Parshat Beshalach5 min read

The Same Hand at the Red Sea and the Walls of Jerusalem

The sea had already closed. Moses still sang about the hand that pulled them out. Later he cursed the sun for lighting the burned house.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Shore After the Army
  2. The Hand That Let Go
  3. Moses Finds the Fathers
  4. Be Cursed, O Sun
  5. The Cow and Her Young

The water was still warm where the Red Sea had been. Moses stood on the far shore with salt in his beard. Below him, along the wet sand, lay the men who had chased Israel out of Egypt. Chariot wheels tangled in weed. Horses on their sides. Soldiers face down at the tide line.

The Same Hand at the Red Sea and the Walls of Jerusalem Click for full size

The people laughed and wept at once. Children pointed at the dead and went quiet. Moses opened his mouth to sing, and the word that came was a word for being pulled free. So God delivered Israel that day from the hand of Egypt, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the shore of the sea (Exodus 14:30). The hand had closed the water over the army and set Israel loose on dry ground.

The Shore After the Army

That hand had gone into Egypt the way a person reaches into a fire, fingers closing fast, and dragged Israel out before the heat could finish them. They had been held. Now they were not held. They had been inside another nation's fist, and the hand of God had pried the fist open and carried them clear.

They had no map and no bread and no name for the wilderness ahead. None of that touched the joy on the sand. The thing they had feared most in the world lay drowned at their feet. Moses sang about the hand. He could not have imagined the same word turning.

The Hand That Let Go

It turned. The sea dried. The wilderness passed. The land was given and built and walled, and the walls rose around a city with a house for God at its center.

Then the walls of Jerusalem came down. Siege engines worked the stone for months until the stone gave. The enemy poured through the breach. The house at the center went up in fire that did not stop until there was nothing left to burn.

Survivors were chained and marched out the way Israel had once marched out of Egypt, except this time no sea opened and no song rose. A voice came up out of the ash. The Lord has given me into the hands of those I cannot stand against (Lamentations 1:14). Given over. Handed across. The same hand that had reached into Egypt and pulled them free now set them into a grip too strong to break.

Moses Finds the Fathers

Moses could not stand it. He went looking for the dead, for the fathers of the people, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the Avot, the ancestors who had been promised children more than the stars. He told them what he had seen. The chains. The children. The house burning.

They did not comfort him. They listened, and they broke, and the grief moved from him into them until four were weeping instead of one. The sound did not stay on the ground. It climbed. It reached the heavens, a long chain of mourning stretched from the burning city back through every generation that had first been promised a future, and every link in that chain was crying.

Be Cursed, O Sun

What broke loose in Moses last was not a prayer. It was a curse, and he threw it at the sky. He looked up at the sun that had gone on shining through the slaughter, the sun that had lit the enemy's path into the holy place and never dimmed for it.

"Be cursed, O sun," he said. "Why was your light not put out in the hour when the enemy walked into the sanctuary? Why did you keep burning?"

The sun answered him.

"O faithful shepherd, I swear by the living God, I could not grow dark. The heavenly powers would not permit it. Sixty fiery scourges they dealt me, and they said, Go and let your light shine forth."

The source of all light, beaten into daylight. Moses had sung on the shore about a hand that saves. Now he stood under a sun that had been whipped for trying to go out.

The Cow and Her Young

He was not finished. He turned from the sky to God.

"Lord of the world," he said, "You have written in Your Torah: whether it be cow or ewe, you shall not kill it and her young both in one day. How many mothers have they slaughtered with their children, and You are silent?"

The man who had carried the first word his whole life had no word left for the second except a curse at the daylight and a law about animals, held up against a burning house. The hand had closed the sea. The hand had opened the walls. The sun kept shining because it had been told to, and the fathers kept weeping because they had been told a promise, and Moses stood between them with salt still in his beard from a shore that no longer existed.

MosesJeremiahLamentationsRed SeaExileYalkut Shimoni
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From the tradition

Sources

2 sources

The texts behind this telling. Some cards carry a translation of the source; others are our own retelling of it, and each card says which. Every card links out to the original.

Yalkut Shimoni on Nach 1026:6Yalkut Shimoni

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.Sefaria Community Translation · CC0

This teaching is part of a series in which the sages set the triumphant words of Moses at the Exodus against the mournful words of Jeremiah at the fall of Jerusalem, drawing out how completely Israel's situation was reversed. When Israel went out of Egypt, the moment of redemption was sealed at the sea, and the text records that the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians (Exodus 14:30). The verb is one of deliverance: God reached out and rescued His people, removing them from the grip of their enemies and setting them free on the far shore.

Against that verse of rescue the midrash places a verse of surrender. When Israel went out of Jerusalem into exile, Jeremiah voiced the lament that the Lord has given me into the hands of those I cannot withstand (Lamentations 1:14). The same divine hand that once delivered Israel from Egypt is now described as handing Israel over to enemies too strong to resist. The contrast is deliberate and painful. At the Exodus, God took His people out of the hand of the oppressor; at the destruction, He placed them into the hand of the oppressor. By laying the two verses side by side, the sages turn the memory of the first redemption into a measure of the depth of the later loss, and they keep alive the hope that the God who once delivered can deliver again.

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Legends of the Jews 10:36Legends of the Jews

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Legends of the Jews by Louis Ginzberg (1909) · Public Domain

“the sound of their grief pierced to the very heavens.” It paints a vivid picture of despair.

Where is Moses, their leader, during all this? He’s gone to plead with the Avot, the Patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. According to Ginzberg's retelling in Legends of the Jews, Moses returns to these ancestral figures, bearing witness to the horrors faced by the exiled Jews. And what happens? They, too, are overcome with sorrow, joining in the chorus of woe.

It's a powerful image, this chain of grief stretching from earth to heaven, from the present generation back to the very roots of the Jewish people. But it's Moses's personal anguish that really grabs you. He cries out, cursing the sun! "Be cursed, O sun," he exclaims, "why was not thy light extinguished in the hour in which the enemy invaded the sanctuary?"

Think about the audacity of that statement. Cursing the sun, the source of all light and life! But it shows the depth of his pain, his feeling of abandonment.

And the sun… it answers him! The sun replies, defending itself. "O faithful shepherd, I sware by the life, I could not grow dark. The heavenly powers would not permit it. Sixty fiery scourges they dealt me, and they said, 'Go and let thy light shine forth.'" According to this version, the sun was forced to shine, even amidst the darkness, highlighting the idea that even celestial bodies are subject to a higher power, and perhaps even to a divine plan beyond our comprehension.

Did the sun want to go dark? The story leaves that hanging.

But Moses isn’t done. He has one last, agonizing complaint, this time directed to God himself. "O Lord of the world," he cries, "Thou hast written it in Thy Torah: 'And whether it be cow or ewe, ye shall not kill it and her young both in one day.' How many mothers have they slaughtered with their children and Thou art silent!" (The source for this is found in Legends of the Jews.)

This is a direct challenge to divine justice. How can a God who commands compassion even towards animals allow such unspeakable cruelty to human beings, mothers and children, no less? The contrast between the divine law and the reality of suffering is stark and deeply unsettling.

It's a question that echoes through the ages. How do we reconcile faith with suffering? How do we maintain hope in the face of despair? These stories, these legends, don't offer easy answers. But they do offer a space to confront these questions, to voice our pain, and to remember that even in the darkest of times, the cries of the Jewish people. And their leaders, have always pierced the heavens.

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