Commento su Esodo 19:2

ויסעו מרפידים AND THEY JOURNEYED FROM REPHIDIM — What does Scripture teach us by again expressly stating from where they set forth on the journey, for is it not already written (Exodus 17:1) that they had encamped at Rephidim and it is therefore evident that they set forth from there?! But Scripture repeats it in order to make a comparison with the character of their journey from Rephidim to that of their arrival in the wilderness of Sinai! How was it in the case of their arrival in the wilderness of Sinai? They were in a state of penitence (as shown by the unanimity with which they encamped before the mountain: cf. Rashi on the end of this verse)! Thus, too, their setting forth from Rephidim was in a state of repentance for the sin they had committed there (see Exodus 17:2) (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 19:2:1).

(1) They traveled from Rephidim and they came to the Sinai wilderness, and they camped in the wilderness. And Israel camped there opposite the mountain. Look at how many repetitions are written here. What would be missing in the [meaning of the] text if it would have just said, "They traveled from Rephidim and they encamped in the Sinai wilderness opposite the mountain"? Any why does it first say "they camped" [in plural] and then afterward "he camped" [in singular]? First it says, "in the Sinai wilderness," and then it just says, "in the wilderness." And first it refers to the mountain using the name Sinai, and after it just calls it a mountain. And it seems that all of this is proving to us that Bnei Yisrael are not worthy of receiving the Torah until there is peace among them. "The owners of collections that are all stemming from one shepherd." (Ecclesiastes 12:11 - see pshat and parshanut there) All of the paths of Torah are paths of peace. And the result of separation of hearts, where one forbids something and another permits it, is that the Torah becomes 2 Torahs. That is why the [previous] pasuk specifies that that it was in the third month on this day that they came to the Sinai wilderness. It is teaching that this month [of Sivan], which has the astrological sign of twins, is instructing us about attachment and love, that together [the Jews] should be perfect[ly connected] to each other like twins. And then there will be great peace among those who love Torah. And there is also a hint to this in the fact that there are 2 luchot which are like twins to each other, with 5 commandments [on one] parallel to 5 [on the other].

ויסעו מרפידים ויבאו מדבר סיני. The departure from Refidim was for the express purpose of getting to the desert of Sinai where the mountain of G’d (Chorev) was located. The people knew that once they would arrive there they would worship the Lord there (Exodus 3,12).

ויסעו מרפידים ויבאו מדבר סיני, They journeyed from Refidim and arrived in the desert of Sinai, etc. The position of the verse is peculiar. We have already heard in verse one that the Israelites arrived in the desert of Sinai. Why did the Torah repeat it again? Perhaps we can explain this in terms of a statement in Sanhedrin 105 that "love has a tendency to disregard normal rules." As a result of love, what took place later may be reported earlier. Inasmuch as the day the Israelites accepted the Torah was the day that G'd had been waiting for ever since He created the universe, it is understandable that the Torah reported the arrival of this day at the earliest possible moment. This explains the emphasis of the Torah on ביום הזה באו, "on this day they arrived." The arrival describes the meeting of the lover and his beloved. Heaven and earth both rejoiced that this day had arrived at last.

נגד ההר, the same mountain that had been mentioned in Exodus 3,12 as the one where the Israelites would worship.

ויסעו מרפידים ויבואו מדבר סיני, “they journeyed from Refidim, and they arrived at the desert of Sinai.” According to the Torah’s syntax which we have grown accustomed to, the Torah should have written: “they journeyed from Refidim and they encamped at the desert of Sinai.” The reason why the Torah chose to write ויבואו instead of ויחנו, is to convey to the reader that as soon as the people saw Mount Sinai they were so happy that they decided to encamp forthwith instead of scouting around for what they considered a suitable area for putting up their camp. This is why the Torah adds the words ויחנו במדבר, ”they made camp in the desert, normally not an appropriate site for making camp.

Just as their arrival at Sinai was of repentance. . . For it is written, ויחן שם ישראל . [Since ויחן is in the singular form], it implies: “As one person.”

