Quotation sur L’Exode 3:7

One powerful midrashic reading imagines God as holding the displaced consciousness of an inert people. At the Burning Bush, God introduces Himself to Moses as One who sees His people’s afflictions, who hears their cries and who “knows their pain” (3:7). Here, God comments on His own sharpened sensitivity in relation, specifically, to human pain. Here again, Rashi glosses: “I have paid attention to contemplate and know their pain: I have not hidden My eyes, nor shall I block My ears to their cry.” God, at this juncture, is no longer unconscious of human suffering. He departs from a habitual apathy, from an exiled state. But another midrash goes further: “Dead flesh does not feel the scalpel, but I do know their pain, which they themselves do not feel.”⁴Lekach Tov in Torah Shelemah Shemoth 126.