Parshat Beshalach4 min read

Egypt Drowned Hebrew Boys in the Nile, So the Sea Drowned Egypt

A horse's hooves found mud that would not let go. The water that had taken Hebrew boys now held Egypt's best chariots down.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. The Nile Took the Boys
  2. Six Hundred Chariots Entered the Same Water
  3. The Sea Floor Turned to Clay
  4. Angels Stared at Dry Ground
  5. The Mouth That Decreed Drowning Went Under

The first Hebrew boy hit the Nile with a sound the river already knew how to swallow. Pharaoh had ordered it. Every son born to Israel, thrown in. Mothers in Goshen learned the decree in the weeks after it left his mouth. The Nile, which Egypt treated as its food and its god, became a grave for children.

Egypt Drowned Hebrew Boys in the Nile, So the Sea Drowned Egypt Click for full size

The account opened then. The sea would close it.

The Nile Took the Boys

Soldiers did the work. Hands that knew brick quotas learned a smaller weight. A mother ran and did not outrun the order. The water took what the throne wanted taken.

Years later Israel stood on the far bank with a song in its mouth. Miriam's drum. Horses and riders gone under. The other side finally reachable. Under the music sat a colder fact. Egypt had used water on the helpless. Water would now close over Egypt.

Six Hundred Chariots Entered the Same Water

Six hundred chosen chariots. The best of what Egypt had. The elite corps of the army that had owned the known world. They went in after a people who had walked through on dry ground.

They had taken six hundred chariots to hunt Israel (Exodus 14:7). The song answers with Pharaoh's chariots and his army cast into the sea (Exodus 15:4). Officers too. They had set third-men over all of them. The sea took the chosen third-men as well.

The weapon Egypt used against infants became the weapon used against chariots, turned back in kind. Middah keneged middah (מדה כנגד מדה), measure against measure. Boys into a river. Horses into a sea.

The Sea Floor Turned to Clay

The sea did not only drown Egypt. It held Egypt down. They had embittered Israel's life in clay, in mortar, in the mud of brick pits. The sea floor at the crossing went soft. Horses that went in did not drown in open water. They sank into mud and could not rise.

A horse's hooves found no bottom it could trust. The animal went in up to the knees, then the belly, then the chest. The rider pulled and the reins came up empty of help. Clay closed around legs that had run down slaves. The same heaviness that had held a child's body under the Nile current now held a warhorse that could not surface.

Foot soldiers, horsemen, officers: each according to the work they had done. Those who had supervised the throwing of infants were cast in. Those who had driven the chariots that ran down the fleeing were submerged in the mire.

Angels Stared at Dry Ground

While Egypt drowned in mud, Israel walked on dry ground. The same sea. The same hour. Two different experiences of the water.

Angels of service stared and were astounded. "The children of Israel, idolaters that they are, are coming on dry land?" The water itself filled with rage. The walls on their right and their left could be read as anger, not only as architecture.

What held the rage back? From the right, the Torah they would later receive, a fiery law. From the left, tefillin. They walked on a future they had not yet earned, through a sea that did not love them, away from an army the mud would not release.

The Mouth That Decreed Drowning Went Under

Even Pharaoh, some said, went down. The song names the chariots of Pharaoh and his army. Others said he was the exception, kept standing so the world would hear why he had been raised. Still others said that in the end the horse of Pharaoh came into the sea, and the mouth that had said "every son that is born, into the river you shall throw him" (Exodus 1:22) was thrown in after the children.

Jethro heard and named it. Now I know that the Lord is stronger than all gods, he said, because by the very thing with which Egypt meant to punish Israel in water, Egypt was punished in water.

Israel's feet were dry. Egypt's horses were not. The Nile had opened an account. The sea closed it, and the clay would not let go.

Yalkut ShimoniExodusPharaohRed SeaDivine JusticeEgypt
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From the tradition

Sources

5 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 Torah 246:3Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

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

Another interpretation of "the chariots of Pharaoh" and so on: By the very measure with which they measured, You measured out to them. They had said, "Every son that is born you shall cast into the Nile" (Exodus 1:22) and so on; You too measured out to them by that same measure. Therefore it is said, "the chariots of Pharaoh and his host He has cast into the sea."

