Chasidut zu Schemot 4:31

When it is said in the Gemara (Avoda Zara, 10b), “Antoninus said to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi, I know that even the smallest among the Jews can revive the dead,” he meant that for men of perfect faith, such miracles are no burden before God. But for a miracle to be shown to the general public, like the story about Rava praying for rain in Ta’anit 24b, including those who have not fixed perfect faith in their hearts and who look at nature as running according to its own order, then miraculous governance is indeed a burden before God.³⁷⁶For G-d must change the natural order, which He originally put into place in order to grant human beings free will. Thus, it is forbidden to pray for a change in nature, as this requires a revelation of supernal governance which is above man’s intellectual grasp. On this, the Zohar of the miracle that happened in Egypt³⁷⁷The Zohar here specifically discusses the splitting of the Red Sea. (Terumah, 170b): “It was difficult for God.” Why was it difficult? Because the miracle in Egypt happened before both believers and nonbelievers alike. It was good for the believers and bad for the nonbelievers, as was explained in the introduction to the subject of miracles. There was a revelation of the level of God’s governance beyond man’s intellectual grasp. Pharaoh did not know of the connection between God and Israel, from which Divine salvation can be aroused, as it exists beyond the grasp of the mortal mind. This is mentioned above, in chapter 12 (Zohar Beshalach 52b), “Pharaoh didn’t see that there was another connection, the connection of faith, which rules over all.” The Zohar calls this kind of connection, “the connection of faith,” because the main kind of connection between Israel and God is through emunah (faith) which reaches beyond the grasp of the human mind. Emunah is the inner aspect, even though it is not dressed in a garment. In the merit of emunah, Israel is worthy of receiving God’s salvation, even though they have no clear good deeds on record. The clear statement of this is written in the Torah where it says (Shemot, 4:32), “And the people believed and they heard.”³⁷⁸This is a foreshadowing of the famous statement of the Jewish people before the giving of the Torah (Shemot 24:7), “We will do, and we will hear (understand)”; meaning to say, the children of Israel had so much faith in God that they accepted the laws of the Torah even before understanding their meaning.

While the Israelites were in Egypt they had not ‎attained more than the first virtue (attribute) i.e. ‎אמונה‎, ‎‎“faith,” as the Torah testifies in Exodus 4,31‎ויאמן העם‎, ‎‎“The people possessed faith.”‎
We have already explained that the feet (legs) ‎symbolize faith and that is why at the Exodus, (12,37) ‎the Torah describes the Jewish people leaving Egypt by ‎referring to them as ‎כשש מאות אלף רגלי‎, “approximately ‎‎600,000 pairs of feet.” The other virtues that the ‎Israelites did not yet possess at the time of the Exodus, ‎they would acquire at the “foot” of Mount Sinai, seven ‎weeks later, at the time when G’d gave them the Torah. ‎This progress of the Israelites’ spiritual development is ‎hinted at in the details with which the Torah describes ‎the Passover offering. The sequence of the words: ‎ראשו ‏על כרעיו ועל קרבו‎, suggests that at that time the virtues ‎other than faith, ‎כרעיו‎, were still as hidden as are the ‎entrails. When we keep this in mind, we can ‎understand a statement in the Talmud ‎‎Menachot 65, where the verse ‎וספרתם לכם ממחרת ‏השבת‎, ”you shall count for yourselves starting from the ‎day after the Sabbath,” is understood to refer to the ‎day after the first day of the Passover festival. This ‎contradicts the interpretation of the Sadducees who ‎understood the word ‎השבת‎ in that verse as referring ‎literally to the first Sabbath day during that festival.

Rabbi Yitzchok in Bereshit Rabbah 56,2 comments on ‎this as follows: “the only reason that Avraham was able to keep ‎his promise to the lads that he would return from Mount Moriah ‎‎(alive), is that he prostrated himself there before the Lord, ‎‎[something beyond what the Lord had asked of him when He ‎commanded him to offer his son Yitzchok as a burnt offering.” ‎Ed.] This is why hundreds of years later his descendants were ‎redeemed from Egypt, as G’d explained to Moses in Exodus 3,12 ‎and as the Israelites did in Exodus 4,31. This ‎השתחויה‎, ‎‎“prostration before the Lord,” symbolized that the person doing ‎so abandoned any claim that he might have had to the material ‎benefits that life on earth offers. This is also what enables G’d to ‎‎“sweeten” i.e. remove the sting, of any judgments man is ‎subjected to by the attribute of Justice. Avraham’s example of ‎reducing himself to ‎אין‎ or ‎אפס‎, “nothing,” paved the way for his ‎descendants to emulate him and to be redeemed from the yoke of ‎the Egyptians who had effectively reduced them to a similar state ‎of having to negate the attractions this world offered to others.‎
The Torah itself was only given to the Jewish people because ‎they voluntarily repeated this ‎השתחויה‎, prostrating themselves ‎before the Lord, as we know from Exodus 24,1 where all the elite ‎of the Jewish people are reported as having prostrated themselves ‎some distance away from Mount Sinai. [That chapter, though ‎written after the revelation, describes events that occurred before ‎the revelation, Ed.] The elite negating their claims on the material ‎benefits this world has to offer, made it possible for coming so ‎close to G’d during the revelation that He addressed them as if He ‎were speaking to an equal. In psalms 99,9 when Moses (the ‎author of this psalm) says: ‎רוממו ה' אלוקינו והשתחוו להר קדשו‎, ‎‎“Exalt the Lord our G’d and prostrate yourselves at the Mountain ‎of His holiness;” similar verses are found in Isaiah 27,13, and ‎Samuel I 1,19 where the wording is almost identical. Rabbi ‎Yitzchok concludes by saying that the resurrection when it will ‎occur, does so only in recognition of these voluntary prostrations ‎of the Jewish people on various occasions when they ‎demonstrated their absolute submission to G’d and His will. If we ‎needed proof of this we find in in Isaiah 27,13 where we read ‎והיה ‏ביום ההוא יתקע בשופר גדול ובאו האובדים בארץ אשור והנדכים בארץ ‏מצרים והשתחוו לה' בהר הקודש בירושלים‎, “it will be on that Day, ‎when a great ram’s horn will be sounded, and the strayed who are ‎in the land of Assyria, and the expelled who are in the land of ‎Egypt, shall come and prostrate themselves on the holy Mountain ‎in Jerusalem.”