Commentaire sur L’Exode 1:10

הבה נתחכמה COME ON, LET US DEAL WISELY — Wherever הבה is used it has the meaning of preparing oneself and making oneself ready to do a particular matter; it signifies as much as: get yourself ready for this (cf. Rashi on Genesis 11:4 and Rashi on Genesis 38:16).

COME, LET US DEAL WISELY WITH HIM. Pharaoh and his wise counsellors²⁷See Isaiah 19:11. did not see fit to slay them by the sword, for it would have been a gross treachery to smite without reason a people that had come into the land by command of a former king. The people of the country also would not give the king consent to commit such perfidy since he took counsel with them,²⁸As it says in Verse 9: And he said unto his people… and all the more so since the children of Israel were a numerous and mighty people and would wage a great war against them. Rather, Pharaoh said he would do it wisely so that the Israelites would not feel that it was done in enmity against them.
It is for this reason that he placed a levy upon them, as it was customary that strangers in a country contribute a levy to the king, as it is mentioned in the case of King Solomon.²⁹II Chronicles 2:16-17. Afterwards he secretly commanded the midwives to kill the male children upon the birthstool³⁰Verse 16. so that even the mothers should not know it. Following that, he charged all his people, Every son that is born, ye — yourselves — shall cast into the river.³¹Verse 22. Essentially, Pharaoh did not want to charge his executioners to slay them by the decree of the king or to cast them into the river. Rather, he said to the people that whoever would find a Jewish child should throw him into the river. Should the child’s father complain to the king or to the master of the city, they would tell him to bring witnesses and then they will exact vengeance [for the crime]. Now once the king’s restriction was removed,³²Literally, “And when the king’s strap was untied.” In other words, when the government’s restraint against murder was removed, the Egyptians, etc. Ramban thus traces through the verses the gradual disintegration of the Israelites’ right to life in ancient Egypt. the Egyptians would search the houses, entering them at night, and indifferent [to the cries of the parents], would remove the children therefrom. It is therefore said, And when she could no longer hide him.³³Further, 2:3.
It appears that this [decree to drown the Israelite children] lasted but a short time, for when Aaron was born [three years before Moses],³⁴Ibid., 7:7. the decree was not yet in existence,³⁵This would explain why his mother did not have to seek a way to preserve his life. and when [shortly after] Moses was born, it appears that the decree was revoked. Perhaps it was through Pharaoh’s daughter, who, in her compassion for the child Moses, said to her father that he should not act in that way. It may be that when it became known that this decree was enacted by the king, he revoked it, or again it may be that it was revoked on account of the astrologers, as is the opinion of the Rabbis,³⁶“When Moses was thrown into the waters, the astrologers said to Pharaoh, ‘Their deliverer has already been cast into the waters.’ Immediately, they voided the decree” (Shemoth Rabbah 1:29). See also Rashi to Verse 22 here. since it was all done dexterously by them in order that the crime not be known. This is the meaning of the complaint made to Moses our teacher [by the officers of the children of Israel], Ye have made our savor to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us,³⁷Further, 5:21. meaning, “Now they will increase their hatred of us and find justification for saying that we rebel against the government, and they will then openly slay us by the sword without the necessity of doing it slyly.”

נתחכמה לו, so that they will not increase further. In the event that they would continue to multiply and a war should break out between us and our enemies. The construction here is just as in Judges 5,26 ידה ליתד תשלחנה, “her left hand reached for the tent pin”. The word תשלחנה is in the plural mode although Devorah speaks of Yael using a single hand to do this. In our verse too the word תקראנה is unaccountably in the plural mode.

הבה נתחכמה לו, let us not confront them frontally but let us outflank them.