ויסעו מרפידים, “they journeyed on from Refidim, etc.” according to Rashi, these words mean that the people moved forward spiritually, i.e. that they had repented their conduct once they moved on. All the time they were at Refidim they had not yet repented. [The reader is referred to chapter 18,79 where upon questioning whether the Lord was in their midst, and the subsequent attack by Amalek when they encamped at Refidim as Hjs way of showing them what would happen if He were not in their midst. Ed.] Rabbi Yoshua in the Talmud Sanhedrin, folio 106, understood the word Refidim as an allusion to the people’s having become very weak in their Torah orientation, as a result of which G-d had showed them that His protection of them would weaken accordingly.

ויחן שם ישראל AND THERE ISRAEL ENCAMPED as one man and with one mind — but all their other encampments were made in a murmuring spirit and in a spirit of dissension (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 19:2:10).

(2) Afterwards, it says "they journeyed from Rephidim," which means to say, "from the place in which they fought and had disagreements" since the place was called "Masah uMerivah" [which means "Test and Fighting"], and the letters of רפידי׳׳ם spell פרידי׳׳ם, [which means "separate"]...because of the distance that existed between them.  Our Sages (in the Talmud Sanhedrin 106a) expounded the name to connote רפו ידים "their hands weakened," since one is dependent on the other, since through growing distant from one another, they weakened their grip in the Torah.  When it says that they travelled Rephidim, it means from that place — from that separation between them and they arrived at the Sinai desert, which caused them to join together in unity.  [How so?] Desiring honor and power is the reason for all fighting and all illness.  Through seeing Mount Sinai, the lowliest of all the mountains — and realizing that this was the mountain that the Holy One Blessed Be He desired to rest [His Presence] on — through this they realized that God chooses the humble, and inspired them to choose humility themselves, which is the catalyst for peace.  This is why the Torah relates to them in the plural initially, "they came to the Sinai desert," "they encamped in the desert."  As long as they were [aimlessly] in the desert they remained divided in their minds.  They were not yet of one heart and mind like a single person.  However, as they came to be opposite the mountain, and it was related to them that on this mountain God would descend, then [it switches to the singular] ויחן ישראל — they were like one person with a single heart and mind...

ויחן שם ישראל נגד ההר, “Israel encamped there facing the Mountain.” The people are here referred to as “Israel,” (in the singular mode) instead of as plain “the people,” to tell us that when the riffraff and the fellow travelers, the ערב רב, had chosen to locate some short distance away, the elite, the main body of Israelites, chose to encamp facing the Mountain. [we need to remember that until the building of the Tabernacle, the signal for breaking camp and making camp was not the overhead cloud of G’d’s glory that the Torah describes in Numbers Ed.] It is possible that not the entire people positioned their tents facing the Mountain but only the elders and most distinguished members of the people. This may be the reason why the Torah wrote ויחן, singular mode, instead of ויחנו, in the plural mode. Nachmanides questions what Rashi wrote as the reason for the Torah having written ויסעו מרפידים, i.e. we needed to know from where the Israelites arrived at the desert of Sinai. He draws our attention to the fact that the Torah normally reports the Israelites’ departure from a certain location prior to reporting their arrival at a new location; so what is so special here? (compare: the pattern of ויסעו מ...ויחנו ב... in dozens of examples in Numbers chapter 33) In answering his query, Nachmanides suggests that what Rashi had in mind was, that seeing that all the other journeys mentioned here have been repeated in the list in Numbers 33, something new occurred at each location, whereas both here and in Massey this journey is described with identical words, without any change in nuance even, Rashi felt impelled make the comment he did, i.e. that just as the people were in a mood of penitence when they departed from Refidim, they were still in that mood when they arrived at the desert of Sinai.

Wherever you find “opposite” it means facing to the east. Rashi is not saying that נגד always means eastward, for it is written (Bamidbar 2:2), “They shall encamp around the Tent of Meeting, from a distance (מנגד) .” There it does not mean toward the east, [for they encamped on all sides]. Rather, Rashi means that wherever נגד refers to an opposite side, [it is toward the east]. This is because נגד conveys facing something, [i.e., they are “faceto-face.”] And east is called פנים , “face.” [See Iyov 23:8]. (Re”m)

Since the Torah repeated the arrival of the Israelites in the desert of Sinai, what does the word ויבאו add to our understanding? Why did the Torah have to add that they camped there? What else were they supposed to do there?

