[Translation: EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.  We are featuring only the new translation to replace the former, the usual commentaries will be added later.—Admin1.]

When we read this narrative, there is so much to remember. If you were one of the Hebrew slaves being given all the detailed instructions on what to do and you had no paper and pencil to note it all down which most likely they did not, what if you missed one little detail?  Would you have missed your chance to be liberated from bondage?

This God named YHWH Who has demonstrated His power over Pharaoh and Egypt is a God of details! 

Surely the instructions for preparation for the ‘night of all nights’ were spread by word of mouth to all—Israelite or not, the curious or disinterested, the skeptic or the desperate—perhaps even some Egyptians who had suffered through the 9 plagues were beginning to be persuaded and shift loyalty to the God of the Hebrews, who knows!  Wouldn’t you if you had witnessed and experienced the plagues?  This was their chance of a lifetime, only the Pharaoh was resistant through the plagues and even he was ready to concede just to get rid of the population causing trouble in what used to be the land of refuge for all Israel during times of famine in Canaan.  And so, the information about preparations for the last night in Egypt must have spread around not only among Hebrew slaves but slaves from other nations, those who eventually joined the exodus of the “mixed multitude” out of the land of bondage. 

The narrative reads simply and is very clear.  If a slave could remember it, so could we.  Since the actual event of the first Pesach, Jews—religious or not— have celebrated at the time prescribed in their biblical calendar.  Messianic congregations among the Christian population are among the few who celebrate Passover instead of “Easter” or “Holy Week” though expectedly, their celebration is infused with symbolism pointing to their Trinitarian Godhead as well as their Passover Lamb, Jesus Christ, the human sacrifice supposedly fulfilling the final atonement sacrifice required on Yom Kippur.  

How the two different feasts are fused in one, only Messianics can explain; we know, we’ve been there and never questioned the fusion, or rather, confusion.  As you read, just remember that the Passover is a spring festival while Yom Kippur is a fall festival; the lamb in Passover is cooked and eaten by a family while the Yom Kippur sacrifice is one of two goats which is slaughtered at the Temple. Passover is a happy occasion celebrating and commemorating the chosen nation’s liberation from bondage, a historical event; Yom Kippur involves self-examination, setting right one’s relationships, with fellowmen and with God, repentance for sin and a turnaround in life-direction. 

What is even more bewildering is how “Easter” or “Holy Week” might have metamorphosed from the Passover.  Messianics explain that the “Last Supper” sometimes called “the Lord’s Supper” is really the Passover Seder that the Jewish Jesus was celebrating with his Jewish apostles, according to the commandment regarding the “Feasts of YHWH” in Leviticus 23.  How the Passover became the Lord’s Supper and then Communion is really perplexing, unless they are not at all connected and the Christian celebrations are not “fulfillment” of OT “prophetic feasts” but traditions that developed from New Testament theology.

So . . . what was the actual historical event like?  TORAH records:

Exodus/Shemoth 11

 Exodus/Shemoth 12

[Translation: EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.  We are in process of changing translations; the usual commentaries we feature will be added later.  For now, only the text/translation is being updated.–Admin1]

In these three chapters, note the following:

• the demonstration of YHWH’s power in bringing upon Egypt calamities one after another;
• the plagues were inflicted only upon the Egyptians, the Hebrews were spared;
• the hardening/strengthening of Pharaoh’s heart by himself and by YHWH, 
• and the repetition like a refrain of the words as YHWH had spoken,  meaning if God has said it will happen, it will happen.
• What is the point of all these? “That you may know that I am YHWH.”
• How important is it for people to know the True God and His Name?

The narrative reads simply and needs no further interpretation.  However, please take note of the following:

• Most casual readers of the “Old” Testament presume that Pharaoh hardened his heart repeatedly during the plagues, so God gave in to him by hardening his heart the 9th time so that the final plague affecting all firstborn would be the turning point in this Pharaoh’s villainous role in the story. As it turns out, from the start God announces He will “harden” (AST: “strengthen”) Pharaoh’s heart and predicts how Pharaoh will not give in.
• Backtrack three chapters and recall the use of the word ‘Elohiym: 8:21-22 are the verses that hint at what the “lamb” is to Egyptians; Pharaoh tells Mosheh to go ahead and sacrifice to their God, but do it “in the land” (Egypt) and Mosheh answers the Egyptians will react in revulsion and will stone the Hebrews if they perform their sacrifice in Egypt.
  • Exodus/Shemoth 4:16 He shall speak for you to the people,
    he, he shall be for you a mouth, and you, you shall be for him a god.
  • That same expression is used in this chapter, this time applied to Pharaoh.   
    Exodus/Shemoth 7:1 YHVH said to Moshe:
    See, I will make you as a god for Pharaoh,
    and Aharon your brother will be your prophet.

