Komentarz do Wyjścia 3:1

אחר המדבר [HE LED THE SHEEP] BEHIND THE DESERT — in order to keep them away from private property (גֶזֵל i. e. things which can be appropriated only as the result of “robbery”) — that they should not graze in other people’s fields (Exodus Rabbah 2:3).

MOSES, TENDING THE FLOCK ETC. The Holy One, blessed be He, appeared to him and commanded him to return to Egypt, and Moshe did not want to do so, because he was afraid until the Holy One, blessed be He, told him, "all the men who sought to kill you are dead" -- this is Par'oh, who had died. That is why it says (Exod. 2:23), "the king of Egypt died," to testify to what the Holy One, blessed be He, said, that "all the men ... are dead." This is similar to (Gen. 9:18) "Ham being the father of Canaan."

ויבא אל הר האלוקים חורבה. Moses, all by himself; he wanted to pray and meditate there in complete isolation and concentration. The phrase is similar to Numbers 13,22 ויבא עד חברון, where we find that one of the spies, Calev, reportedly, came to Chevron. [the sudden singular ויבא instead of ויבואו, there prompted the sages to say that Calev went to pray at the graves of the patriarchs. Ed.]

ומשה היה רועה…וינהג את הצאן, And Moses was a shepherd….and he led the sheep, etc. The Torah means that G'd had His hand in this, i.e. He caused the sheep to move in that direction. Alternatively, it means that Moses was in the habit of guiding his flocks as usual but the sheep walked to that mountain on that occasion for G'd wanted to speak to him there.

וינהג את הצאן אחר המדבר. “he guided the flock out into the wilderness;” Ibn Ezra understands this expression in light of the fact that Midian was sort of a satellite state, subject to Pharaoh’s sphere of political influence. This necessitated that Moses became a shepherd, a vocation that enabled him to operate beyond the reach of Pharaoh and his secret service. Once G’d told him that Pharaoh and the members of his regime whom he had fled had died, he was able to name his son Eliezer by saying that G’d had saved him from the sword of Pharaoh. (compare Exodus 18,4)

Kap. 3. V. 1. מדבר ist zunächst nicht Wüste in dem Sinne einer öden Steppe, vielmehr weist das Wort selbst auf eine zur Viehtrift sich eignende Gegend hin. Grundbedeutung von דבר (verwandt mit דור: Zeitgenossenreihe, Geschlecht, auch טור ,תור: Reihe, תפר: aneinander nähen) eine Verbindung gleichartiger Dinge. Daher auch דוברות: Floß, דבורה: Bienenschwarm und ganz speziell: ורעו כבשים כרברם ,דֹבֶר (Jes. 5, 17) כעדר בתוך הדברו (Micha 2, 12): die Vereinigung der Herde. So auch das Zusammen führen der Völker unter einen Herrn, וַיַדְבֵר עמים תחתי (Ps. 18, 48). — Der Choreb wird hier bereits Gottesberg genannt; denn zur Zeit des Niederschreibens war dort ja bereits die Gesetzesoffenbarung geschehen. Tief bedeutsam aber ist es, dass hier die Erlösung vom Choreb ausgeht, von der künftigen Geburtsstätte des Gesetzes. Es hat damit von vornherein die Erlösung nur מתן תורה zum Ziele, das Volk hierher zu führen, und es hier zum Volke des Gesetzes zu konstituieren.

וינהג את הצאן, “he led the flock after the desert.” The choice of the word אחר here is to serve as a hint that when G–d’s flock in the desert, i.e. the generation that left Egypt as adults had all died, and he had been buried where they had been buried, in the desert, He could bring the next generation to the land of Israel right away; this is why the verse ends with describing the mountain where Moses stood as being already “the Mountain of G–d.”

אל הר האלהים TO THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD — Scripture so names it with reference to what happened there in the future (Sifrei on Deuteronomy 1:24).

אל הר האלוקים חרבה, “to Mount Chorev, the mountain of G’d.” Some people are astounded and cannot understand that Moses took the sheep of his father-in-law such a great distance away from Midian, seeing that the territory of Midian is far to the east of Sinai. Pirkey de Rabbi Eliezer (chapter 40) claims that on occasion the flock Moses tended went for 40 consecutive days without food.

אחרי המדבר, “beyond the desert.” [Presumably Moses went beyond the desert to avoid encroaching on privately owned land for Yitro’s sheep to graze on. Ed.]

חרבה, “near Mount Chorev;” this is about 3 days’ march from the border of Egypt, as we know from Exodus 5,3, where Moses asks permission for his people to offer sacrifices there to Hashem and he asks for them to be allowed to walk that distance, i.e. three days’ march. The reason why the Mountain is better known as Sinai, is because this is where the miracle of the burning bush, סנה occurred. (Ibn Ezra)