Komentarz do Wyjścia 4:1

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.

והן לא יאמינו לי ולא ישמעו בקולי, once the people will see that Pharaoh will refuse to let them go, they will lose faith in me and will not listen to my promises. 'כי יאמרו לא נראה אליך ה, for they know that when G’d says something it will be so. They will not be able to account for my failure except by claiming that I am an impostor.

ויען משה ויאמר והן לא יאמינו לי, Moses replied saying: "But they will not believe me, etc." What could have prompted Moses to claim that the Jewish people would not believe him when G'd Himself had told him "they will listen to your voice?" Furthermore, why did Moses even add the almost unbelievable: "and they will not listen to my voice?" One might be tempted to say that inasmuch as a person is free to do what he wants to do and to believe what he wants to believe in, G'd's assurance on that score could not be absolute seeing He is not in control of our feelings. This is why Moses did not believe in the righteousness of their faith. He said: "and they will not listen to my voice," as if to say "they will not even want to listen to my voice." However, such an explanation would not do justice to Moses who certainly did not want to question G'd's attributes, nor to slander Israel by uttering such a gross suspicion. Besides, we must consider that Moses did not even say "suppose they will not believe me," but he made a flat statement והן לא יאמינו לי, "they will definitely not believe me."

ויען משה ויאמר והן לא יאמינו לי, Moses answered saying: “but they will not believe me, etc.” According to Shemot Rabbah 3,12 Moses sinned in the manner in which he spoke to G’d at this point, seeing that he contradicted G’d Who had told him that the people would listen to what he had to say (3,18). G’d responded to Moses in the manner in which he had spoken to G’d. He asked him what he had in his hand, i.e mazeh beyadcha? When Moses replied that he had a staff in his hand, G’d turned the staff into a snake to show Moses that his answer had been quite wrong. G’d demonstrated that by reading the letters מזה not as “mazeh,” “what is this?” but as “mizeh” “with this,” that He would provide him with a means by which to make the Israelites believe him. (the Midrash, according to Mahar’zu, appears to imply that the need to employ miracles in order to make the Israelites believe that Moses was not an impostor was held as a sin against Moses, not against them.) Ibn Ezra, approaching the text as being quite plain, and Moses’ reply as being in order, writes that when G’d had said to Moses that the Israelites would listen to him, (3,18) He had spoken of the elders to whom Moses would have to identify himself in the first place. When Moses now said that the Israelites would not believe him, he did not refer to the elders, but to the masses of the Jewish people. He may also have referred to their having unspoken reservations in their hearts, disbelief they would not dare to voice at that time. Nachmanides explains that Moses meant that it is entirely possible that the words in ושמעו לקולך in 3,18 were not to be understood as an assurance, but as a command, a directive to Moses to make sure that the people would take him seriously, would believe what he had come to tell them. 3,18 is immediately followed by G’d Himself telling Moses that the elders following him notwithstanding, Pharaoh will turn a deaf ear to their mission. In other words, G’d had never promised immediate success at all. Moses was therefore entitled to point out additional factors which would make his mission difficult in the extreme. There are numerous instances in the Scriptures where the meaning of such words as ושמעו, or ואמרו, is not a prediction of what will happen but an assessment of what ought to happen. It is also possible that in 3,18 G’d had only meant that the elders would be willing, on the strength of Moses having identified himself, to go for an interview before Pharaoh with him, and to tell him that their G’d had instructed them to ask for a three day furlough to offer sacrifices to Him. After all, in their own estimation, what did they have to lose by going along? G’d had already told them that the mission would not be successful. (3,19) Moses therefore was quite correct in saying that after the interview with Pharaoh, also attended by the elders, had failed to produce the desired results, the masses of the people would not believe in him as their saviour. They would argue that if he had truly been a messenger from G’d he would have been successful. Another approach to the subject could be that what the people would refuse to believe would be Moses’ claim to have been privy to the instructions of G’d in His attribute as Hashem, the attribute of Mercy, rather than having received instructions from elokim, the attribute of shaddai, that was known to them but had not produced relief from their sorry condition. They would refuse to see in him a prophet with greater powers than the patriarchs who had not been known as miracle workers. No wonder, they would say, that Pharaoh was not impressed by him. They would argue that their sorry state was not due to their sins, for as far as their sins were concerned these would not form an impassable barrier between them and G’d’s attribute of Mercy. Yet another way of understanding our verse is that Moses simply meant that the Israelites would not believe him unless he could produce some kind of miracle to convince them that he had not lied. There was no suggestion that Moses did not accept G’d’s statement that the people would listen to him. .

Kap. 4. V. 1. Gott hatte ihm offenbart, wie sein Auftreten vor Pharao nicht sofort von Erfolg sein würde. Natürlich durfte Mosche voraussetzen, dass die Erfolglosigkeit seines Auftretens einen gerechten Zweifel an seiner ganzen Sendung hervorrufen werde: der Gott, von dem du sprichst, ist dir nicht erschienen, sonst würde deinem Worte an Pharao sofort die Erfüllung folgen.