 Exodus/Shemoth 7  

Exodus/Shemoth 8

Exodus/Shemoth 10 

[Commentary by S6K.  Translation:  EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses. .—Admin1.]

Image from www.blasphemersbible.com

At the end of this chapter, Mosheh, still the reluctant messenger and still showing no self-confidence, makes yet another excuse to the God Who has been propping him up since their first encounter.  

Exodus/Shemoth 6: 

30 Moshe said before YHVH: 

 If I am of foreskinned lips, 

 how will Pharaoh hearken to me?

Exactly what does “uncircumcised lips” mean?  In our simple thinking,  in general it might mean: who is man to bear any message from God or articulate it in imperfect human language? Pharaoh looks at the messenger of this “YHWH” that Pharaoh does not know, neither is he familiar with the Name, and look at the bearer of dire warnings, a mere Hebrew like all the slaves, never mind that he was adopted by the former Pharaoh’s sister.  Why indeed should Pharaoh listen to the YHWH of Mosheh?  The expression is also reminiscent of Isaiah 6, when Isaiah has a vision: [AST] 

Isaiah’s reaction, as any humbled person given such a vision of THE OTHER, is: 

Woe is me, for I am doomed:  for I am a man of impure lips and I dwell among a people with impure lips, for my eyes have seen the King, HaSHEM, Master of Legions. [JPS] Isaiah/ Yesha’yahuw 6

6:1 In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

6:2 Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

6:3 And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.

6:4 And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

6:5 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

6:6 Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: 6:7 And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

6:8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.

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It is always helpful to seek the Jewish perspective, so here are two discussions:

1.  The medieval French rabbi Rashi explains:

• closed lips: Heb. עִרַל שְׂפָתָיִם, Literally, of “closed” lips. 
• Similarly, every expression of (עָרְלָה) I say, denotes a closure: e.g., “their ear is clogged (עִרֵלָה) ” 
  • (Jer. 6:10), [meaning] clogged to prevent hearing; “
  • of uncircumcised (עַרְלֵי) hearts” (Jer. 9:25), [meaning] clogged to prevent understanding; 
  • “You too drink and become clogged up (וְהֵעָרֵל) ” (Hab. 2:16), [which means] and become clogged up from the intoxication of the cup of the curse; עָרְלַתבָּשָָׂר, the foreskin of the flesh, by which the male membrum is closed up and covered; 
  • “and you shall treat its fruit as forbidden (וְעִרַלְךְתֶּם עָרְלָתוֹ) ” (Lev. 19:23), [i. e.,] make for it a closure and a covering of prohibition, which will create a barrier that will prevent you from eating it. “For three years, it shall be closed up [forbidden] (עִרֵלִים) for you” (Lev. 19:23), [i.e.,] closed up, covered, and separated from eating it. 

2.  This next discussion is from:   [http://www.kolel.org/pages/5762/vaera.html] Va’era (Exodus 6:2-9:35)

OVERVIEW

On first approach, Moses has unsuccessfully confronted Pharaoh. Rather than heed God’s instruction to let the slaves go,  Pharaoh increases their workload and makes their situation even more difficult.  Moses goes back to God, and is reassured that the Israelites will indeed be redeemed.

 The lineage of Moses and Aaron is given, and then they re-approach Pharaoh. When he will not listen, the battle of the plagues begins. However, Pharaoh will not be moved.

After the sixth plague, when Pharaoh still fails to relent, God “hardens” Pharaoh’s heart, and then the final plagues upon Egypt commence.

IN FOCUS

But Moses appealed to the Eternal, saying,

“The Israelites would not listen to me;

how then should Pharaoh heed me,

a man of impeded speech!” (Exodus 6:12)

PSHAT

Complying with God’s orders, Moses approaches the Israelites to tell them of the coming redemption. But, after he speaks to the Israelites as God instructed, they ignore him. The text explains this by saying that they would not listen because their spirits had been crushed by the cruel bondage.

