Komentarz do Wyjścia 1:9

ויאמר אל עמו הנה עם בני ישראל, He said to his people: "here we have the nation of the children of Israel, etc." The expression הנה in this verse may be understood once we remember the interpretation of Genesis 34,30 where Jacob censured his sons saying עכרתם אותי, "you have made my image clouded" (as opposed to clearly transparent). Bereshit Rabbah 80,12 states that Jacob and the Canaanites had a long standing tradition that the Jews would overpower the Canaanites. This was supposed to take place after the Jews numbered at least 600.000. Now that Shimon and Levi had jumped the gun by destroying the inhabitants of Shechem, Jacob was afraid that such a premature action would backfire. Pharaoh, king of Egypt referred to this ancient prediction that the Jewish people would display such military strength, when he observed how the Jews constantly gained in numbers and vigour. הנה, i.e. the time has arrived of which the prophecy foretold.

V. 9. הנה עם בני ישראל: die Söhne Israels sind ein ganzes Volk geworden!

ויאמר אל עמו, “he said to his people: he initiated this new policy. Our sages in tractate Sotah foliol 1, state that there were three advisors of this king who were discussing how to preempt a saviour of the Israelites who would take them out of their land.[We must remember that a “people” who had come to Egypt only about 100 years previously, numbering only twelve families, and who had meanwhile multiplied and not only not assimilated, but had come to be viewed as an existentialist threat to the original Egyptians, were known to have a powerful G-d, and the Egyptians had made a point to know the source of this people’s strength. They had studied the traditions of that “people.” Ed.] The most radical advisor of Pharaoh among the three advisors, Yitro, Job and Bileam, was the latter who advised Pharaoh to commit genocide. Some of you my readers may wonder how Bileam, could have been alive still in the days of Balak when he had already been a senior advisor of Pharaoh, before Moses had been born even? This question is especially relevant in light of the tradition according to which Bileam was thirty three years old? He was still alive when the people killed him in the war against Midian in the 40th year in the desert, at which time Moses was almost 120 years old! According to the Talmud in Sanhedrin folio 106, when a heretic asked a Rabbi how old Bileam was when he was killed he was told that he was 33 or 34 years old, based on the fact that the wicked supposedly do not even reach the halfway mark of a normal lifespan of 70 years. The Rabbi who had given this answer had not been accurate, as he had based himself on the statement by Mar de brey de Ravino to his son, a scholar in the immediate post Talmudic period, according to which although we are asked to report historic events accurately, Bileam is an exception, as if one can find a way to make him look worse even than he was, we have full latitude to do so. There is an opinion according to which the Bileam who was an advisor to Pharaoh was not the same as the one we encounter in the Book of Numbers. The one mentioned here was the grandfather of the one who blessed the Jewish people in Numbers. There is also an opinion according to which there were three men who hatched the plot to seduce the Israelites to engage in sexual relations with the daughters of Moav, but that this had nothing to do with what is reported here.

הבה נתחכמה לו פן ירבה, "let us outsmart them before they become more numerous, etc." If we do not put a stop to their population explosion they will do exactly what the prophecy had forecast, namely ועלה מן הארץ, "they will move back to the land of Canaan and destroy our Canaanite brothers." Egypt's first decree against such a possibility had been a ban on Jews leaving the country.

רב ועצום ממנו kann nicht wohl heißen: zahlreicher und mächtiger als wir. Mizrajim war sicherlich mächtiger und zahlreicher als das in Goschen wohnende Israel. Es müsste denn sein, der fremde Dynast habe auch seinen fremden Volksstamm mit ins Land gebracht, die Ägypter seien bereits unterworfen gewesen, und zu seinem, dem mit eingedrungenem Volke, nicht zu Mizrajim, habe er gesprochen: die Mizrer haben wir nicht zu fürchten, die sind bereits unterworfen; aber in dieser fernen Provinz wächst uns ein Stamm heran, der uns zu stark wird, den wir nicht so leicht besiegen können. Wahrscheinlich aber ist das ממנו hier wie das לך מעמנו כי עצמת ממנו מאד zu Isaak (Bereschit 26, 16) zu verstehen, das doch auch nur heißt: du bist uns viel zu mächtig, wir können es nicht mit ansehen, dass du, ein einzelner, mächtig bist, weit mächtiger als irgend ein einzelner unter uns. Ebenso hier: Ägypten war ja in Kasten geteilt, bestand aus verschiedenen "עמים", und nun konnte er wohl sagen, seht das Judenvolk, das noch dazu so zusammenhält wie ein נפש, es wird zu mächtig, es gibt keine einzige Kaste unter uns, die so zahlreich, die eine solche Fülle unverbrauchter Kraft hat wie diese.

The word הנה may also be understood as follows: הנה עם, "this here nation," i.e. they are a people different from any other. Every other nation is an amalgamation of a number of different peoples. Not so the Jewish people. They are monolithic, like a single block. When Pharaoh added the words רב ועצום, he explained that the strength of the Jewish nation lay in its singlemindedness and unity of purpose. Because of this they represented a danger totally disproportionate to their actual numbers. Most military commanders are familiar with the phenomenon of a small, elite, but highly motivated force.