ולא ישמעו בקולי, “they (the people) will not listen to me (Take me seriously).” if you were to argue that there is a contradiction here, G-d having told Moses that they will have faith in Him in 3,18, the answer is that Moses argues that they will not believe that Moses is His prophet, but is an impostor. This sounds heretical, as G-d had told Moses in 3,18 that they will listen to him and believe in him? The answer is that G-d had spoken of the elders, whereas here he had been asked to instruct the people who were asked to believe that the Egyptians would hand over all their valuables.

The correct answer to our problem is that outlined by Maimonides in chapter seven of his treatise Yesodey Ha-Torah where he writes that the gift of prophecy is given only to people of outstanding intellectual capacity, people who are whole in body and spirit. The author of כסף משנה, a major commentator on Maimonides' works, comments as follows: "We must analyse why Maimonides did not add some more qualifications such as that the prophet has to be wealthy, humble, of physical prowess, etc." He concludes that Maimonides certainly feels that the prophet must possess these attributes as well. However, inasmuch as someone who practices prophecy on a regular basis must possess these attributes as a matter of course, Maimonides did not bother to mention this in that paragraph. In the chapter mentioned, Maimonides was concerned only with people who prophesy only on occasion. Even if we were to consider Moses as someone who practiced prophecy only on occasion-something we cannot accept,- he argued what he did as a result of his extreme humility, out of a conviction that he personally lacked the qualities needed for someone to be accepted as such by the Israelites. When Moses said והן לא יאמינו לי, he meant that "as the result of my many shortcomings they will have no reason to believe me, etc." This was all the more true, Moses said, since I have not been accredited as a regular prophet, but am only making an occasional appearance as a prophet. When a person who has not yet established his credentials as a prophet appears and claims to be a prophet he has to be able to demonstrate all the attributes the people expect of a prophet; these attributes include wealth, physical prowess, a body without blemish, etc. If the people needed proof that Moses lacked the attribute of personal wealth, all they had to find out was that he Moses, had been a mere shepherd in the employ of his father-in-law Yitro. (He had attained personal wealth only by being allowed to pocket the splinters of the tablets of the Covennant as per a comment in Nedarim 38). In view of all this, as soon as the Israelites would consult with their elders if Moses was believable, the elders would tell the people, quite correctly, that Moses had failed to legitimise himself adequately.

Zur ursprünglichen Ausrüstung Mosche war kein אות, kein Wunder notwendig. Auf כי אהי׳ עמך וזה לך :den Erfolg hat Gott Mosche und uns für alle Zeiten hingewiesen האות. Dass wir in unserer Ohnmacht mit der Thora im Arme einen solchen welthistorischen Gang durch die Zeiten vollbringen konnten, das ist der ewige vollgültige Beweis für die Göttlichkeit der Thora und die Wahrhaftigkeit der Sendung Mosche. Allein hier, im Anfange, wo der Erfolg noch fehlt, ja, wo von vornherein wiederholte Erfolglosigkeit angekündigt war, da war ein Zweifel an Mosche Sendung sehr wohl begründet, und Mosche sehr wohl berechtigt, einen solchen Zweifel beim Volke vorauszusetzen.

When Moses had added ולא ישמעו בקולי he alluded to yet another argument, namely his stutter. His voice would give him away as someone who was not fit to be a prophet. Later on he indeed spelled out his concern on that score. At any rate, the absence of a speech impediment is an absolute necessity even for prophets who appear as such only on occasion. If someone suffered from such an impediment it is equivalent to a physical blemish. When Moses said the Israelites would argue that G'd had never communicated with him, they would be quite justified in their assumption as they would base their rejection of his claim on his physical blemish, saying G'd would not appear to such a person even on a temporary basis. The reason Moses had not advanced this argument at once but had asked G'd what he should say when the Israelites would ask him in what capacity G'd had appeared to him- something which appears to show that he was not concerned about the people rejecting him personally- was because G'd had interrupted him by saying: "this is My name, etc."

It is also possible that Moses wanted G'd to reveal more of the mystical aspects of His name, and that in order for G'd to do so he made what sounded like a provocative statement. Moses hoped, that if successful, G'd would equip him with all the visible and invisible attributes that he felt he lacked in order to qualify as a regular prophet. We find this concept in Psalms 91,14 אשגבהו כי ידע שמי, "I will raise it (the Jewish people) high since it has become aware of My name." Moreover, if they would appreciate the qualities G'd had equipped Moses with their regard for G'd Himself would be appreciably enhanced.

Still another reason why Moses was not perturbed at saying what he did, i.e. that the Jewish people would not believe him, was that G'd Himself had told him after He had said that the Jewish people would hearken to his voice (3,18) that He knew that Pharaoh would not respond to Moses' entreaties and would not let the Israelites depart (3,19). Moses reasoned that if Pharaoh would not take his mission seriously then the Israelites would surely lose faith in his leadership in short order. If Moses would have repeated audiences with Pharaoh all of which did not produce results, the people would eventually even stop listening to him altogether. They would claim that the reason he failed was that לא נראה אליך השם, "G'd never appeared to you in the first place." They would argue that if indeed Moses' mission had been authorised by G'd, who would have the effrontery to refuse to carry out G'd's orders? Do we not know from Kings I 14,10 that if someone contravenes G'd's commands deliberately he will be utterly destroyed by G'd?