God then instructs Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh and demand that the Israelites be freed. Moses, discouraged by his lack of success with his own people, is not confident that he will have any more success with the King. And so he appeals to God using what would later become a classic form of Talmudic argumentation, applying the outcome from a minor case to a major case (kal va-homer):  if the Israelites would not listen to me, then why should Pharaoh? But Moses takes it one step further, by blaming his speech impediment for his lack of success.   Literally, he refers to himself as being “a man of uncircumcised lips.”  God seems to ignore Moses’ concerns about his bad track record so far, but he does assign Moses’ brother Aaron to serve as his spokesman.

DRASH

This phrase “uncircumcised lips” seems to be a red flag, given the pivotal importance of circumcision in Jewish tradition. What is Moses really concerned about here? 

Rashi explains that the Hebrew ‘aral’ (“uncircumcised”) simply means “obstructed” and gives a variety of examples of its use in other parts of scripture. Therefore ‘orlah (foreskin) is simply an obstruction over the head of the penis, and Moses’ ‘aral s’fatayim – “obstructed lips” – simply refers to the physical deformity of his lips, causing a speech impediment. But “uncircumcised” is also a clear sign of inappropriateness.

When Jacob’s daughter Dinah is defiled by Shechem, who then wants to marry her, her brothers object saying, “we cannot give our sister to a man who is uncircumcised, for that is a disgrace to us” (Genesis 34:14). Moses, then, seems to be implying that he is not only unable, but somehow unfit or impure for this important task, to serve as God’s messenger. But our tradition sees this act of extreme humility to Moses’ credit.  He was not drawing attention to his disability to get out of serving God, but rather to try and explain the behaviour of the Israelites.  

As it states in the commentary Sefat Emet (as quoted in the anthology Itturai Torah),

“The reason they do not listen to me, Moses implied, is not because they do want to hear the voice of God, but because I am of uncircumcised lips.”

But another commentator, (Derashot Ha-Ran, also in Itturai Torah) sees it as all part of God’s plan.  It states that, Moses was gifted with all the qualities necessary for a prophet, so that everyone would realize his divine mission. The only quality he did not possess was fluent speech. This, too, was because of God’s divine plan, so that people should not say the Israelites were following him because he was a demagogue. Indeed, in the case of a real demagogue, people listen to him even when he lies.” In the end, we must assume that it was all part of God’s divine plan, but that humility was one of the many qualities that made Moses such a great leader. Moses was not superhuman. Above all, he was an ordinary man, with normative human weaknesses and defects. Realizing that, we can appreciate even more what an extraordinary leader he must have been.

DAVAR AHER  

“And the Eternal spoke to Moses andAaron and gave them a charge to the Children of Israel…” (Exodus 6:13).

Even though the Children of Israel refused to listen, “for impatience of spirit and cruel bondage“ (Exodus 6:9), the Eternal commanded Moses and Aaron to continue speaking to them. For the words of God must of necessity leave a profound impression; they may not take effect all at once, but eventually they must accomplish their purpose, for holy words can never be lost on a person. (Sefer Emet) Shabbat Shalom, —JDC      

NSB@S6K

[Translation: EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses. The introductory commentary is our own Sinaite discussion of this chapter—we usually allow for straight reading of each chapter without too much interruption from commentaries except our own.  The next post usually follows this ‘straight-read’and that one has verse by verse commentary from 3-4 of our specially selected sources. —-Admin 1.]

The message of the God on Sinai as given to Moshe, then shared with Aharon to be transmitted to Pharaoh is not so clear to us.  We’ve been brainwashed by Hollywood as well as song lyrics: “Let my people go,” meaning—release my people from slavery.  

It appears that is not at all the initial message, instead it is this: allow the Hebrew slaves to “observe a feast to Me” or “celebrate for Me” in the wilderness.  It is simply asking permission to go off to worship the God of the Hebrew slaves, whose Name is YHWH, outside of the land of Egypt.

Now why do they need to get out of Egypt just to do this?  Could they not do it right there in Egypt?  Is Israel’s God a territorial deity, present in the wilderness but not in Egypt? None of the answers to these questions are answered by the text.  

What is answered is Pharaoh’s reaction to the Name:  

Who is YHVH, that I should hearken to his voice to send Israel free?  

Indeed, where does this God with this Name belong in Egypt’s pantheon of gods?

It is ironic that this is the same reaction of  people TO THIS DAY who are not familiar with the Name YHWH.  Writings both Jewish and Christian actually refer to YHWH as the “Jewish God”—really, does God have a nationality? “God of the Jews” or “God of Israel” is appropriate at this time in the biblical narrative, since the God who spoke to Mosheh on Sinai identifies Himself as the same God who spoke to the patriarchs of the Hebrew slaves.  

