Torah paraphrase shaped in Palestine between the second and seventh centuries CE, knows what the sapphire was. During the slavery in Egypt, the angel Gabriel descended. He took clay from the pits where Israel had been worked to exhaustion. He formed it into a brick. He carried it up to heaven and placed it under the throne of God as a footstool. What the elders saw beneath the divine feet was the record of bondage, the clay the Israelites' hands had worked, set permanently in the highest court of the universe.

Why the Covenant Stood Over a Memory of Suffering

The covenant at Sinai is often read as a beginning, the moment Israel moves from the chaos of exodus into organized relationship with God. But the Targum refuses to let Egypt leave the scene. The footstool under the divine throne is made from the same mud the Israelites had pressed into bricks, counted into quotas, and carried on broken backs. The covenant is spoken above that brick. Every commandment descends from a throne that stands on a record of what was done to Israel in Egypt.

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, the narrative midrash attributed to the school of Rabbi Eliezer ben Hyrcanus from the Land of Israel around the eighth to ninth century CE, fills in what Gabriel saw when he arrived. The taskmasters drove men past the point of endurance. Quotas were enforced whether or not straw was provided. Rabbi Akiva, quoted in that text, describes a woman who went into labor while treading clay and whose child fell into the mud alongside the bricks. Gabriel collected the bodies, or in some tellings the clay saturated with their suffering, and carried them upward.

The Blood That Sealed the Covenant

Moses took the blood of the oxen in basins, threw half onto the altar, and sprinkled half on the people: this is the blood of the covenant which God has made with you upon all these words (Exodus 24:8). Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on that verse specifies the blood was thrown on the altar to expiate the people. Half for God. Half for Israel. The covenant sealing is symmetrical, each party receiving the same blood that comes from the same sacrifice.

The combination of the slave brick under the throne and the covenant blood sprinkled on the people makes Sinai into something harder to sentimentalize than a mountaintop revelation. The mountain holds both the record of what was suffered and the binding of what is promised. Neither the suffering nor the covenant can be separated from the other. The elders who looked beneath the divine feet saw slavery and beauty in the same stone.

Michael Named and Standing at the Summit

The Targum identifies the voice that summoned Moses up the mountain as the voice of Michael, Prince of Wisdom. The Hebrew says simply that God called. The Targum names the angel and gives him a title, drawing the angelic court into the covenant scene alongside the human witnesses. Michael had already been present at the suffering in Egypt, a witness to what was done. Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer records his testimony. He was there when the taskmasters counted. He is there when the covenant is spoken. The angel who witnessed the crime is the angel who announces the repair.

GabrielSinaiCovenantEgyptAngelsExodus
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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Targum Jonathan on Exodus 24Targum Jonathan

The covenant ceremony at Sinai in (Exodus 24) is solemn in the Hebrew Bible. The Targum Jonathan turns it into a visionary experience with one of the most haunting images in all of ancient Jewish literature: an angel carrying a brick of slavery and placing it beneath God's throne.

The Targum identifies the voice that summoned Moses up the mountain as "Michael, the Prince of Wisdom." The Hebrew says simply "He said to Moses." The Targum names the speaker and gives him a title. Michael is not just an angel but the angelic patron of wisdom itself.

Before the tabernacle existed, the Targum explains, the firstborn served as priests. Moses "sent the firstborn of the sons of Israel" to offer sacrifices, "for until that hour had the firstborn had the office of performing worship, the tabernacle of ordinance not as yet being made, nor the priesthood given unto Aaron." This addition explains a puzzling detail: who performed the sacrificial service before the Levitical priesthood was established?

The most remarkable passage comes when Nadab and Abihu and the seventy elders ascended and "saw the glory of the God of Israel." The Hebrew says they saw something like a sapphire pavement under God's feet. The Targum transforms this into a memorial of slavery: under God's footstool was "a memorial of the servitude with which the Mizraee had made the children of Israel to serve in clay and bricks," including pregnant women who were "made abortive by being beaten down with the clay." The angel Gabriel descended, made a brick from that very clay, ascended to heaven, and "set it, a footstool under the throne of the Lord of the world."

