Комментарий к Шмот 4:3

ויהי לנחש AND IT BECAME A SERPENT — This was an indication to him, that he had slandered the Israelites by saying (v. 1) “But, behold they will not believe me etc.”, and that he had made the serpent’s occupation (slander) his own (cf. Genesis 3:5) (Exodus Rabbah 3:12).

AND HE SAID: CAST IT ON THE GROUND. AND HE CAST IT ON THE GROUND. I do not understand why G-d performed the signs before Moses. Moses believed that it is the Holy One, blessed be He, Who speaks with him, and it would have been fitting for Him to say, “The staff that is in your hand you shall cast on the ground before them, and it shall become a serpent,” and the same also with respect to the second sign, [i.e., his hand becoming leprous], just as He said at the third sign, and thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land, etc.²⁵⁵Further, Verse 9. In other words, the third sign of the water turning to blood was not performed now, but only when Moses came before the people. The question thus arises: Why did He perform the first two signs — the staff turning into a serpent, and Moses’ hand becoming leprous — before Moses now? It is for this reason that the words of our Rabbis²⁵⁶Shemoth Rabbah 3:16. can be relied upon, namely, that the first sign, [i.e., the staff turning into a serpent], was a hint to Moses that he had slandered the Israelites [when he said that they would not believe him],²⁵⁷See Genesis 3:5, that the serpent was the first creature to slander when it said to Eve, For G-d doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, ye shall be as G-d, knowing good and evil. Thus it suggested to her that it was not because it may bring about her death that G-d forbade it, but out of a sense of jealousy. As Rashi puts it: “Every artisan detests his fellow-artisans.” and the second sign was for the purpose of punishing him.²⁵⁸See Numbers 12:1-10 that the punishment for slander is leprosy. And this is the sense of the expression, and Moses fled from before it [the serpent]. He feared lest he would be punished and the serpent would bite him, since every person naturally avoids danger, even though Moses knew that if it was indeed G-d’s desire [to punish him], there was no one that could deliver him out of His hand.²⁵⁹See Daniel 8:4.
Perhaps even though He informed Moses of the Great Name with which the world was created and everything came into existence,²⁶⁰See above, 3:13. He wished to show him that with this Name signs and wonders would be done, changing the natural order of things, so that the matter would be firmly established in Moses’ heart and that he should in truth know that with the Great Name he will perform new things in the world. The first two signs were sufficient for Moses, and therefore the third miracle of the water [turning into blood] was not done here. Instead, G-d commanded him to do the third sign in the sight of the people.

וינס משה מפניו, for the staff had become a real snake and had assumed a threatening posture. This was totally different from the “snakes” produced by Pharaoh’s magicians that were unable to move. They only looked like the real thing, but were totally harmless. None of these sorcerers can produce something that is really alive, i.e. becomes part of nature. Our sages in Sanhedrin 67 commented on this phenomenon by saying: “not only can the sorcerers not produce small creatures, they cannot even produce big creatures such as a camel” This is why in the case of Moses, the Torah speaks of “the staff which had turned into a נחש, serpent,” whereas when the sorcerers’ work is described the Torah speaks of תנין. [at that point Aaron’s staff also turned into a תנין, not נחש, as G’d was not yet ready to demonstrate the superior magic Moses was capable of. Only when Aaron’s staff swallowed the “taninim” of the sorcerers was that point brought home to Pharaoh.]

ויהי לנחש, it had turned into a snake. G'd hinted to Moses that the forces of the קליפה are characterised by the symbol snake. We know from the original serpent that it represents סם, i.e. something potentially poisonous. G'd wanted to teach Moses that his hands possessed the power to neutralise the power of that serpent and to turn it into a harmless piece of wood. If, however, Moses would not keep firm control and allow it to escape from his hands, he would unleash all the latent powers of evil which are controlled by the serpent. This would become so threatening that Moses would flee from it [although he stood on consecrated ground, Ed.]. When G'd asked Moses: "what is this in your hand?" He wanted Moses to understand that the staff was biologically analogous to a certain kind of desert-mouse. If Moses were to even loosen his grip on his staff it was liable to develop into a serpent just as earth can turn into a certain species of mouse. [In Talmudic times there was a widespread belief that this specimen of mouse was half flesh and half earth, and developed out of the earth. This belief has halachic implications regarding the laws of ritual impurity, compare Chulin 9,6, Ed.] Moses replied to G'd's question that he was certain that what he held in his hand was a staff, i.e. one hundred per cent wood, without potential to develop into a living organism. When G'd made him throw the staff down to earth, He demonstrated that not only did the staff contain the potential to develop into a living creature, but it did not do so only very gradually, such as the desert-mouse, but it did so in a single moment.