Because of this request which Pharaoh denies, the making of bricks by the slaves are made more difficult because they are required the same work output but without straw.  There is no rest for slaves, no day of rest, every day is the same. ArtScroll note: 

“The Jewish nation is too large for him (Pharaoh) even to consider a mass exodus for three days.  Therefore, let Moses and Aaron cease making trouble and go back to their own personal chores.”

Those in charge of the Hebrew slaves complain to Moshe and Aharon, and Moshe in turn complains to God.  Moses at this point continues to be the reluctant messenger, a bit disappointing for someone who has had the unique experience of seeing an unconsumed burning bush,  who has been spoken to by the Almighty God Himself, who has been encouraged, and taught, given the words to say, then backed up by his own brother as companion during this mission . . . you would think anyone would instantly transform from coward to brave heart! And yet he doubts that the God who sent him is more powerful than a mere man like the Pharaoh.

NSB@S6K, for SINAI 6000

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Image from pinstake.com

Exodus/Shemoth 5

S6K:  Highlight ours.   Obviously, the Name YHWH, the God named YHWH, was not among the gods in Egypt’s pantheon, nor known among other heathen empires. Please refer to Shemoth 5a post to read an illuminating write-up in Pentateuch & Haftorahs about the spiritual contrast between Israel and Egypt.]

[Translation: EF/Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.   Commentary is mostly Sinaite indicated by S6K ;  additional commentary from P&H/Pentateuch & Haftorah and AST/ArtScroll Tanach. Reformatted for posting.—Admin1.]

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S6K:  Ugly duckling to swan; absent-minded professor to suave debonair lady’s man; skinny awkward teen with two-left feet to premiere ballerina.  Transformation from inferior to superior is the predictable plot of success stories with happy endings. And so it is with the beginning part of the transformation of the reluctant Mosheh.  

He starts with no self-confidence and no eloquence of speech, needing human reinforcement (brother Aharown) and backing from the God of his people’s patriarchs.  He needed a miracle if he was at all going to succeed in this divine mission that he himself did not think he could carry out on his own.  

God accedes, knowing the frailties of His chosen instrument but more so because this was the appointed time for Him to demonstrate to one and all He was the One True God.  It was time for Him to make a mockery of the gods of men’s making (Egypt) and show Pharaoh, Egyptians and their multi-national slaves His power over the forces of nature and Egypt’s non-gods, including Pharaoh who, like other kings and emperors, are perceived to be divine themselves.

The biblical narrative is quite clear, needing no interpretation (reformatted for easier reading).

Image from yhwhleads.wordpress.com

Exodus/Shemoth 4

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S6K:  Read that last line once more: 

and you will be to him as ‘Elohiym. 

Exactly what does that mean?  How could Mosheh be “as ‘Elohiym” to Aharown? Isn’t that word ‘Elohiym one of the proofs Christians use to show that God is a trinity?  Yet Moses is ‘one’ (and obviously not a trinity) who will be to Aaron “as god.”  

The other Hebrew translation AST translates the same verse differently:  

you will be his leader.

Christian translations:

• NASB:  you will be as God to him.
• NIV: as if you were God to him.
• NLT:  you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say.
• ESV:  and you shall be as God to him.
• KJV:  and thou shalt be to him instead of God.

Not to belabor the point, the NLT translation actually best interprets the verse:  

you will stand in the place of God for him, telling him what to say.

The mouthpieces of God, Moses and Israel’s prophets, are as ‘Elohiym to the people of God, and in extension, to those such as ourselves who have come to know and worship the God of Israel.

—————————————————————————-

S6K:  Christian translations use the word “harden” and not “strengthen.”  There is a difference between the two word choices; while “harden” is understandable in the context where Pharaoh is not fazed by the plagues one after another, choosing each time not to give in to the request that he allow the Israelites to worship their God in the wilderness, “strengthen” has more to do with being given boldness to defy God HImself.  Hardening one’s heart is Pharaoh’s choice; strengthening Pharaoh’s heart comes from God? Where then is Pharaoh’s fault in this?  The answer might be in the use of literary device in narratives.  Man’s consistent choice to disobey or defy God’s commands becomes a pattern in his life; if he consistently chooses the same direction (his own), there is a point that God gives in to man’s consistent choice and lets man go his chosen way.  Divine grace, mercy and patience have their limits, at some point justice is allowed to take its natural course.

