Parshat Beshalach5 min read

Serah Named the Red Sea Walls as Living Mirrors

In the study hall Serah bat Asher corrects the sages. The sea walls were mirrors of all Israel. Earth and sea then fight over Egypts drowned host.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. What Did the Walls Look Like
  2. Reflections in the Water
  3. Who Hardens and Breaks
  4. Earth and Sea Argue
  5. After the Oath
Serah Named the Red Sea Walls as Living Mirrors Click for full size

What Did the Walls Look Like

Rabbi Yohanan challenges his students. What did the walls of the Red Sea look like? No one can quite conjure the image. He offers his own vision: a window lattice, fine latticework holding back the water. The study hall nods as study halls do when a master paints a picture.

Then a voice pierces the quiet. No, it was not like that at all. Everyone looks up. Peering through the window is a very old woman. Who are you? Rabbi Yohanan asks. I am Serah bat Asher, she answers. I was there. I crossed the Red Sea.

The room stills. Serah is the one who entered the Garden of Eden alive, the witness who outlived centuries and still shows up when memory needs a correction. I know exactly what the walls resembled, she says. They resembled shining mirrors, mirrors in which every man, woman, and child was reflected. It seemed like an even greater multitude crossed there, not only those of the present, but also those of the past and future as well.

Reflections in the Water

After Serah speaks, no one dares contradict her. Why would they? She was there. Her knowledge is firsthand. The walls reflected all of Israel, past, present, and future, walking through that sea. The water shone because of those who had drunk deep of Torah's waters, like Moses and Aaron. Their wisdom illuminated the very waters themselves.

A child in the column sees not only his own face in the standing wave but faces he has not yet met. A grandmother sees faces she buried in Egypt. The path between walls is a census of the people across time. No lattice. A living gallery of who Israel is and will be.

Pharaoh's army does not get a mirror. They get a road that closes.

Who Hardens and Breaks

Job asks who has ever hardened his heart against God and come away whole. The answer walks the generations. The Flood's generation set itself against Heaven, and the waters swept it away. Babel hardened itself and was scattered. Sodom hardened itself and fire rained down. Then comes Pharaoh, proudest of them all. He sneered, I do not know the Lord, when the command came to send out the people. He refused and refused, his heart growing harder with each plague.

The pattern could not be broken for him either. When the plague of the firstborn struck in the night, his defiance shattered, and he sent Israel out with his own mouth. The verse that opens the next chapter, and it came to pass when Pharaoh sent out the people, is the closing line of his hardness. Strength of will is no shield against the One who made the world.

He chases them anyway into the corridor of mirrors. Hardness dies hard. The sea finishes what the plagues began.

Earth and Sea Argue

When the Egyptians drown, the dead have to go somewhere, and a quarrel breaks out beneath creation. The sea hurls the bodies up onto the dry land, and the dry land hurls them back into the sea. Neither wants them. The earth makes her case. When I once received the blood of a single man, Abel, I was cursed for it. If one murder stained me so deeply, how can I now take in the blood of these countless multitudes and not be condemned forever?

The land fears that accepting Pharaoh's host will drag her into judgment. So the Holy One, blessed be He, gives her an oath that she will not be brought to trial for receiving them. You stretched out Your right hand. The right hand, the teachers read, is always the language of a sworn oath. Only once the earth is sworn safe does she open to swallow them down.

Even creation's elements demand justice before they obey. The same sea that stood like mirrors for Israel becomes a reluctant grave for Egypt, and the ground accepts the bodies only under divine bond.

After the Oath

Israel walks out singing. Serah carries the image of mirrored walls for a thousand years and more until a study hall needs her. Pharaoh's hardness becomes a proverb. The earth keeps the oath and the dead. Children of the future will see themselves, by Serah's word, already walking between those waters in the reflection of a night their ancestors crossed.

No one who hardens against God stays whole. No one who crosses under the mirrors walks alone. The lattice theory dies politely in a room where an eyewitness still breathes. The sea remembers both the gallery of faces and the quarrel over corpses. Heaven remembers the right hand raised in oath so that dry land could finish the work without fear of Abel's old curse.

Somewhere a student erases lattice from his notes and writes mirrors. The correction feels small. It is not. It is the difference between a pretty image and a people seeing itself complete while an empire drowns behind them.

SerahRed SeaExodusEgyptPharaohMirrorsSeaOath
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From the tradition

Sources

3 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.

Pesikta de-Rav Kahana 11:13Pesikta de-Rav Kahana

Translation of the source text.Pesikta de Rav Kahana according to an Oxford manuscript, Dov Mandelbaum ed., N.Y. 1987 · CC-BY

Rabbi Yochanan was sitting and expounding: How were the waters made for Israel, like a wall? Rabbi Yochanan expounded: like these lattices. Serah daughter of Asher leaned over and said: I was there, and they were only like these latticed windows.

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 251:2Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

Another interpretation of "You stretched out Your right hand" (Exodus 15:12): this teaches that the sea cast them onto the dry land and the dry land cast them back into the sea. The dry land said: If, when I received only the blood of Abel alone, it was said to me, "Cursed are you from the ground" (Genesis 4:11) ["Cursed are you from the ground"], now how can I receive the blood of all these multitudes? until the Holy One, blessed be He, swore to her that He would not bring her to judgment, as it is said, "You stretched out Your right hand" and "right hand" means nothing other than an oath, as it is said, "The LORD has sworn by His right hand" (Isaiah 62:8).

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 225:7Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

Translation of the source text.Torat Emet (Yalkut Shimoni) · CC-BY-NC

This is what Scripture said: "Wise of heart and mighty in strength, who has hardened himself against Him and remained whole?" (Job 9:4).

The generation of the Flood hardened themselves against Him; He swept them away in the waters. The generation of the Dispersion hardened themselves against Him; He scattered them throughout the whole world. The men of Sodom hardened themselves against Him; what was their end? "And the LORD rained down upon Sodom" (Genesis 19:24).

Pharaoh said, "I do not know the LORD" (Exodus 5:2), and the Holy One, blessed be He, said, "Send out My people" (Exodus 5:1). And Pharaoh hardened himself against Him, as it says, "And it came to pass when Pharaoh stubbornly refused." Once the plague of the firstborn came, immediately he sent them out. Therefore it is said, "And it came to pass when Pharaoh sent out" (Exodus 13:17).

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