출애굽기 7:17의 인용 해설

AND MOSES ANSWERED AND SAID: BUT, BEHOLD, THEY WILL NOT BELIEVE ME, NOR HEARKEN UNTO MY VOICE. “At that moment, Moses spoke improperly. The Holy One, blessed be He, had told him, And they shall hearken to thy voice,²⁴⁶Above, 3:18. and he said, But, behold, they will not believe me. Immediately, the Holy One, blessed be He, answered him according to his opinion,²⁴⁷Since it was Moses’ opinion that the people would not believe him, he was therefore in need of certain wonders which he was to do before them to convince them of the truth of his mission. Accordingly, G-d now gave him the wonders he was to do. The implication of the Midrash is thus clear: If Moses had not said that the people would not believe him, there would have been no need for him to do these wonders before them. and gave him signs commensurate with his words.” Thus the language of V’eileh Shemoth Rabbah.²⁴⁸Shemoth Rabbah 3:15.
And Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra said, by way of the plain meaning of Scripture, that G-d related to Moses that the elders will believe him, but He did not mention that the people will believe. Perhaps they may hearken to his voice but would not believe him wholeheartedly. But this does not appear to be correct. Rather, it is possible to say that v’sham’u l’kolecha (and they shall hearken to thy voice) does not constitute a promise but a command: “And they must hearken to your voice” — for it is to their advantage to listen — and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt.²⁴⁶Above, 3:18. A similar case is found in the verse, When the Egyptians shall hear — for Thou broughtest up this people in Thy might from among them — they will say to the inhabitants of this land,²⁴⁹Numbers 14:13-14. meaning it is fitting that the Egyptians should say so. Similarly, the verse, In this thou shalt know that I am the Eternal,²⁵⁰Further, 7:17. means it is fitting that it be so, but not that it so happened. In a similar vein is the verse in this chapter, and they will believe the voice of the latter sign,²⁵¹Verse 8. [which means it is fitting that they believe the latter sign], and many similar cases.
The correct interpretation appears to me to be that the expression v’sham’u l’kolecha means that “they will listen to you to come with you to the king and say to him, The G-d of the Hebrews hath happened to meet us,²⁵²Ibid., 5:3. for what will they lose by it?” Thus G-d informed Moses that the king of Egypt would not give them leave to go, and this was why Moses said, But, behold, they will not believe me, for after seeing that Pharaoh did not give them permission to go, they would no longer believe him at all, for they will say: “The Eternal hath not appeared unto thee. If you were G-d’s messenger, Pharaoh would not have rebelled against His word.” It may be that they will say that “G-d has not appeared to you by the Great Name with the attribute of mercy, to do for us signs and wonders as you have said, for you are not greater than the patriarchs.²⁵³To whom He appeared as E-il Sha-dai. See Ramban above, 3:13, for a full explanation of this matter. This was why Pharaoh did not hearken, for if Pharaoh had believed your words, we would have gone out from Egypt under all circumstances, and it is not our iniquities that have separated between us and the G-d of mercies.”²⁵⁴See Isaiah 59:2.

With the phrase “this is the word.” This is an additional distinction, for “This is the word” implies that it is the word itself, which was clearly heard from Hashem in what is termed a “clear vision.” This was not so for the other prophets, as Hashem spoke to them only in riddles or through dreams, termed as “unclear visions.” But to Moshe He spoke “the word” itself, so that he could tell it to Bnei Yisroel. Likewise, it states (Bamidbar 12:8), “Mouth to mouth I speak to him, in vision and not in riddles.” [One might ask what was meant] when Moshe prophesied with the words “So says Hashem” as it is written in Parshas Va’eira (Shemos 8:26) and in Parshas Bo (Shemos 10:3). The answer is that before he stood on Mount Sinai he would prophesize with “So [says Hashem]” however after the Torah was given he prophesied with “This is the word [of Hashem],” once his face began to emit beams of light.

את הקשואים ואת האבטיחים, “the cucumbers and the melons, etc.” The people spoke in a desultory way of the superior food the Lord had provided, the manna. In order to belittle the manna they compared it unfavorably to such food as is universally considered as inferior such as cucumbers and melons. We know that the land of Egypt produced excellent food, seeing the Torah had described the land of Egypt as “a garden of the Lord” in Genesis 13,10 when describing the fertility of the Jordan valley. In order to emphasize their disdain for the manna the people did not compare it unfavorably with Egypt’s best produce but they compared it to Egypt’s most inferior produce. Moreover, the fact that they mentioned fish was an outright insult against the manna seeing the only kind of fish the Israelites had been given in Egypt were the fish which had already begun to decompose and to stink. They were given only fish which had been caught at least 4 or 5 days previously. This is the reason they spoke about remembering הדגה instead of דגים or הדג, “the fish.” The word הדגה means that these fish were recognizable only as a species not individually. We know that this is an appropriate distinction from Jonah 2,1 where the prophet describes G’d as commanding דג גדול, “a large fish” to swallow Jonah. However, when the Torah refers to the fish in the river Nile at the time the river was turned into blood, the dead fish are described as דגה. The river is described as “stinking with these dead fish.” (Exodus 7,17). When Jonah prayed inside the belly of the fish, that fish is described as דגה, because Jonah describes himself as praying from “Sheol,” i.e. from the grave (Jonah 2,3). If someone sits inside a dead belly he is equivalent to sitting in a grave. If, later on, we read that G’d commanded Jonah to be spewed out and to be swallowed by a second (smaller) fish, this was only because it was not dignified for Jonah to sit inside a dead fish. The second fish was then ordered to spew out Jonah on dry land (Jonah 2,11).
To get back to our main subject: The Israelites expressed their disgust at what was a most valuable gift from G’d. The people were not so much wanting something as expressing their dissatisfaction with what they had. Significantly, throughout this episode the Torah speaks of the people as העם, “the people,” a term describing the lowest common denominator. They are not referred to as either עדה or בני ישראל, which would have pointed at people on a spiritually higher level. Eventually (verse 5) the בני ישראל, the elite of the people, also became infected with this discontent.
The place referred to in verse 34 as קברות התאוה is none other than תבערה which was mentioned in verse 3. The meaning both times is that at the very site where their unjustified desires surfaced they were punished. The “fire” is none other than their “burning desire.” The reason these two paragraphs dealing with תאוה desire, is written adjacent to the story of Miriam making uncalled for comments about Moses and his family life or lack thereof, is because Miriam too made inadmissible comments, just as had the people who had denigrated the manna or who had wanted to stuff themselves on a meat diet. The paragraph reporting Miriam’s inadmissible comments is followed by the one with the spies who also made inadmissible comments about Eretz Yisrael being a country which devours its inhabitants, etc.