P&H: This does not mean that God on purpose made Pharaoh sinful.  For God to make it impossible for a man to obey Him, then then punish him for his disobedience, would be both unjust and contrary to the fundamental Jewish belief in Freedom of the Will.

The phrase most often translated ‘hardening of the heart’ occurs 19 times; 10 times it is said that Pharaoh hardened his heart; and 9 times the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is ascribed to God.  There thus seem to be two sides to this hardening.  When the Divine command came to Pharaoh, ‘Set the slaves free,’ and his reply was, ‘I will not,’ each repetition of Pharaoh’s persistent obstinacy made it less likely that he would eventually listen to the word of God.  For such is the law of conscience: every time the voice of conscience is disobeyed, it becomes duller and feebler, and the heart grows harder.  Man cannot remain ‘neutral’ in the presence of Duty or of any direct command of God.  He either obeys the Divine command, and it becomes unto him a blessing; or he defies God, and such command then becomes to him a curse.

‘It is part of the Divinely ordered scheme of things  that if a man deliberately chooses evil, it proceeds to enslave him; it blinds and stupefies him, making for him repentance well-nigh impossible’ (Riehm).   

Thus, every successive refusal on the part of Pharaoh to listen to the message of Moses froze up his better nature more and more, until it seemed as if God had hardened his heart.  But this is only so because Pharaoh had first hardened it himself, and continued doing so.  The Omniscient God knew beforehand whither his obstinacy would lead Pharaoh, and prepared Moses for initial failure by warning him that Pharaoh’s heart would become ‘hardened.’

The modern mind whilst agreeing that all things are ultimately controlled by God’s will does not attribute results to the immediate action of God.  Not so the Biblical idiom.  Events, whether physical or moral, which are the inevitable result of the Divine ordering of the universe, are spoken of as the direct work of God (Dillmann, Driver, Jacob).  

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S6K:  Notice the manner in which God calls His chosen people (plural):  My son, My firstborn, he, him (singular).  This will be repeated in the Isaiah references to Israel as My servant, My suffering servant. Bear this in mind when you read through the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures that the God of Israel fondly calls His people “son” and “servant” in the singular, collectively as one.  

Now this next part is a bit baffling unless we remember that circumcision is the sign of the covenant with Abraham; and that it was kept by both Isaac and Ishmael, and presumably the generations that were born and grew up in Egypt.  Why Moses failed to circumcise his firstborn is reflective of how careless he must have been about this particular inherited commandment; after all he was raised as an Egyptian, though surely he must have been circumcised if he was nursed by his own mother Jocheved.  

If wikipedia is to be believed: “The oldest documentary evidence for circumcision comes from ancient Egypt.”  We’d have to think: who inflluenced whom?  Was the earlier presence of Joseph and the 70 in Egypt a significant influence in the ‘good’ Pharaoh’s court or was circumcision already a practice of Egyptians even before then?  Whichever, how could Moses been amiss, whether as natural Hebrew or adopted Egyptian in applying circumcision to his firstborn?  Perhaps it was not the practice among the Midianites with whom he settled.  At this point, he is made aware of the gravity of his own oversight and responsibility of keeping the covenant of circumcision; his Midianite wife Tsipporah understands and does the procedure herself to save husband and son. At this point in his preparation to be Israel’s greatest prophet and leader, Moses appears to be unimpressive, even clueless!  

[Translation:  Everett Fox, The Five Books of Moses.  Commentary from P&H/Pentateuch& Haftorahs and AST/ArtScroll Tanach.—Admin1.]

• From Pharaoh’s court to the wanderer in the wilderness;
• from bachelor to husband to Zipporah;
• and father to firstborn Gershom (“a stranger there”)
• from prince of Egypt to shepherd for the flocks of father-in-law Jethro who’s a priest of Midian;

—–thus far, this is the movement in the life and roles taken on by the key figure in this book of Exodus/Shemoth during the years he was being prepared for his calling as God’s hand-picked, set-apart, anointed leader-to-be, of a nation already prophesied but yet to be formed.

At this stage, Mosheh had not yet realized he was being primed for the next stage of a life-path he had not chosen for himself; he could have easily settled into the uncomplicated and unstressful life of a shepherd. The desert seems to be ideal for contemplation except the text does not tell us if Mosheh was at all a man who sought God.  Raised in pharaoh’s court, how much of Egypt’s religion impacted his thinking?  Conscious of his Hebrew roots, how much did he know about the God of his ancestors? Was anything handed down those generations of Hebrews born and raised in Egypt?