ויחנו במדבר, “they encamped in the desert;” the desert is noman’s land, open to all and sundry to make their home there without being legally challenged.

נגד ההר BEFORE THE MOUNTAIN — i. e. at its east side (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 19:2:10), for wherever you find the word נגד referring to a locality it signifies with the face towards the east of the place mentioned.

I believe the Torah wanted to acquaint us with three steps which were essential in the preparation to receive the Torah. G'd became willing to entrust the Torah to the Jewish people as an eternal inheritance after they had taken these three steps..

נגד ההר, “facing the Mountain.” (Mount Sinai, also known as Mount Chorev). According to Rashi, the reason for the Torah adding this detail is that it tells us that the Israelites faced East. It is noteworthy that Rashi does not say; במזרחו, “on its eastern side,” but: למזרחו, “facing its eastern side.” Had he written במזרחו, this would have meant that the people had already passed the Mountain. We would have wondered how it was possible that the people had passed the Mountain before receiving the Torah, something G-d had told Moses they would do in Exodus 3,12, in answer to his query why the time for redemption had been advanced so many years over what G-d had said to Avraham at the covenant between the pieces in Genesis chapter 15. We must therefore understand Rashi here as meaning “the people encamped facing theMountain, looking eastward, as they had been doing every time they had made camp, every time since they made camp for the first time at Eytam after they had previously converged together at a place named Sukkot, (Exodus 13,20) They continued facing east when encamping until they came to the steppes of Moav, prior to crossing the Jordan river in a westerly direction. (Compare Rashi on Numbers 34,3) This is what prompted Rashi, based on the Mechilta, that the word נגד when used by the Torah in connection with the Israelites’ journeys always means “eastward.” The only exception is when the people are described in Numbers 2,2, as encamping מנגד סביב לאהל מועד, where it means “opposite,” i.e. the Tabernacle was in the middle of the camp, the tribes camping around it, each group from a different direction.

The first step was for the Israelites to get a grip on themselves and to study the Torah diligently. Laziness is like a weed which leads one to forfeit whatever achievements in Torah insights one has acquired. You will observe that whenever G'd mentions the Torah He is careful to use such attributes as חוזק, strength, intensity as well as אמץ, fortitude and vigour. Numbers 19,14 אדם כי ימות באהל is one such example. Our sages in Shabbat 83 explain that Torah study must be such that a person is prepared to endure death in order to acquire its insights. He is to study Torah even when at the point of death. The author refers to a book he wrote in his youth called Chefetz Hashem where he commented on Shabbat 88. The Talmud there describes Torah as the elixir of life to those who treat it as if it were on their right side, whereas to those who treat Torah as if it were on their left side it will prove to be a fatal dose of poison. He explained that Rava (the author of that statement) meant that Torah proves an elixir of life only to those who invest all their vigour in studying it. In our verse, the Torah alludes to this by saying that the Israelites "moved away from Refidim." If the Torah had wanted us to know from which location the Israelites journeyed towards the desert of Sinai, this would have had to be stated at the beginning of verse one. The Torah meant that the Israelites put some spiritual distance between their neglect of Torah as demonstrated at a place called Refidim, and their renewed progress towards receiving the Torah. We have explained in 17,8 that the reason Amalek attacked the Israelites was because they had demonstrated neglect of Torah study. In the meantime they had begun to prepare themselves to become worthy of the Torah they were about to receive. This is what the Torah meant with the words ויבאו מדבר סיני.

The second step which the Israelites had to take in preparation for מתן תורה was to be modest and humble. Our sages say that only people who are humble can be certain that they will not forget their Torah knowledge. They phrase it thus: אין דברי תורה מתקימין אלא במי שמשפיל עצמו ומשים עצמו כמדבר "Words of Torah do not endure except with people who humble themselves to be like the desert."

(the third thing is) the teaching of the wise coming together with each other, and connecting with a full and whole friendship (heart). Not to be separated from each other, as for that the Talmud teaches us based on the words of Jeremiah, that it's like a sword on those who are [studying] alone. But, we need to come together, grow from each other [from the differences], and treat each other nicely. That is why the Torah uses a singular word, because all the Israelites became like one person - and now they were ready to receive to Torah. (free translation by Abby Stein)