ויאמר השליכהו ארצה ויהי לנחש, “He said: ‘throw it to the ground so that it will turn into a serpent.” Nachmanides has trouble understanding the need for G’d to perform these miracles in front of Moses, seeing Moses had not been a doubter here. In his (preliminary) view it would have been more appropriate for G’d to tell Moses to perform this very miracle in front of the Jewish people, as He did with the third miracle the turning of water into blood. It is considerations such as these which prompted our sages to say that Moses was meant to consider the first miracle here as a personal rebuke for having spoken badly of the Jewish people, for having accused them of lack of faith. He was to realize that he deserved to be punished, and this is also why he reacted in fear, fleeing from the serpent. He considered it entirely possible that this snake would bite him as a penalty for badmouthing his people. The same applies to his hand turning leprous; this too was to remind him that the affliction known as tzoraat is in the main reserved for people who were derelict in their relationship with their fellow human beings, in particular by speaking badly about them. Their forced stay in isolation would bring this home to them even more forcefully. Moses did not recover from his fright until G’d told him to grab the snake by its tail. Moses is then described not as taking hold of the snake’s tail merely, as G’d had instructed, by אחיזה, a somewhat tenuous hold on things, but the Torah uses the word ויחזק בו, “he took a firm hold of it.” Some commentators claim that the miracle of the staff was a demonstration by means of a simile, that the great Pharaoh whose career had started out as a malleable human being, something similar to a pliable staff, had then become hard as a תנין הגדול, a great sea-monster, only to become all soft again, none of his powers remaining, his glory having vanished into thin air. When Pharaoh had turned “tough” on him after he had killed the Egyptian, Moses had already fled from him, as we read in The miracle of the staff would reassure Moses that he no longer had anything to fear from him.

השליכהו ארצהת וישליכהו ארצה ויהי לנחש. “Throw it to the ground! He threw it to the ground and it turned into a snake.” You should realise that the changing of the staff into a snake was related to the reversal of the natural power inherent in the letters used by the Torah. It is alluded to in our verse so that when the order of the letters would be reversed the snake could become changed into a staff again. [According to Torat Chayim quoting a Rabbi Naftali, — cited by Rabbi Chavell —the final letters in the words ארצה, וישליכהו, ארצה, ויהי are the letters of the tetragrammaton in reversed order. When these letters appear again in the proper order at the end of the words ויהי למטה בכפו, it is easy to understand why the snake turned again into a staff.] We know that basically the tetragrammaton consists of the three letter י-ה-ו. The letter ה appears twice in that name.

ויהי לנחש, “it turned into a serpent.” Why did G–d show Moses this miracle by using a serpent rather than any other creature? It symbolised that just as the bite of a snake not only hurts but results in the death of the victim, so Pharaoh and his servants would not only “bite” the Hebrews but would by their treatment of them cause their deaths. Moses being asked to grasp the tail of that serpent and turn it back into his staff, was to symbolise that Pharaoh and his servants would become dried out as the wood of his staff. Any hand afflicted with the plague of tzoraat had automatically become ritually unclean, as we know from Leviticus 14,6. Moses placing his hand back within the folds of his tunic symbolically restores the entire Jewish people to ritual purity which it had lost through contact with the Egyptians. When the Torah reports in verse 7 that והנה שבה כבשרו, “and lo, his hand looked again like the rest of his flesh,“ this was a hint that the Jewish people’s state of ritual impurity would be reversed.

We may understand that by means of these two miracles, i.e. Moses’ staff turning into a snake and his hand becoming afflicted with tzoraat, G’d hinted to him that it was in His power to kill the living and to revive the dead. The staff had been a dried out piece of wood, devoid of life of any sort, and by throwing it on the ground it turned into a living organism. Moses’ hand on the other hand, which had been part of a perfectly healthy living organism, suddenly became as if dead. The disease tzoraat is viewed by the Bible as a form of death as we know from Moses’ prayer for his sister Miriam (Numbers 12,12) “do not let her remain like a dead person!” G’d (Moses) performed both of these miracles here in the desert and later in the presence of the assembled Jewish people in Egypt (4,30). This was what G’d had meant when He said: “so that they will believe that the Lord G’d has indeed appeared to you” (verse 5). The second miracle was repeated in accordance with G’d having said: “in the event they will not believe the impression made by the first miracle, they will believe the impact of the second miracle” (verse 8).
The question remains why these miracles had first to be performed in the desert, i.e. while Moses was standing at the foot of Mount Chorev. After all, surely Moses did not doubt anything G’d told him! We have to accept what our sages Shemot Rabbah 3,15) handed down to us as their tradition, i.e. that the first miracle Moses had to perform was to make him aware that he had slandered the Jewish people when he had stated that the people would not believe that G’d had appointed him as their redeemer. He had no right to say this (4,1) after G’d Himself had told him in 3,18 ושמעו לקולך, “they (the Jewish people) will hearken to your voice (message).” The second miracle, that of Moses’ hand becoming afflicted with tzoraat was as a punishment for his slandering his people and not believing G’d. The miracles performed a different function each time Moses performed it.

The reason G'd had said: "throw it to the ground," was that in the eyes of the serpent the earth assumes great significance since it derives all its needs for survival from the earth, and earth (dust) is its exclusive habitat (Genesis 3,14). G'd taught Moses many lessons by means of this small demonstration. Amongst other things Moses was to demonstrate this very miracle before the eyes of the Israelites.

When G'd instructed Moses: "stretch out your hand," He wanted Moses to realise that though he thought that he had already lost control over what had been his staff, he still possessed the power to master what had become a serpent and to turn it into a harmless piece of wood again.

G'd instructed Moses ואחוז בזנבו, instead of ואחוז בו. This was to teach him an additional lesson. Normally, people are afraid of the poisonous head of the snake and when they try to grab it they try to get hold of its head and crush it in order to neutralise its poisonous bite. G'd told Moses that it would suffice to grasp the tail of the snake and he would not have anything to fear. When the Torah nevertheless describes Moses as ויחזק בו "he took hold of it," and not as ויחזק בזנבו, "he took hold of its tail," this does not mean that Moses did not obey G'd's instructions but that he took hold of the nearest part of the snake without fear. When the Torah goes on to describe that ויהי למטה בכפו, "it turned into a staff in his palm," this means that it ceased being a living organism as soon as Moses' palm touched it i.e. ויהי, "it remained as a staff only."