Komentarz do Wyjścia 12:33

כלנו מתים WE ARE ALL DEAD MEN — They said, Not according to Moses’ decree is this what has happened for he said (10:5) “And every firstborn shall die”, and here all the ordinary people are dead, five or ten in one house (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 12:33).

ותחזק מצרים על העם, “Egypt imposed itself strongly on the people, etc.” After they had been struck by ten plagues they were forced to dismiss them against their will. Not only that, but the Israelites also took all the Egyptians’ money. This is the meaning of verse 36: “they emptied out Egypt.” This has been confirmed by Midrash Mishley (27,2). When Solomon speaks (Proverbs 27,17) about “as iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the wit of his friend,” the words “iron sharpens iron” refer to Moses the righteous and Pharaoh the wicked respectively. They were opposing each other with words. When Moses entered Pharaoh’s palace, Pharaoh asked him: “who has sent you?” Moses answered: “the G’d of the Hebrews has sent me to you.” Pharaoh countered: “what did he tell you to say?” Moses: “let go of My people so that they will serve Me.” Pharaoh: “Is there then a deity in the world whom I did not know? By all that’s holy, all the deities in the world have sent me letters but your God has not sent me any letter at all.” Seeing that he did not find the name of the G’d of the Hebrews recorded anywhere, he continued: “did I not tell you that I do not know of such a god?” He then sent for his wise men and asked them if they had ever heard the name of a god of the Hebrews. His sages answered that they had indeed heard that once there was a such a god descended from primeval wise kings as referred to in Isaiah 19,11: “utter fools are the nobles of Tzoan, the sages of Pharaoh have made absurd predictions.” Thereupon Pharaoh said to his wise men: “you are the fools. You call yourselves wise and me the son of the wise! I will dispose of your so-called wisdom.” Pharaoh based himself on Isaiah 29,14 “and the wisdom of its wise men shall fail.” Moses countered: “you claim that you do not know the god of the Hebrews. In the end you will get to know Him. You said that you will not dismiss the Israelites. In the end you will most certainly dismiss them against your will instead of willingly.” Let me illustrate what happened by means of a parable. The present situation is comparable to a king who had said to his servant; “go and bring me a certain fish from the market.” The servant went and brought back a smelly fish. Thereupon the king decreed a choice of either of three penalties on this negligent servant. 1) He suggested that the servant himself eat that fish. 2) If he did not like this he could be whipped with a hundred lashes. 3) As a third alternative he was willing to accept 100 silver pieces as payment of a financial fine. The servant started to eat the fish. Before he had finished eating it (forcing himself) he said that he would rather submit to 100 lashes of the whip. By the time he had absorbed 50 lashes he volunteered to pay the fine instead of being whipped some more. This is precisely what G’d did to the Egyptians. They absorbed the plagues, then they did let the Israelites go, and on top of it all they paid the financial penalty when the Israelites took their money. What caused them to suffer all these degradations? Their obstinacy in refusing to acknowledge the existence of G’d. Pharaoh’s obstinacy was countered by Moses’ obstinacy. This is what Solomon had in mind when he spoke of iron sharpening iron.

(Exodus 12:33) "And Egypt bore down upon the people": We are hereby apprised that they hurried them to leave in a panic. "for they said: We are all dying": They said: It is not as Moses said (11:5) "and every first-born in the land of Egypt will die." They had thought that if one had four or five sons only the first-born among them would die — not realizing that their wives were profligate and that they could have borne the first-born of different men. They (their wives) wrought in secret, and the Holy One Blessed be He exposed them! Now does this not follow a fortiori, viz.: If in His lesser measure, that of punishment, one who acts in secret is exposed, how much more so will this hold for His greater measure, that of good, (that secret acts of goodness will be blazoned forth)!

כלנו מתים, “we are all about to die;” the word מתים here has to be understood as an activity, i.e. as if the Torah had written: כלנו הולכים ומתים, “we are all progressively dying.” The Egyptians remembered that Moses had warned that if the Israelites could not perform their rituals, their G-d would punish them with the sword and with pestilence (5,3) They reasoned that the G-d of the Hebrews would not only punish the Hebrews who had failed to honour Him (not through a fault of their own) but that He would certainly punish the ones who had prevented them from serving Him. When an Israelite would say to an Egyptian that he should wait until he would give back to him any valuable object that he had “borrowed,” he would tell him not to bother but to keep it. By doing so he hoped that his life would be spared.