parshat Beshalach

We recite it daily during the morning service, We speak of it again after the Shema, It was the supreme miracle of the exodus. But in what sense?

To commit suicide,to capitulate to the to go to war, or simply pray for God's help?

The Torah describes where the nation went right after being sent out of Egypt. They did not take “the path of the Land of the Plishtim” because it was too close (Shemot 13:17). They started in Rameses and Sukkot (ibid. 12:37). They continued in Eitam (ibid. 13:20). Then we find the command which took Bnei Yisrael to the place of Kri’at Yam Suf: “… before Pi Hachirot, between Migdol and the sea, before Ba’al Tzfon” (ibid. 14:2).

Last time we started discussion of the apparent contradiction between the depictions of the exile in Egypt as 400 or 430 years and the indications that it was only 210 years. This condensed piece finishes our discussion. The Rashbam understands the pasuk (Shemot 12:40) as referring to the inhabitance of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt finishing a period of 430 years that began with Brit Bein Habetarim. It did not mean that the whole period had to do with Egypt. The Alshich arrives at a novel explanation based on the fact that the pasuk refers to Mitzrayim and not Eretz Mitzrayim. He says that Mitzrayim does not refer only to Egypt but to all different types of difficulties, based on the etymological associations of the word. The Malbim picked up on the fact the pasuk refers to the exodus of “all the bands of Hashem” and says that since there were heavenly beings that were with Bnei Yisrael in Egypt and since Bnei Yisrael were worked day and night, the time that they needed to stay in Egypt only needed to be, from a calendar perspective, half of the 430 mentioned by the pasuk.

We set off, confident that we know where we are going, only to find that it is rarely that simple.