הבה נתחכמה לו, “come on let us outsmart it!” Neither Pharaoh nor his servants wanted to do violence to the Israelites, as it would have been a major act of betrayal to commit genocide against an innocent nation that had settled in Egypt at the request of the previous king. He was afraid that even if he were to give an order to destroy these people his subjects would not obey that order. Moreover, the descendants of Ephrayim and Menashe possessed considerable influence in the highest governmental circles, and the very number of the Israelites would have made open warfare against them a highly dangerous undertaking. The Israelites would surely resist any attack upon them by violent means. Therefore, he imposed a form of taxation upon that nation, a common practice in those days. When this did not have the desired effect, he resorted to instructing the midwives who assisted the Jewish women at birth, to kill the male babies before the mothers had held them in their arms. This was done clandestinely, so that even the mothers were unaware that they had given birth to a male baby. When this proved impossible to carry out, he issued the decree to drown all male babies. Instead of the government killing the babies, the population was encouraged to drown Jewish babies when found, and if the father would protest he would be invited to prove his allegation in court by producing witnesses to that murder. He would be assured that if the murderer would be found he would be duly punished for what he had done. As the restrictions the king had imposed upon himself were gradually loosened, many of his people would enter Jewish homes at night, misrepresenting themselves, searching for recently born boy babies. They would snatch these babies. This is why the Torah reports that Yocheved, after Moses was three months old, no longer risked hiding him at home. This situation was in effect for a relatively short period, as 3 years earlier, when Aaron had been born, this decree had not yet been in force. It appears to have been cancelled shortly after Moses’ birth, perhaps due to the intervention of the daughter of Pharaoh who had been audacious enough to save Moses’ life. It is also possible that the decree had been inspired by the astrologers who had predicted the birth of a saviour of the Jewish people on a certain day or in a certain month, as mentioned by our sages. This may also have been at the root of the overseers saying to Moses (and Aaron) 80 years later (Exodus 5,21) הבאשתם את ריחנו, “you have made our very scent abhorrent in the eyes of Pharaoh, etc.” They meant that until these “so called saviours” had given the Egyptians an excuse to deal harshly with the Jewish people, they had at least had to use subterfuge when applying discriminatory legislation. Now they felt entitled to repress the Jews with all their might openly.

To the nation [of Israel]. The [singular] word לו (to him) refers to עם (nation), and not to [the plural] Bnei Yisrael.

V. 10. Der Sinn dieses Verses ist dunkel. Stände der Akzent אתנח statt unter לו, unter ירבה, so würde man einfach das ועלה מן הארץ als das herbeizuführende Ziel auffassen können, und es würde heißen: wir wollen es so einschränken, dass es die erste sich darbietende Gelegenheit ergreifen wird, aus dem Lande fortzuziehen, indem es durch Anschluss an unsere Feinde bei ihnen sich Boden und Bürgerrecht erwerbe. Allein der Akzent ist dagegen und lässt das ועלה מן הארץ nicht als das durch die Maßregel zu Erzielende, sondern zu פן וגו׳ gehörig, als Teil des durch die Maßregel zu Verhindernden verstehen. Und da ist es denn sehr schwer zu begreifen, weshalb das Fortziehen der Ibrim so sehr gefürchtet worden wäre. Sie waren ja noch nicht Sklaven. Man müsste denn annehmen, es sei die Gegenwart der Juden im Grunde schon damals dem Staate so wichtig und nützlich gewesen, dass man ihre Verminderung wohl gewünscht, allein ihr gänzliches Fortgehen gefürchtet, vielmehr ihr Dasein in beschränkter Zahl für nützlich und notwendig gehalten habe. Wahrscheinlicher wäre dann das עלה מן הארץ nicht: aus Mizrajim fort, sondern: aus der ihnen angewiesenen entlegenen Provinz Goschen hinauf über das ganze übrige Land, zu verstehen; wozu es aber dann des Mittelfalls des Krieges bedurft haben sollte, ist auch nicht klar. Vielleicht sind es jedoch zwei Befürchtungen. Wer dem andern feind ist, setzt in der Regel seine Gesinnungen bei diesem voraus. Pharao mochte sagen: Die Juden sind unsere Feinde und meinen es nicht ehrlich mit uns. Werden sie zahlreich und es kommt Krieg, so werden sie es mit unseren Feinden halten, und auch ohnehin sich so vermehren, dass Goschen sie nicht mehr alle fassen kann, sie vielmehr mit gewaffneter Hand sich über das ganze Land verbreiten werden. Hat ja das böse Gewissen der Völker auch in späteren Zeiten die Juden verdächtigt, es mit den Landesfeinden, den Mauren, den Türken, den Franzosen, zu halten. Auch תקראנה als Plural zu מלחמה im Singular ist schwierig. מלחמה ist hier wohl nicht Subjekt, sondern Objekt – und תקרינה wie Jes. 41, 22 .את אשר תקראנה