God keeps a brick of Egyptian slavery beneath His throne. The suffering of Israel is permanently displayed in heaven itself. This is the Targum's theology of divine memory. God does not forget what His people endured, and the evidence sits at His feet forever.

The Targum also notes that Nadab and Abihu deserved punishment for gazing too boldly at the divine glory, but "the stroke was not sent in that hour." It awaited them until the eighth day, the dedication of the Tabernacle described in (Leviticus 10), when they would die offering unauthorized fire. The Targum connects two stories separated by an entire book of the Torah.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 24:10Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

When Nadab and Abihu lifted their eyes at Sinai and beheld the glory of the God of Israel, they saw something no prophet had described before. Beneath the divine throne, serving as a footstool, lay a stone like sapphire. The Targum teaches that this was no ornament. It was a memorial.

The sapphire held the memory of Egypt. When the Egyptians forced the children of Israel to labor in clay and bricks, women trod the mud alongside their husbands. Among them walked a pregnant young woman, delicate and weary, who was beaten down into the clay until she miscarried. The suffering that drowned her child did not vanish. The angel Gabriel descended, gathered that clay, and formed a single brick from it. Then he ascended to the heavens and placed it as a footstool beneath the throne of the Lord of the world.

The splendor of that brick, the Targum says, shone like a precious stone, radiant as the beauty of the clear heavens when no cloud obscures them. God had taken the worst day in Egypt and made it the nearest object to His feet.

This is the Shekhinah's logic. The Holy One does not forget the anonymous. A young woman whose name we will never know has her grief installed permanently at the base of the divine throne. Every time God is enthroned in vision, He rests His feet on Egypt's cruelty as a witness that will not be erased. Nadab and Abihu saw this and lived to eat and drink in its presence.

The memorial is not revenge. It is covenant memory. The God who brought Israel out of Egypt keeps the receipts, and He keeps them close enough to feel underfoot.

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Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 48:18Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer

Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, a fascinating work of aggadic literature, gives us a glimpse, a chilling, visceral snapshot of their suffering.

Rabbi Akiva, a towering figure in Jewish tradition, paints a particularly harrowing picture. He reminds us that the Egyptian taskmasters were merciless. Their sole focus was extracting labor, forcing the Israelites to meet impossible quotas: "And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, ye shall lay upon them" (Exodus 5:8). It wasn't just about building cities; it was about breaking spirits.

Families forced to gather straw in the wilderness, loading it onto donkeys, onto themselves, even onto their wives and children. The rough straw, piercing their heels, blood mingling with the mortar. This was raw, agonizing work.

Then comes Rachel, granddaughter of Shuthelach. She's heavily pregnant, near childbirth, yet there she is, alongside her husband, treading the mortar. Can you feel the desperation? The exhaustion? In that moment, amidst the mud and the blood, she gives birth. The child, tragically, becomes entangled in the brick mold.

Her cry, Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer tells us, ascended before the Throne of Glory. A powerful image, isn't it? A mother's anguish, so profound it pierces the heavens.

The angel Michael himself, a messenger of immense power, descends. He doesn't offer immediate relief, not in the way we might expect. Instead, he takes the brick mold, with its clay and the trapped child, and brings it up before the Throne of Glory. Why? Perhaps to serve as a tangible, irrefutable evidence of the Israelites' suffering. A reminder of the cost of Pharaoh's oppression.

That very night, the Holy One, blessed be He, descended. "And it came to pass at midnight that the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt" (Exodus 12:29). Was Rachel's cry the catalyst? Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer doesn't say explicitly, but the implication is clear. The divine response, the final plague, was inextricably linked to the suffering of the Israelites.

