Commento su Esodo 14:27

לפנות בקר AT THE TURNING OF THE MORNING at the time when the morning turns to come).

לאיתנו, the waves returning into the trough created by the waters having been split.

לאיתנו, to its original position. Shemot Rabbah 21,6 understands this expression as לתנאי הראשון, to its original condition or contract which was made between the waters and G'd at the time G'd said in Genesis 1,9 that the waters should gather to one place. Why does the Midrash describe this as the "first condition," when the first condition of the waters was its state of being divided, not possessing molecular adhesion. The directive that the waters should congregate i.e. adhere to each other was the "second condition!" Perhaps what is meant by our verse is that after the waters had returned to their original state they realised that Moses had not destroyed their cohesion but that he had now allowed them to again resume their previous cohesion. It is possible that although the waters knew about the agreement made at the time with G'd, they had not imagined that when the time came to honour this agreement that the result would be so radical i.e. that they would literally form walls of stone (frozen water). When things went back to normal the waters realised that what had transpired was only part of the original agreement, and that G'd had not added new conditions. We must try and understand this agreement in depth, seeing that according to the Midrash the waters first refused to part at Moses' request, claiming that inasmuch as they had been created before man they did not have to take orders from a human being. G'd had to incline His right hand together with the right hand of Moses (Isaiah 63,12 "who made His glorious arm march at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them, etc."). Another problem with the verse is that we know that selected individuals did experience that the waters were split on their behalf; an example is the sainted Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair (Chulin 7). If G'd's contract with the waters at the time had been restricted to the sea splitting for the Jews at the time of the Exodus, by what power did Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair accomplish such a miracle?

ומצרים נסים לקראתו, when they were turning around the wheels of their chariots in order to escape, the waves of the Sea hit them before they had completed their turnaround completely so that at that point it appeared as if they were fleeing in the direction of the onrushing sea. ובני ישראל הלכו ביבשה בתוך הים, all this while the Israelites had already completed crossing the sea while its bed was completely dry.

ויט משה את ידו על הים, “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea.” Nachmanides writes that it had been G’d’s will to split the sea by means of a strong easterly wind which would create the impression that the wind’s heat had dried out the sea. The result would be to deceive the Egyptians into thinking that they were facing a natural rather than a supernatural phenomenon, i.e. that the wind had dried out the sea. Rabbi Joseph Kimchi writes that these two verses appear to contradict one another, seeing that one verse makes it appear that the splitting of the sea was G’d’s doing, whereas the other verse makes it appear as if it had been a natural phenomenon. One can reconcile these two verses by positing that initially Moses split the sea by means of a miracle when he stretched out his staff, whereas the hot easterly wind blowing, dried out the bottom of the sea to make it passable. If that natural phenomenon, i.e. the wind, had not aided in the matter, the Israelites would likely have drowned in the bottom of the sea, as it was too muddy after so short a period to have dried out sufficiently. The correct interpretation of the verse therefore is as follows: “G’d made a powerful easterly wind blow across the sea all night long in order to dry out the mud at the bottom of the sea, seeing that the waters themselves had already been split by Moses.”

(Exodus 14:27) "And Moses stretched forth his hand upon the sea, and the sea returned towards morning to eithano. "eithano" signifies "His strength" as in (Numbers 24:21) "Eithan is your dwelling." R. Nathan says: "Eithan" signifies "hardness," as in (Jeremiah 5:15) "Behold, I am bringing against you a nation from afar, house of Israel, says the L rd, a nation that is eithan, an enduring nation." "And Egypt fled towards it": to apprise you that wherever Egypt fled, the sea pursued it. An analogy: A dove, fleeing a hawk, enters a king's palace, whereupon the king opens the eastern window for her, whence she escapes. The hawk, following, the king closes all the windows and begins shooting arrows at it. Similarly, when the last of the Israelites ascended from the sea, the first of the Egyptians entered it, whereupon the ministering angels began shooting arrows at them, and hailstones, fire, and sulphur, as it is written (Ezekiel 38:22) "And I will punish him (Gog) with pestilence and with blood, and with torrential rain, and hailstones, fire, and sulphur will I rain upon him and upon his wings, and upon the many peoples that are with him." "And the L rd shook out Egypt": as one shakes out a pot, its bottom ascending, and its top, descending. Variantly: "Vayenaer the L rd, Egypt, etc.": The L rd "invigorated" Egypt in order to (be able to) receive the punishment. Variantly: "Vayenaer the L rd, Egypt, etc.": He delivered them into the hands of "young," cruel angels, viz. (Mishlei 17:11) "And a cruel messenger will be sent against him," and (Iyyov 36:14) "Their souls will expire by youth" ("noar").

V. 27. איתן ,לאיתנו von אתן (mit verlängertem נח, wie קיטור von קטר) Wurzel von אתון, das Lasttier, und verwandt mit אדן, der Säulenfuß, bezeichnet einen festen, unveränderten, aus der Urzeit angewiesenen Grund. Gegen seine Natur war das Wasser auf Wasser festgetürmt. Jetzt kehrte es zu seinem natürlichen Stande auf Meeresgrund zurück. — וינער. In dem folgenden "Gesang am Meere" wird der Flutentod der Ägypter wiederholt wie das Versinken von Stein und Blei in Wasser geschildert, ein Bild, das, dem Anscheine nach, dem hier erzählten Vorgange nicht entspräche. Die Ägypter stürzten ja nicht von oben herab ins Meer. Sie befanden sich vielmehr auf Meeresgrund und die Fluten stürzten von oben herab auf sie hin. Das Wort וינער dürfte aber die Lösung bieten. נער heißt wesentlich abschütteln, ausschütten, überhaupt: leer machen. Wie bereits bemerkt, war der größte Teil des Heereszugs zu Wagen. Die Wagen wurden durch das Wasser gehoben und umgestürzt, so dass ihre Insassen ins Wasser geschüttet wurden und ohne auch nur den Versuch zu machen, sich schwimmend zu retten, vor Schrecken starr, wie Stein und Blei in die Tiefe sanken.