We’ve studied the call of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; to these patriarchs, the God of Abraham spoke of specific promises and a distant future affecting their progeny.  They died seeing partial promises and prophecies fulfilled in relation to them and the next generation, but the promise of the Land where they moved to, lived in, left, returned to, were buried in—were yet to happen.  Did the generations after them know, remember, forgot? What would Moses himself have known of those promises?

The call of Moses is by far the most unusual, with vivid images, dramatic in fact, for an initial human-divine encounter, and as we will see through this whole book of Shemoth, the Divine Presence becomes not only Mosheh’s personal God but his life Companion to see him through the most significant divine assignment that is uniquely his. 

Exodus/Shemoth 3

Any encounter with an “other” unfamiliar being is unsettling to say the least; surely instant fear is the first impulsive reaction. But Mosheh seems to be given a gradual introduction first through a malak (angelic appearance) within an unnatural phenomenon of an unconsumed burning bush followed by the Divine call.  So . . . is the burning bush a manifestation of God or an attention-caller?  Perhaps both, for later in Scripture, God refers to Himself as a Consuming Fire and appears as a pillar of fire by night among the encamped Israelites.  Fire and Light become familiar theophanies for this God of Israel.  Remember He also manifested as a smoky furnace/smoking fire pot and a torch of fire in the ratification of the covenant with Abraham (Genesis 15:17).

AST comment:  Moses first prophetic vision.  The Torah describes Moses’ vision in three different ways:  a fire, an angel, and finally, as God.  Like someone in a dark room whose eyes cannot tolerate an immediate exposure to blinding sunlight, Moses ha to be exposed to prophecy gradually.  First, he was shown a fire that was strange because it did not consumer the bush.  Then it was revealed to him that an angel was in the fire, and once he had become accustomed to this new phenomenon, he was given the vision of God Himself (R’Bachya).

The preponderant Name of God in this chapter is Elohim, the Name that connotes strict justice, because God was about to judge Egypt for its excessive cruelty.  In the three places where He reveals Himself to Moses (vv. 2, 4, and 7), however, He is called HaSHEM, the Name of mercy, to show that His primary intention is to save Israel in a historic demonstration of Divine mercy.

Q:  If Mosheh was already looking at the curiosity of an unconsumed burning bush, then what else was he afraid to look at?  “upon the ‘Elohiym” — was God manifesting in more than just the burning bush?  He was listening to a voice speaking to him, with nobody else around, one would presume it must be  ‘Elohiym because of what is being communicated. As Mosheh’s first encounter with this so far unfamiliar God,  he begins to learn about the Character of the Speaker —- surely, his faith begins to develop:

Who am I?  Isn’t this a basic question for every individual to determine for himself, what is one doing here at this time in this situation for what and whose purpose? In Mosheh’s case, he is said to be meek and humble (Numbers 12:3).  Skeptics challenge this by saying how can anyone write about himself as being humble; pastors teach that when you think you’re humble, most likely you are not! In the context of the Numbers 12:3 verse, Miriam and Aaron are challenging Moses’ being the only one spoken to by Elohiym, so that warrants putting them in their place.  In this context, it is only right that Mosheh questions his capability to execute a tall order—to begin with, he fled Egypt to save his life, now he’s going back to tell Pharaoh he’s going to take the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt? The question is right, who is Mosheh at this point but a fugitive and a lowly shepherd.

AST Comment:  Obviously the Jews knew the various Names of God, so that the question cannot be understood literally.  Each of God’s Names represents the way in which He reveals Himself through His behavior toward the world.  When He is merciful, He is called HaSHEM [Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei].  When He exercises strict judgment, He is called Elohim, God.  When He exercises His mastery over nature and performs hidden miracles—as He did for the Patriarchs—He is called Shaddai, and so on. Thus Moses was saying that once the Jews accepted him as God’s emissary, they would want to know which of God’s attributes He would manifest in the course of redeeming them from Egypt (Ramban).

P&H Comment:  “I AM THAT I AM” Heb. Ehyeh asher ehyeh — the self-existent and eternal God; a declaration of the unity and spirituality of the  Divine Nature, the exact opposite of all the forms of idolatry, human, animal, and celestial, that prevailed everywhere else.  I am that I am is, however, not merely a philosophical phrase; the emphasis is on the active manifestation of the Divine existence . . . .To the Israelites in bondage, the meaning would be, ‘Although He has not yet displayed His power towards you, He will do so; He is eternal and will certainly redeem you.’
 
