출애굽기 2:12 해설: Rashi, Chizkuni, Siftei Chakhamim & Rav Hirsch

ויפן כה וכה AND HE TURNED THIS WAY AND THAT WAY — he saw what he had done to him in the house and what he had done to him in the field (outside the house. viz., the beating to which he had subjected him) (Exodus Rabbah 1.28). But according to the literal meaning it must be explained in its ordinary sense: he turned this way and that way.

וין את המצרי, “he struck the Egyptian (dead).” He found that he had committed a capital offence according to the seven laws that all of mankind must obey. His offence was that he had raped someone else’s wife, and the Torah had forbidden this when writing in Genesis 2,24: ודבק באשתו, “he is to cleave to his wife,” and not to the wife of another man. (According to Tossaphot, Kidushin 21.) There was no need to warn that Egyptian beforehand in order to make him culpable for the death penalty as we derive from Genesis 20,3: “you are going to die on account of the woman (Sarah whom you have taken captive)”, and Avimelech had not first received warning.

No man was there . . . that would convert. [Rashi offers this Midrashic interpretation] because the verse says “he saw that no איש (man) was there,” rather than “no אדם (person) was there.” Whereas according to the verse’s plain meaning that Moshe was afraid of being seen, there is no difference whether it was a man or a woman. Therefore Rashi explains, “No man. . . that would convert,” since איש implies a tzaddik. Similarly Rashi explains in Parshas Shelach (Bamidbar 13:3) and in Parshas Devarim (Devarim 1:13) that איש implies a tzaddik but it does not exclude women (Maharamash). You might ask that in Parshas Emor (Vayikra 24:10), Rashi says that בתוך בני ישראל (among the B’nei Yisrael) means that the son whom the Egyptian begat from Shlomis had converted. [Thus, he did have a righteous descendant.] The answer is that when Moshe killed the Egyptian, Shlomis had already conceived him. However, Moshe saw that no additional converts were destined to descend from him.

וירא כי אין איש AND HE SAW THAT THERE WAS NO MAN destined to issue from him, who would become an adherent of Israel’s religion (Exodus Rabbah 1:29; cf. Targum Jonathan on Exodus 2:12) .