Shemos 5774:  Going Home... Honestly

By Rabbi Joshua (honestly known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

 

            One of the questions that has bothered the commentators on this week’s Torah reading is Moshe’s request from Pharaoh to let the slaves go into wilderness and serve God there for three days. The implication is, that after three days in the wilderness, they would return to Egypt and resume their work, while, in fact, they never returned. Rather, He told Moshe to tell the people that He would bring them into the Holy Land. How could God, whose stamp is truth, engage in such seeming dishonesty?

            Many answers have been given to the question. Among them is that of the Netziv, who says that, in fact, if one looks closely at the language used, there was no direct dishonesty uttered. He also refers to Rabbeinu Bachya, who says that in fact, God wanted to give them some mitzvos at an early stage in the process of redemption, as we find He actually did at Morah and this explains the request that they be allowed to serve God in the wilderness.  Rav Yaakov Kaminetsky, in his Emes L’Ya’akov, explains more elaborately, that God’s original plan was for the slaves to undergo suffering for a full four hundred years. However, after two hundred nine years they reached such a low level of spirituality that they would not be able to endure if they fell any further. Therefore, God wanted Moshe to take them, for a short time, into the wilderness, and teach them the fundamentals of the faith, and then return to Egypt, to complete the four hundred years of enslavement and suffering. It was only because Pharaoh did not agree to this request that the plan changed, and the four hundred years were changed to two hundred ten through various technical considerations, such as the incorporating the harshness of the enslavement into the calculation. Rav Yitzchok D. Frankel, in his Machat Shel Yad, says that Moshe was told to request a furlough for the people in the wilderness to show that it was not economic considerations that led Pharaoh to refuse any respite for the people, because three days away from work would not entail such a great loss, and Pharaoh refused that request, thus demonstrating that his harsh treatment of the slaves was not motivated by economic concerns, but, rather by an intense hatred of them, so that the punishment he brought upon Egypt was richly deserved. Still, there does not seem to be any indication, in Moshe’s request to Pharaoh that the ultimate goal was for them to leave permanently, while this is what the Israelites themselves were told. I believe, however, that a comment by Rabbeinu Bachya helps us find an allusion to this ultimate goal that was given to Pharaoh, as well. 

            Rabbeinu Bachya says that in the message that God tells Moshe and the elders to deliver to Pharaoh, God refers to Himself as “God of the Ivrim,” rather than God of Yisroel, which is the usual term used. What does this rarely used term imply? The medieval commentary, Daas Zekeinim miBa’alei Tosafos, says that the terms alludes to Avraham the Ivri, who stood on one side in his faith, while the rest of the world stood on the other side. So, too, the slaves in Egypt maintained their distinctiveness by maintaining their names, their language and their clothing, and in this merit deserved redemption. Rabbeinu Bachya, however, says that the term Ivrim as used here refers to a different aspect of Avraham, that he came from beyond the river, and the slaves, as Avraham’s descendants, also came from a land other than Egypt. 

            The midrash (Devarim Rabbah 2:8) tells us that the reason that Moshe was not buried in Eretz Yisroel, while Yosef was, is that Moshe did not acknowledge his connection to the land, while Yosef did. When the daughters of Yisro told their father that an Egyptian man rescued them he did not protest, while after Potiphar’s wife referred to Yosef as an Ivri, Yosef, while in prison, said that he had been kidnapped from the land of the Ivrim, thus acknowledging his connection to the land. When God referred to Himself as the God of the Ivrim, then He was saying that the slaves being oppressed by Pharaoh came from another land. 

            God told Moshe to gather the elders of Yisroel and tell them that God appeared to him and said “I have surely remembered you (pakod pakadti eschem) and what is done to you in Egypt… I shall bring you to the land of the Canaanite… and they shall heed your voice” (Shemos 3:16-17). Rashi explains that the words “pakod pakadti” were a sign of redemption, as given over from Yaakov to Yosef and to the elders. In what way did these words indicate redemption?  Rav Moshe Wernick, zt”l, in his Leiv Moshe, explains that when these words are spoken to a person or a nation, they are being told to remember their past, and to return to their origins.  God, using these words in reference to redemption, is saying that He will bring the people back to Him, the God of their forefathers, and to Eretz Yisroel, the land of their forefathers.  Redemption, then, means returning to one’s original place, as the Maharal teaches, and as is apparent from the use of the term in regard to the return of the land to its original owners in the laws of Yovel. The term “God of the Ivrim,” as well, is a reference to the land of origin of the Jewish people, and, so, when Moshe made his request to Pharaoh in the name of the God of the Ivrim, he was indicating that the ultimate place of this people is Eretz Yisroel, and, thus, there was no dishonesty involved in the request.