Most moderns follow Rashi in rendering ‘I will be what I will be’; i.e. no words can sum up all that He will be to His people, but His everlasting faithfulness and unchanging mercy will more and more manifest themselves in the guidance of Israel.  The answer which Moses receives in these words is thus equivalent to, ‘I shall save in the way that I shall save.’  It is to assure the Israelites of the fact of deliverance, but does not disclose the manner.  It must suffice the Israelites to learn that, “Ehyeh, I WILL BE (with you), hath sent me unto you.’

What more could Mosheh or the children of Israel ask?  YHWH their Deliverer has given specific details of what they can expect from  beginning to end! What group of people, what nation, what religion or church, has ever had this much privilege? Yet, promises are one thing, fulfillment another. 

Here are further notes on this portion of Scripture, from one of our recommended RESOURCES, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible by John J. Collins:

The most celebrated part of this passage is the exchange between Moses and God in 3:13-14.  When Moses asks for God’s name he is told “I am who I am” (Hebrew ehyeh aser ehyeh).  The Greek translators of the Bible rendered this passage as eimi ho on, “I am the one who is.”  Beginning with Philo of Alexandria, around the time of Christ, countless generations of theologians argued that the God revealed to Moses was identical with absolute Being, in the sense in which that term was understood in Greek philosophy.  The Greek translation became the foundation for a theological edifice that assumed that Greek philosophy and biblical revelation could be correlated, and were two ways of getting at the same thing.  Historically, however, it is impossible to find this meaning in the Hebrew text.  Hebrew simply did not have a concept of Being, in the manner of Greek philosophy.  This fact does not invalidate the theological correlation of the Bible with Greek philosophy, but neither does it give it any real support.  No such correlation is envisioned in the Hebrew text.
 
The actual meaning of the Hebrew phrase is enigmatic.  The proper Hebrew name for the God of Israel, Yahweh, can be understood as a form of the verb “to be” —specifically the causative (Hiphil) third person singular imperfect.  It can be translated “he causes to be.”  It has been suggested that this name is a way of referring to a creator God.  The Deity is often called “the LORD of hosts” (YHWH Sabaoth), and it has been suggested that this means “he causes the hosts (of heaven) to be” or “creator of the hosts.”  Whether the name was originally understood as a verbal form, however, is uncertain.  It often appears in Hebrew names in the form yahu or yaho, which would not be so easily parsed.  In Exodus 3, in any case, the association with the verb “to be” is assumed.  The phrase “I am who I am” in effect changes the verbal form to the first person.  The phrase may be taken as a refusal to divulge the divine name, in effect brushing off Moses’ question.  In favor of this suggestion is the fact that Jewish tradition is reluctant to pronounce the divine name.  Rather, it substitutes Adonai, “the Lord.”  But elsewhere in Exodus the name YHWH is used freely, and it is explicitly revealed in the Priestly passage in Exodus 6.  It may be that the passage is only an attempt to put the divine name YHWH, understood as a form of the verb “to be” in the first person.

In any case, Exodus 3 goes on to give a fuller explanation of the identity of the Deity.  He is the God of the ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  The key element, however, is what he promises to do in the future . . . in effect fulfilling the promise to Abraham in Genesis 15.  The Deity is motivated by the suffering of Israel . . . YHWH may already have been worshipped in Midian as a god who appeared in fire on the mountain, but henceforth, he would be worshipped as the God who delivered the Israelites from Egypt.

In the previous article “What if you were a Hebrew slave in Egypt” we speculated if, after 400+ years, the generation of Yaakovites/Israelites who have become slaves to a ‘Pharaoh who did not know Yosef” would know anything at all about their roots and ancestry.  Would if they even care about who they supposedly are, a distinct people with a destiny proclaimed by the God of their forefathers? 

Surely, generation after generation would have recounted the story about Yosef, son of Yaakov, whose misfortune turned into good fortune not only for himself but for his whole family.  Would this generation be wondering why misfortune has come upon them because the Pharaoh they now serve feels insecure about their multiplying population? 

 Exodus/Shemoth 1:15-22

15 Now the king of Egypt said to the midwives of the Hebrews—

BBB, artist: ART EXPLOSION STUDIOS, 744 Alabama St., San Francisco, CA

 Verse 17 seems to indicate that the Hebrew midwives did have knowledge of God enough to fear Him more than Pharaoh, since they disobeyed the command to kill male infants born to the Hebrew women.  Because of their courage,  God rewarded them with households  (vs. 21) .  