Bemerken wir im allgemeinen: 1) Auch dieses allererste רשעות ist durch nichts veranlasst, was die Juden etwa verbrochen hätten; Pharao konnte nichts gegen sie vorbringen, sonst hätte es nicht der חכמה gegen sie bedurft, man hätte offen gegen sie vorgehen können. Ferner: 2) das allererste רשעות ging nicht vom Volke, sondern von oben aus. Erst von oben herab war der Neid angeregt, war ein Mittel der Politik, die der neue Dynast zur Befestigung seiner eigenen Gewalt gebrauchte. Es gibt wenig Neues unter der Sonne, und die geschichtlichen Erscheinungen im großen sind so alt wie die Geschichte. So oft man von oben herab ein Volk drücken wollte, gab man ihm gern ein anderes Volk preis, das es drücken konnte, um sich für den eigenen Druck schadlos zu halten. Dieser Politik verdanken viele Judengesetze ihren Ursprung. Eine gleiche Rücksicht mochte den ersten Schöpfer des allerersten Judengesetzes geleitet haben. Er wollte das von ihm gewaltsam unterdrückte ägyptische Volk dadurch entschädigen, dass er ihm eine Pariaskaste schuf, auf welche alle anderen Kasten in stolzem Selbstgefühl hinabschauen und sich als freier träumen konnten. Dass er übrigens den Juden nichts weiter als ihre große Vermehrung vorwerfen konnte und zur Rechtfertigung der beabsichtigten Härte seine Zuflucht zu Motiven aus der höheren Staatsraison nehmen mußte, ist ein glänzendes Zeichen für das sozial sittliche Verhalten der Juden. Wohl lehrt uns Jecheskel (Kap. 20. 8), dass unsere Väter Gott gegenüber nicht die abrahamitische Treue in aller Reinheit bewahrt, vielmehr ägyptischem Unwesen in Geist und Sitte bei sich Eingang gewährt, und, woran das jüdische Geistesauge kein Gefallen haben (שקוצי עיני) und was das jüdische Herz als seiner unwürdig, als Auswurf, von sich weisen sollte (גלולי מצרים) bei sich hatten heimisch werden lassen; und wenn uns auch hier von beidem nichts erwähnt wird, so lässt doch schon das völlige Schweigen von einer positiven Gesamtäußerung des jüdischen Geistes, wie wir dies bei den Vätern im קרא בשם ד׳, im ויבן שם מזבח, gefunden, und das nicht sowohl eine Propaganda nach außen, als vielmehr eine Erhaltung der jüdischen Bekenntnistreue in Mitte einer so gegensätzlichen Bevölkerung gewesen wäre — auf ein Sinken des abrahamitischen Geistes schließen; allein sozial muss nicht das Geringste gegen sie vorgelegen haben. Hätte Pharao von bornherein das Volk gegen die Juden auf seiner Seite gehabt, es wäre überflüssig gewesen, künstlich ihren Neid und so fernliegende Befürchtungen zu erregen, und er hätte, statt mit einem "Galut" voranzugehen, sofort und kürzer einen "Gerusch" statuieren mögen.

There is another aspect of the words רב ועצום. They are רב, i.e. they multiply at an unnatural rate; ועצום, although it is well known that multiple births usually result in the children being below average weight, physique, etc., in the case of the Jewish people this was not so. Not only did they multiply at a phenomenal rate, but they were all physically healthy specimens. In fact each individual Jew, though in most instances the product of a multiple birth, was ועצום ממנו, physically stronger than any of us Egyptians. As a result, the only way to counter their physical predominance was to outsmart them. The word ממנו would then refer only to the word עצום, and not to the word רב.

Yet another way of understanding the sequence רב ועצום ממנו, is that the king stated that the fact that the Jews had developed as they did was by taking something that should have belonged to the Egyptians, ממנו, "from us." He wanted to forestall any argument by his countrymen who would protest the injustice of suddenly declaring part of their citizenry as inferior, as slaves. To that end he told his people that the Jews were actually owned by the Egyptians who had fed them during the years of famine and enabled them to not only survive but to thrive. Only 70 Jews immigrated. If they now were a numerous and strong people they owed it all to the Egyptians. It was quite in order for the Egyptians to legislate measures that would ensure their own supremacy. The way to do that was to outsmart them.

It is customary for the kings and leaders of highly developed countries to point with pride to the intelligentsia of their nation which alone is responsible for the prominence and the high regard in which their country is held. Wherever Jews were exiled, the host country developed out of all proportion due to the Jewish contribution to their host country (compare Lamentations 1,5) "its oppressors developed into being the head." In the case of Egypt, the elite were the Jews. Allowing the elite to depart was equivalent to what is called a "brain drain" in contemporary society. Pharaoh told his countrymen that unless they took measures to prevent such a brain drain, i.e. forbid the Jews to leave, they would eventually also lose their position in the world as a leading civilisation. The reason the Jews might decide to leave Egypt was that they admired brainpower not military power. If Egypt were to be involved in warfare, the Jews might prefer to migrate elsewhere.