The students of a great teacher reported that he expounded a striking principle using the words of the prophet Jeremiah: "Therefore, behold, days are coming, says the Lord, when it will no more be said: 'As the Lord lives, who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt'" (Jeremiah 23:7). This prophecy envisions a future redemption so spectacular that it will eclipse even the memory of the Exodus.
To explain this, the Mekhilta offers a parable. A man desperately wanted children. First, he had a daughter. Overjoyed, he began making all his vows upon her life — "by the life of my daughter" became his oath of choice, his way of invoking what mattered most to him. Then a son was born. From that moment forward, he stopped vowing by his daughter and began vowing by his son instead.
The parable maps onto Jewish history. The Exodus from Egypt was God's "firstborn" act of national salvation — the event by which Israel swore, the defining memory of divine power. For generations, the Exodus was the ultimate reference point: "As the Lord lives, who brought us out of Egypt."
But Jeremiah prophesied that a future redemption would arrive that would be so overwhelming, so complete, that it would displace the Exodus from the center of Jewish memory. Just as the father shifted his deepest oath from daughter to son — not because the daughter lost value, but because something even more precious arrived — so Israel would one day shift its foundational memory from the Exodus to a redemption still greater.