Comentários de Citação sobre Números 7:20

הנה אנכי מכה במטה אשר בידי, “I am about to strike with the staff which is my hand, etc.” The words הנה אנכי mean “at my command,” (seeing Aaron was doing the actual striking of the river, verse 20); The verse teaches that the water was transformed not only in appearance but also in taste as well as in smell. We know that the appearance changed from verse 20 where the miracle is described as occurring before the eyes of Pharaoh and his servants. We know that the taste of the river changed from the words: “the fish in the river died.” Fish live in a cool environment. When the water turned into blood it also became warmer. The fish drank from it and died as they could not survive in the warmer temperatures. We know that the smell of the river changed from the words: “the river stank.”

ויעשו כן חרטומי מצרים, “the sorcerers of Egypt did likewise.” Seeing that all the water had turned into blood, where did the sorcerers take water from? We must therefore assume that Moses and Aaron struck only the waters of the Nile. This is supported by the words “the waters in the river” in our verse. Most of the verses dealing with the subject do not describe Moses and Aaron as striking “all the waters in Egypt.” Even verse 18 speaks only of the inability of the Egyptians to drink water “from the river.” It follows that the sorcerers had ample sources of water to draw on in order to demonstrate their skill. If we adopt this line of reasoning, how do we understand the words in verse 19 that Moses and Aaron were commanded to stretch out their hands over “all the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their ponds over their canals and over all their gathering of waters and they shall become blood?” How do we account for the fact that apparently Moses and Aaron did not comply fully with G’d’s command and struck only the waters in the river (verse 20)? We may answer this apparent omission by Moses and Aaron by remembering that the Nile was the primary source of water in Egypt and that all the ponds and canals were in the nature of tributaries receiving their water supply from the Nile. This, of course, brings us back to the question of “where did the חרטומים take water from to demonstrate their tricks?”
The answer is that they started digging in the ground. They found some water which they proceeded to turn into what looked like blood. Moses’ decree applied only to waters which were already visible as such not to subterranean pools of water. Alternatively, seeing that the sorcerers had heard the warning announcing this forthcoming plague, they had hastened to some areas where the water had not yet turned into blood, had taken some water out of its natural habitat and had then proceeded to demonstrate their skill in turning such water which had been divorced from its source into blood. They claimed that they had done this by their own efforts, though in fact, these waters also turned into blood once Moses and Aaron decreed that the waters in the Nile and those supplied by the Nile should turn into blood. You will note that Moses’ deed is attributed by the Torah to having occurred while Pharaoh and his servants were watching, i.e. לעיני פרעה ועבדיו, whereas it is not mentioned anywhere that Pharaoh or his servants actually watched the water used by the sorcerers changing into blood (verse 22).

כל חלב שור, “any of the fat parts above the kidneys and liver of the four legged animals fit for sacrifices on the altar, are forbidden to be eaten.” Contrary to verse 20, where we encountered the penalty for eating while in a state of ritual impurity, though we had not heard about the warning not to do so, here we hear the warning, but must search for where the penalty has been spelled out. We find it in verse 25. The reason why the law has been repeated is to teach us that the law forbidding to eat these fat parts from animals which the Torah has forbidden us to eat, anyway does not apply. [In practice this means that when someone eats an animal that is forbidden to be eaten, he is not penalised additionally for eating those parts of the animal. Ed.] (Sifra)