לפנות בקר לאיתנו, “when the morning had approached to becoming noon;” (B‘chor shor)

לאיתנו means TO ITS ORIGINAL STRENGTH (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 14:27).

ומצרים נסים לקראתו, since the morning watch of the day the hand of G’d had been actively deployed against them to confuse them. That is when they first articulated the decision to flee. (verse 28) They kept fleeing along the trough created by the splitting of the waters until morning. At that time the waters began to reverse themselves meeting the Egyptians who were now near the wrong end of this trough, head on.

We must perceive the condition or contract implied in the word איתנו, as an overriding condition applying to the work of creation as a whole, namely that all creatures, be they inert or alive submit to the requirements of the Torah and the people who are its carriers. In fact the authority of the Torah scholars in this respect equals that of the Creator Himself. This is the reason that individuals such a Joshua could order the moon and the sun to suspend their motion in the sky, etc. The statement we just made is the mystical dimension of Isaiah 43,1: "Jacob your creator, Israel who has formed you;" In commenting on this verse in Vayikra Rabbah 36,4 our sages claim that G'd asked the universe a rhetorical question: "who has created you, who has fashioned you if not Israel, and all this by means of the power contained in Torah." I have dealt with this also in my commentary on the word בראשית at the beginning of the Torah.

נסים לקראתו, “fleeing toward it;” at the beginning the waters of the sea had frozen; when the Egyptians saw that the solidity of the water offered them a chance for escape they tried to use it as a route of escape seeing that climbing to the shore was too strenuous. When the waters started to melt, they realised that they had been fleeing in the direction of where the waves came from.

נסים לקראתו FLED TOWARDS IT — because they were thrown into confusion and were bewildered and on that account ran towards it.

וינער ה' את מצרים, G’d tossed Egypt, King and all from all the chariots to the bottom of the sea. The verb נער occurs in the same sense as here in Nechemyah 5,13 חצני נערתי, “I shook out my garment.” We also find this term used in this sense in Isaiah 52,2: התנערי מעפר, “arise and shake off the dust!”

At the time of the Exodus the Israelites had not yet received the Torah therefore the decree that Torah scholars could dictate to the forces of nature did not apply as yet. This is why the sea's consent was needed for it to split at the behest of Moses, and the sea was able to argue that Moses had no authority seeing he (man) had been created only on the sixth day of creation and was therefore junior to it which had been created on the third day. The sea simply hinted that Moses could not claim to order it around by reason of his mastery of the Torah. If he had truly possessed mastery of Torah which had been created prior to the universe, he himself could have claimed to be senior to the sea. G'd therefore had to resort to a stratagem by extending His own right hand alongside that of Moses' right hand. This was a sophisticated way of telling the sea that Moses did indeed possess mastery of the Torah and therefore was entitled to order the sea about. The significance of the right hand in this respect is anchored in the Torah itself in Deut. 33,2: "from His right hand He flashed lightning at them." As soon as the sea noticed G'd's right hand, it split without further ado. Henceforth every צדיק who lived after the Israelites had received the Torah at Mount Sinai could present "a copy" of the agreement G'd had made with His creation to submit to instructions issued by those who represented mastery of Torah. Such people possessed not only the power to effect changes in the laws of nature, but they could inflict penalties on nature if it chose to disobey them.

'וינער ה AND THE LORD OVERTHREW (or, shook out or emptied out) — as a person empties out a pot, turning what is on top underneath and what is underneath on top: thus they were emptied out of their chariots and they rose and fell till at last they were broken to pieces in the sea, and the Holy One, blessed be He, put vitality (strength) in them so that they could bear the pain (and thus their agony was protracted) (cf. Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 14:27).

ומצרים נסים לקראתו, “and the Egyptians were fleeing towards it.” We would have expected the Torah to write that the Egyptians were fleeing מפניו, “on its account,” or “from it.” However, the meaning of the words is that they were fleeing on account of the sea in order to escape it. The water kept coming at them in spite of their attempts to run away from it. This is what the Torah means when it wrote: ”G’d poured the Egyptians into the sea.” Our sages understood this verse as “He poured them into the sea as one pours meat into a pot.”

ומצרים נסים לקראתו, while the Egyptians were fleeing towards it. Although the Egyptians were fleeing from the onrushing waters, they found that the sea was coming towards its original place. As a result they found themselves fleeing towards the waters regardless of which direction they were headed for. We find something similar in Bamidbar Rabbah 18 and Sanhedrin 110 describing the descent of Korach and his supporters into the bowels of the earth. The "mouth" of the earth is described as following the direction where any one of Korach or his companions happened to be standing.

וינער — Onkelos renders this by ושניק which is an expression for confounding in Aramaic, and there are many examples of it in the Agadic expositions.

וינער ה׳ את מצרים בתוך הים, G'd hurled Egypt into the sea. This statement is necessary seeing there are expert swimmers who are often able to stay above the waves even during a storm. The Torah says that G'd hurled such expert swimmers into the sea so that they too had no chance to survive. According to Shemot Rabbah 21 the reference to מצרים as distinct from מצריים, the Egyptians, means that G'd hurled the guardian angel of Egypt into the sea by pouring strong rain upon him.