Wyjścia 2:12 Komentarz: Rashi, Chizkuni, HaKtav VeHaKabalah & Siftei Chakhamim

ויפן כה וכה AND HE TURNED THIS WAY AND THAT WAY — he saw what he had done to him in the house and what he had done to him in the field (outside the house. viz., the beating to which he had subjected him) (Exodus Rabbah 1.28). But according to the literal meaning it must be explained in its ordinary sense: he turned this way and that way.

וין את המצרי, “he struck the Egyptian (dead).” He found that he had committed a capital offence according to the seven laws that all of mankind must obey. His offence was that he had raped someone else’s wife, and the Torah had forbidden this when writing in Genesis 2,24: ודבק באשתו, “he is to cleave to his wife,” and not to the wife of another man. (According to Tossaphot, Kidushin 21.) There was no need to warn that Egyptian beforehand in order to make him culpable for the death penalty as we derive from Genesis 20,3: “you are going to die on account of the woman (Sarah whom you have taken captive)”, and Avimelech had not first received warning.

He turned this way and that. Moshe thought that one of his Hebrew brothers in the area would rise up against the Egyptian and save his fellow Jew.

וירא כי אין איש AND HE SAW THAT THERE WAS NO MAN destined to issue from him, who would become an adherent of Israel’s religion (Exodus Rabbah 1:29; cf. Targum Jonathan on Exodus 2:12) .