הבה נתחכמה לו, “let us try to outwit it” (the Jewish nation). The numerical value of the letters in the word הבה , is 12. What the king meant was to outsmart the twelve tribes of the Jewish people. According to Rashi, what the king meant was to outsmart the deity of the Jewish people. How did he think to accomplish this? Seeing that G–d had promised never to bring another deluge, and His method is to match the punishment to the crime, he thought that by drowning Jews in water, G–d would not be able to punish him appropriately. (Talmud, tractate Sotah, folio11). Our sages say that the king had three advisors who helped him figure out how to deal with the ever increasing number of Israelites. They were: Bileam, Job, and Yitro. Bileam was killed for having given the advice the king accepted. Job was subjected to severe afflictions. He had not disagreed, but kept silent on the king’s proposal. Yitro who left that meeting and decided to flee, was rewarded by some of his descendants eventually being able to make their home near the Temple. (Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, folio 106, quoting Chronicles I 2,55.) According to the Talmud there, Bileam was only thirty three years old when Pinchas killed him during the punitive campaign against Midian reported in Numbers chapter 31. Our author, not surprisingly, questions the statement in the Talmud, seeing that if Bileam had been an advisor to the Pharaoh of whom the Torah speaks here, as that conversation took place before Moses was born and Moses was 119 years old when the campaign against Midian was fought. This is why Rabbi Menachem interprets the statement that when Bileam said to Balak in Numbers 24,14 before taking his leave: לכה איעצך, “I will now give you an advice,” and the Torah does not spell out what the advice was, but writes only what the Israelites will do to the Moabites in the distant future, that what he told him was that seeing the G–d of the Jewish most detests sexual promiscuity, he should arrange for the men of the Israelites to be seduced. (Compare Sanhedrin folio 106) As to the question raised by Rabbi Moshe that this advice of Bileam has been spelled out in the history of Moses’ life and been attributed there to the sorcerer Bileam, (compare a text quoted by Ibn Ezra on Exodus,2,22 and described by him as unreliable. Ed) Rabbi Menachem, quotes the Talmud tractate Zevachim folio 116 that at the time when G–d was ready to give the Torah to the Jewish people, all the gentile nations assembled around Bileam, fearful that another deluge was in the offing. They based themselves on the overwhelming sounds emanating from Mount Sinai at that time, as described in Exodus 19,16. Even if you were to assume that at that time Bileam was no older than twenty years of age, and that he was killed 40 years later during the campaign against Midian, i.e. when he was 60 years old, he clearly had not yet been born when the Pharaoh in our chapter of the Torah consulted how to stop the expansion of the Israelites in Egypt. There are books in which it is claimed that the gentile nations assembled around a person known as Kemuel, whom they asked about the imminence of another deluge. This interpretation is also not plausible, seeing that Kemuel was the founding father of the nation of Aram (Genesis 22, 21, who was a contemporary of Avraham and would have been over 500 years old at his death. Besides, according to B’reshit Rabbah, near the end of paragraph 57, this Kemuel is identified with Lavan, also identical with Kushan Rishatayim, i.e. Bileam. The reason given why he was also known as Kemuel, is that he rebelled against G–d his Creator. This comment is also listed in Sanhedrin folio 105. Why was Bileam’s father called בעור? This was because he had sexual relations with his she-ass, i.e. בעירו. He was also identical with Lavan, who was also known as כושן רשעתים, having been guilty of two sins, one in the days of Yaakov and one in the era of the Judges. From all this it is clear that he was תפל, someone of no value. This is the meaning of Job 30,11 כי יתרי פתח ויענני, “for the Lord has humbled me.” In the version by the Massoretes, the word יתרי is spelled יתרו, a reference to Moses’ father-in-law who had been present when Pharaoh consulted with his advisers how to deal with what he considered the danger of the multiplying Hebrews. Supposedly, he was the first to respond to Pharaoh’s question. This is difficult, as Job never fled, so how can we interpret the beginning of that verse in Job as applying to Yitro? We may have to answer that at that time Yitro was the most respected personage and he could have protested Pharaoh’s murderous intentions, but instead he was content to simply flee Pharaoh’s presence. This is why in the verse quoted Job accuses him of having failed.