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 246:4Yalkut Shimoni on Torah

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

Another interpretation: They said, "and he took six hundred chariots" (Exodus 14:7); You too, "the chariots of Pharaoh and his host." They said, "and captains over all of them" (ibid.); You too, "the choicest of his captains were sunk in the Sea of Reeds." They embittered their lives with mortar; You too, by that same measure, did to them, for You made the waters like mortar, and they kept sinking into them. Therefore it is said, "sunk in the Sea of Reeds," and "sinking" refers to nothing but mortar, as it is said, "and Jeremiah sank into the mire" (Jeremiah 38:6), and it says, "I have sunk in deep mire" (Psalms 69:3). Therefore it is said, "sunk in the Sea of Reeds."

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Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 238Yalkut Shimoni

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

"And the waters will came back and cover the chariot and the horsemen" (Exodus 14:26) And even Par'oh, according to Rabi Yehuda, as it says "the chariots of Phar'oh and his army" (15:4). Rabi Natan says Par'oh was the exception, since we have this verse about him: "maybe for this I made you stand up"(Exodus 9:16). And there are those who say that at the end Par'oh went down and drowned, as it says "and the horse of Par'oh came" (Exodus 15:19). "And the children of Israel went into the sea in dry ground" - the angels of service were astounded, saying: 'the children of Israel, idolaters that they are, are coming on dry land?!' And from where do we know that even the sea was filled with rage from Above? Because the text says "and the waters were like rage to them" [since the vav is missing to the word chomah, wall, it can be read as chema, rage; so you can re-read the verse as "the water was like anger on their right and on their left"]. And what caused them to be saved from their right and their left? From the right, it was Torah, which they would receive later on, as it says "From His right, [He gave] a fiery law to them". And left? This is tefilin.

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Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus 18:11Targum Pseudo-Jonathan on Exodus

Retold in our words. Read the original at the link below.The Targum of Jonathan ben Uzziel, trans. J. W. Etheridge, London, 1862 · Public Domain

The Targum Pseudo-Jonathan captures Jethro's theological breakthrough in one line: "Now have I known that the Lord is stronger than all powers; for by the very thing by which the Mizraee wickedly would have punished Israel by (drowning them in) the sea, upon themselves came the punishment, in being punished in the sea" (Exodus 18:11).

This is the doctrine of middah k'neged middah, measure for measure, articulated by the first convert in the Torah. Pharaoh had decreed in (Exodus 1:22) that every Hebrew baby boy be thrown into the Nile. The Egyptians had planned to drown Israel. So they drowned.

Jethro's phrasing is precise. He does not say simply that Egypt was defeated. He says they were punished by the very thing they intended to use. The instrument of cruelty became the instrument of justice. The Aramaic underlines it: "by the very thing by which.. upon themselves came the punishment."

The rabbis draw out this theme in countless midrashim, Haman hanged on his own gallows, the sons of Jacob eating grain in the same Egypt where they sold Joseph, Samson bringing down the pillars he was chained to. Jethro is the one who first names the pattern.

The takeaway: evil is often undone by its own mechanics. The trap you build for others is, in the moral architecture of God's world, the trap most likely to catch you.

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Pesikta DeRav Kahana 11:2Pesikta 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

"Say to God, How awesome are Your deeds! Through the greatness of Your power Your enemies cringe before You" (Psalms 66:3). Rabbi Yohanan said: Say to the good Workman, well done!

"How awesome are Your deeds" (ibid.), how fearsome are Your acts of judgment: those who are slain slay their slayers, those who are impaled impale their impalers, those who are sunk sink the ones who sank them. The mouth that said, "Every son that is born you shall cast into the river" (Exodus 1:22) was itself cast into the sea, "Pharaoh's chariots and his army He cast into the sea" (ibid. 15:4).

The rest of the passage is as written above.

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