R. Yehudah ben Lakish offered a poignant interpretation of the verse (Exodus 2:25): "And God saw the children of Israel, and God knew." The verse seems simple enough — God observed Israel's suffering in Egypt and understood their condition. But R. Yehudah ben Lakish read something far more intimate into these words.
"He saw that they had repented" — God, looking down at the enslaved Israelites, perceived something happening in their hearts. They were turning back to Him. After generations of slavery, after being immersed in Egyptian culture and Egyptian idolatry, the people of Israel were quietly, individually, beginning to repent.
But here is the crucial detail: "they did not see this in each other." Each Israelite was repenting privately, secretly, inside their own soul. No one announced it. No one organized it. No one stood up in the slave quarters and declared, "I am returning to the God of Abraham." The repentance was invisible to human eyes. Each person thought they were alone in their turning.
"And God knew" — He knew that they had repented. "But they did not know this about each other." The symmetry is devastating. God could see what no human could see: that the entire nation was undergoing the same transformation simultaneously, without any coordination, without any awareness that their neighbors were doing the same thing. A secret, collective repentance — hidden from everyone except the One who sees all hearts.