נתחכמה לו LET US DEAL WISELY WITH THEM (לו more lit., with him) — i. e. with the people (the word לו, which is singular, refers to עם used in the preceding verse in the phrase עם בני ישראל): let us consider wisely what to do to them. Our Rabbis, however, explained that the singular לו refers to God, and that the words mean: “let us use our wisdom against Him who would show Himself Israel’s deliverer, by sentencing them to death by water, since He has already sworn that He will not bring another flood upon the world, and He will therefore be unable to punish us ‘measure for measure’, as is His way.”)

AND HE WILL GO UP ‘MIN’ (OUT OF) THE LAND. “I.e., ‘against our will.’ Our Rabbis explained that they spoke like a person who is pronouncing a curse against himself but assigns the curse to others. Thus it is as if Scripture wrote, ‘And we shall have to go up out of the land, and they will possess it.’” These are the words of Rashi. But if the explanation is as the Rabbi has it, [i.e., that the Israelites will go up to wage war against the Egyptians], Scripture would have said, “And he will go up al (against) the land,” [instead of saying min ha’aretz (out of the land)]. Such is the correct expression concerning warriors: Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came up ‘al’ (against) all the fortified cities of Judah, and took them³⁸Ramban here combined two verses: II Kings 24:1 and 18:13.; Rezin the king of Aram… went up to Jerusalem to war ‘aleha’ (against it).³⁹Isaiah 7:1. Perhaps [Rashi will explain it by] saying that the meaning is that “he will come up against us from the land wherein he dwells,” meaning the land of Goshen.
It is possible to explain that Pharaoh is saying that “if wars will occur, the Israelites may join forces with our enemies to take the spoil, and to take the prey.⁴⁰Ibid., 10:6. They will get themselves up out of this land to the land of Canaan with all our belongings, and we will not be able to wreak our vengeance on them nor to war against them.” This is similar to the verses: that brought us up out of the land of Egypt;⁴¹Further, 32:1. that brought up and that led the seed of the house of Israel out of the north country, and from all the countries whither I had driven them.⁴²Jeremiah 23:8. Similarly, the verse, And they shall appoint themselves one head, and shall go up out of the land,⁴³Hosea 2:2. means they shall appoint over themselves a captain and they shall go up to their land out of the country in which they had been exiled.

כי תקראנה, as if the Torah had written כי תארענה, “if it were to happen.”

ועלה מן הארץ, of their own volition, without our having to expel them. If we do not have adequate reason to expel them we would become pariahs among our neighbours. If we were to do that, פן ירבה והיה כי תקראנה מלחמה, so that no additional problems would beset us, such as a war (compare Samuel II 13,39 ותכל דוד המלך, the king pined away), These words should be understood as a parenthesis.