Question:  Does this mean that telling a lie is allowed under certain circumstances? Apparently, in this specific instance,  it was not only allowed in order to save human lives, specially Hebrew lives, in fact it was even rewarded! 

There are many stories about Jews who were spared from sure death during the holocaust because people risked their own safety and lives to protect God’s people from Hitler’s Nazi Germany.  The evil of anti-semitism has plagued the people of Israel as early as this preparatory stage, the formation of the yet-to-be-born nation.  

ArtScroll Tanach notes:

“it was the first instance in history of what has become the familiar pattern of anti-Semitism.  The Jews are too dangerous to keep and they are too important to lose.  So Pharaoh proposes a solution.  He will harness the Jews by enslaving them, so that the state will benefit from their talents without fear that they will desert the country.  God thwarted the evil plot.  The more the Jews were tormented, the more their population grew, and infuriated the Egyptians further (Rashi), thus leading to the next stage in persecution.  

Having failed to stem Jewish growth through slavery, Pharaoh devised a more blatant, if secret, form of destruction.  He ordered the Jewish midwives to kill the male babies; then the females would be forced to blend into Egypt.  

According to the Sages, the midwives Shifrah and Puah were Jochebed and Miriam, the mother and sister of Moses.  Pharaoh had another reason for the infanticide.  His astrologers told him that the savior of the Jews was about to be born, so Pharaoh ordered all the boys to be killed.  Indeed, Moses was born during the time this cruel order was in effect.”

Had the midwives obeyed Pharaoh, there would not be a Moses.

So back to the Q: What’s the A?

NSB@S6K

[This Introduction is from Pentateuch & Haftorahs, ed. Dr. J.H. Hertz, a publication of the Soncino Press. Reformatted for post.]

NAME.  The Second Book of Moses was originally called ‘the Book of the Going out of Egypt.’ At an early date, however, it came to be known as ve-eleh shemoth from its opening phrase, ‘ And these are the names’.  Its current designation in Western countries is Exodus—from the Greek term exodos.  ‘The Departure’ (of the children of Israel out of Egypt), a name applied to it in the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of Scripture.

CONTENTS. The Book of Exodus is the natural continuation of Genesis.  Genesis describes the lives of the Fathers of the Hebrew People; Exodus tells the beginning of the People itself.  

• It records Israel’s enslavement in Egypt, It describes the institution of the Passover, 
  • and the deliverance from the House of Bondage.  
• the Covenant at Mount Sinai, 
• and the organization of Public Worship It recounts the murmurings and backslidings of Israel, 
  • that was to make Israel into ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’.  
• as well as the Divine guidance and instruction vouchsafed to it; 
• the apostasy of the Golden Calf, 
• as well as the supreme Revelation that followed it—
• the revelation of the Divine Being 
  • as a ‘God, 
  • merciful and gracious,
  •  long-suffering, 
  • and abundant in goodness 
  • and truth; 
  • keeping mercy unto the thousandth generation, 
  • forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin’
  •  and that will by no means clear the guilty’. 

IMPORTANCE. 

Nearly all the foundations on which Jewish life is built—

• the Ten Commandments, 
• the historic Festivals, 
• the leading principles of civil law—

are contained in the Book of Exodus.  And the importance of this Book is not confined to Israel.  

In its epic account of Israel’s redemption from slavery, mankind learned

• that God is a God of Freedom; 
• that even as in Egypt He espoused the cause of brick-making slaves against the royal tyrant, 
  • Providence ever exalts righteousness and freedom, 
  • and humbles iniquity and oppression.  

And the Ten Commandments,

• spoken at Sinai, 
• form the Magna Charta of religion and morality,
•  linking them for the first time, and for all time, indissoluble union.

DIVISIONS.  The Book may be divided into five parts.  

• The first part (chaps I-XV) relates the story of the Oppression and Redemption.  
• The Second part (chaps. XVI-XIV) describes the journey to Sinai, and embodies the Decalogue and the civil laws and judgments that were to have such a profound influence on human society.  
• Then follow, in chaps. XXV-XXXI, the directions for the building of the Sanctuary.  
• Chaps XXXII-XXXIV detail Israel’s apostasy in connection with the Golden Calf; 
• and chaps. XXXV-XL describe the construction of the Sanctuary, 

—-and thus prepare the way for the Third Book of Moses, the Book of Leviticus.