Netvort Parshas Bo 5770: A Well Respected Man About Town

By Rabbi Joshua (respectably known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

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With thanks to the Almighty for sustaining me, and a prayer that He continues to do so, this week's message completes twelve years of Netvort. Thanks to the readers for their corrections, comments and suggestions, and a special thank you to all those who helped with Netvort during my two recent stays in the hospital (September and October), including my long-time gabbai/editor, who corrected and sent out the two issues that were written during that period of time.

After the end of the plague of darkness and before God's instructions concerning the warning to Pharaoh about the final plague, the Torah tells us of the high esteem in which Moshe was held by various segments of people in Egypt: "The man Moshe was very great in the land of Egypt, in the eyes of the servants of Pharaoh and in the eyes of the people."  (Shemos11:3) The commentators discuss whether the second group motioned here, 'the nation,' refers to the Jewish nation or the Egyptian nation, and why the servants of Pharaoh are mentioned before the nation.

The Ramban mentions both possibilities in regard to the identification of the nation referred to here. The problem with identifying the nation as the Egyptians is that if Moshe found favor with Pharaoh's servants, who dealt with him directly and had more reason to dislike him, he was certainly held in esteem by the Egyptian people at large, who didn't have direct contact with him, but only knew that he had been going to Pharaoh to announce the plagues. Why then was it necessary to mention them separately?  Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk explains that the emphasis here is on the word 'ish' – man - used in describing Moshe. In the phrase, 'the man Moshe' The word 'man' points to the character traits of Moshe - his humility, courage, and the like. The servants of Pharaoh were in a better position to observe these traits, so they are mentioned first, followed by the people of Egypt, who only saw from afar the results of Moshe's mission. I would like to offer a somewhat different explanation of the usage of the term ‘ish’ here in describing Moshe and explain the next term as referring to the Jewish nation, following the second explanation of the Ramban.

We mentioned in our message to parshas Shemos that the term ‘ish’ in Scripture sometimes refers to the angel Gavriel. This is especially true in regard to the use of this term in the saga of the struggle between Yosef and his brothers and the exile of the Jews in Egypt which it generated.  The angel Gavriel shows up at certain key points in order to move the events along to their proper conclusion so that God's plan for His people will come to fruition. We also noted that the meaning of the name Gavriel is 'gevuros Keil,' or 'the strength of God,' which refers to the trait of gevurah, meaning, not God's physical strength, but His perseverance in bringing about His plan for His people. By extension when referring to an angel, gevurah refers to the perseverance and single-mindedness of the angel to carry out his mission as directed by God. With this explanation of the term ‘ish’, we can better understand our verse here in regard to Moshe.

Moshe, as we noted in our message to parshas Shemos, followed the lead of his parents, and especially his father Amram, who is referred to there as 'ish,' in emulating the angel Gavriel by devoting his efforts in a single-minded fashion to fulfill his mission as God's agent in bringing about the redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt. Both Amram and Yocheved disregarded the dangers involved in remarrying and giving birth to a child at a time when Pharaoh decreed that all male children be cast into the Nile.  They did so in an effort to fulfill the prophecy of their daughter Miriam, that the child born of their union would lead the Jewish nation to its redemption. Because of this, we explained, their names are not mentioned at that point of the narrative, because they acted selflessly and single mindedly in trying to help bring about God's plan for the nation just as the angel Gavriel always acted. Moshe, following his parents' example, carried out his mission of going to Pharaoh and warning him of the plagues that would be brought upon Egypt despite the dangers involved in doing so. In this way, he, too, was similar to the angel Gavriel, and that is why he is referred to as ‘ish’ in our verse. The Torah is telling us, then, that the servants of Pharaoh held Moshe in high esteem because they knew how a servant is supposed to act in service of his king, and they saw Moshe acting in that way in respect to the King of Kings.

When the Torah then tells us that the nation also held Moshe in high esteem we can explain it to be referring to the Jewish nation, who saw that Pharaoh's servants respected Moshe and understood that they saw the significance of the level of his service to the God he worshipped. The importance of this reaction of the nation can be understood on the basis of the Mishnah's requirement, in fulfilling the mitzvah of retelling the story of the redemption from Egypt on Pesach night, to do it in a way that begins with recounting the degraded state of the nation and ends with recounting its elevated state.  Rav Abraham Yitzchak Kook explained that this is because the degraded state generated the elevated state. According to one opinion in the Talmud, the degraded state of the nation refers to the fact that they were slaves in Egypt. The experience of slavery in this context prepared the people to become servants of God albeit with all the differences between being a slave to an evil tyrant such as Pharaoh and a servant of the merciful God that are involved in that transfer of service. Thus, our verse is telling us that the servants of Pharaoh respected Moshe for his service of God, and the people took due notice of this respect and incorporated it in their absorption of the process of slavery, which they would use in their later role, after redemption and their acceptance of the Torah, as servants of God.


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