ועלה מן הארץ, “and go up from the land.” Rashi views this simile as similar to people who are superstitious enough not to mention possible disaster in the same breath as themselves, so what the Egyptians were really afraid of was not the emigration of the Jews, but their own expulsion from Egypt by the Israelites. It is also possible to explain these words at face value, i.e. that they were afraid that the Israelites would emigrate to the land of Canaan, taking with them all the chattels of the Egyptians.

Let us wisely determine what to do to him. [Rashi adds the words מה לעשות (what to do) in order] to say that the Egyptians did not try to be wiser than the nation. Rather, to deal wisely with the nation. For if the Egyptians tried to be wiser than the nation, it should have said נתחכם עליו (become wise “over” him), so why does it actually say לו (“with” him)? Therefore Rashi explains: “[To wisely determine] what to do to him.” (Maharshal)

והיה כי תקראנה מלחמה, “it will be when war will break out, etc.” the word תקראנה refers to an unforeseen and unplanned event. One example in the Bible is Leviticus 10,19 when Aaron refers to the sudden death of two of his sons as such an event. The fact that the plural mode is used here is nothing exceptional, as we also find it again with this word in Numbers 10,9 when the use of the trumpets as a means of giving the alarm is discussed, i.e.וכי תבואו מלחמה, instead of וכי תבא מלחמה, “when war will come.”An alternate exegesis: the Torah here abbreviates instead of writing: כי תקראנה קורות מלחמה, “when warlike events will occur.” We find another verse with such grammatically unusual construction in Proverbs 15,22: וברב יועצים תקום, “when there are numerous counselors they will prevail.” The Hebrew word for “they will prevail is in the singular mode instead of in the plural mode as we would expect. When Bileam refuses to retract the blessings he gave to the Jewish people in Numbers 23,21 we also find such a grammatically puzzling construction. We have to imagine that the wording is: וברך ברכה לא אשיבנה, “a blessing once pronounced I cannot retract.”.

ועלה מן הארץ AND HE WILL GO UP OUT OF THE LAND, against our will. Our Rabbis explained that they spoke like a person who is pronouncing a curse against himself but attaches the curse to others (because he does not wish to use an ominous expression of himself), so that it is as though Scripture wrote “and we shall have to go up out of the land” and they will take possession of it (Sotah 11a).

ונלחם בנו ועלה מן הארץ, in order to return to the land of their ancestors. It would be disastrous for us to lose this source of cheap manpower. If that were to happen my kingdom would be an emaciated kingdom. [Pharaoh speaking of his loss of “face,” if he would allow the Jews to escape although they were also a great source of frustration. Ed.]

ונוסף גם הוא על שונאינו, at such a time they may display their hatred of us seeing that they have remained culturally incompatible with us both in practicing circumcision of their males, language, and in such practices as the way they eat meat only after the blood has been removed, etc. (compare Genesis 43,32). Let us therefore induce them to leave our country before it comes to this. In order to achieve this end,

Let us deal shrewdly with the Savior of Yisrael (God). According to this view, the word לו (with Him) is referring to Hashem [and not to the nation of Yisrael]. This explains the term רב ועצום (great and strong), and why the entire passage is written in the singular form. (Nachalas Yaakov)

ונוסף גם הוא על שונאנו, “and that in such an event, it (the Israelite nation), would make common cause with our enemies.” The word: שונאנו, literally meaning: “our enemies,” in reality refers to the Egyptians themselves. It is a figure of speech avoiding mentioning oneself in connection with a curse, as doing so is considered a bad omen. Another matter, joining our enemies will result in their leaving Egypt notwithstanding our need to keep them here.

By bringing about their fate through water. If so, why did Pharaoh immediately order the midwives to kill any son that was born? [This act was not through water.] The answer is that this wise strategy was without the knowledge of the Egyptians. Rather, Pharaoh himself ordered the midwives [to kill the sons], and he did not fear Divine retribution because the midwives, not he, would actually carry it out.

For He has already sworn that He will never again bring a flood upon the world. Hashem exacts justice only in a manner of measure-for-measure.