What does this story, found in Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer, teach us? It's more than just a historical account. It’s a reminder that even in the darkest of times, when suffering seems unbearable, our cries are heard. That even in the midst of oppression, the divine is present, witnessing, and ultimately, acting. It urges us to see the humanity in every story, to connect with the pain of the past, and to recognize the power of hope, even when surrounded by bricks and blood.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 24:8Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus (Exodus 24:8) describes the most solemn act of the covenant ceremony: Mosheh took half of the blood which was in the basins, and sprinkled upon the altar, to expiate the people, and said, Behold, this is the blood of the Covenant which the Lord hath made with you upon all these words.

Half on the Altar, Half on the People

The Torah describes an extraordinary act. The blood of the oxen sacrificed earlier (Exodus 24:5) was collected into basins. Half was now thrown against the altar, the side of God. The other half, the preceding verse tells us, was thrown upon the people themselves. Two halves of a single blood, binding two parties into one covenant.

The Targum adds the purpose: to expiate the people. The blood is not merely a dramatic signature. It cleanses. It prepares Israel, still dusty from Egypt, still shaken by the thunder of Sinai, to enter into a formal relationship with God.

The Blood of the Covenant

Then Moses says the words that will echo through Jewish memory: this is the blood of the Covenant which the Lord hath made with you. The Hebrew phrase, dam habrit, becomes a technical term. In late antique tradition, dam habrit also refers to the blood of circumcision, the sign Abraham received (Genesis 17:10). Two moments of covenantal blood: the personal covenant of Abraham, and the national covenant of Sinai.

The Takeaway

Covenants in the Torah are not signed with ink. They are sealed with blood, not because blood is dramatic, but because blood is costly. Something dies so something greater can be born. At Sinai, a nation was born from the blood of offerings and the words of a book. And that covenant is still binding today.

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Legends of the Jews 4:347Legends of the Jews

Because, according to some traditions, even the ten plagues weren't enough to soften the hearts of the Egyptians. The oppression of the Hebrews continued relentlessly, right up to the very moment of their freedom. In fact, the Legends of the Jews (Ginzberg) tells a heartbreaking tale of a woman named Rachel, daughter of Shuthelah.

On the very day of the Exodus, as Rachel and her husband toiled, making bricks from clay, she went into labor. In the midst of this grueling work, the baby slipped from her womb and vanished into the clay. A truly devastating moment.

Then, something extraordinary happened.

Gabriel, the archangel, appeared. He molded that very clay, the clay that had swallowed the child, into a brick. And what did he do with this brick? He carried it all the way to the highest heavens, placing it as a footstool before the Divine throne. Can you picture that? A symbol of unimaginable suffering transformed into something that literally supports the glory of God.

It was on that very night, the Legends of the Jews continues, that God finally looked upon the suffering of Israel, and the tenth and final plague – the slaying of the firstborn – was unleashed upon Egypt. This night, according to tradition, is one of four nights so significant that God inscribed them in the Book of Memorial.

So, what are the other three?

The first, unsurprisingly, is the night God appeared to create the world. Imagine the scene: utter chaos, emptiness, darkness covering the abyss. Then, the Lord's word bursts forth, and light floods everything. (Ginzberg, Legends).

The second night commemorates God's appearance to Abraham at the brit bein ha-betarim (ברית בין הבתרים), the covenant of the pieces. This is a pivotal moment in our history, marking the beginning of God's special relationship with Abraham and his descendants.

And the third? Well, we've already touched on it: the night in Egypt when God struck down the firstborn of the Egyptians with His right hand, while simultaneously protecting the firstborn of the Israelites with His left. It's a night of both destruction and salvation, forever etched in the memory of our people (Midrash Rabbah).

But the story doesn't end there. The fourth night, the Legends of the Jews tells us, is yet to come. It will be the night when the final redemption is accomplished, when the iron yoke of the wicked kingdom is broken, and evildoers are destroyed. In this future, Moses will emerge from the desert, and the Messiah will come from Rome – each leading their respective flocks. And the word of God, the ultimate mediator, will guide them both to walk together in harmony.

It’s a powerful vision, isn't it? A reminder that even in the midst of suffering and oppression, hope remains. That even the darkest moments can be transformed into something sacred. And that the story of redemption is not just a thing of the past, but a promise for the future.

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