ציטירנדיקער פּירוש אויף שמות 19:1

Our sages of blessed memory gave a reason why it provides all the details of the place and date and context of the jewish people before they are counted - in the desert, in the tent of greeting, in the specific year and month. They brought a parable of a king who married a woman and didn't give her a marraige document. He divorced her and didn't tell her the date of the divorce. He did this for the first and second woman when he married them as well. After a while he found a pauper who had worthy parents. He said "this one isn't like the previous women who I married. He wrote her a marraige document and he put in the date of the marriage. In the same vein in Megilat Esther we need precisely the date that Achashveirosh married her (to show us how qualitatively different Esther was from all the other women he had married in the past). The parable can be explained in the following way. When G-d created the world, the whole purpose was for the Jewish people. All the nations meant nothing to him. Therefore when it comes to the creation of the world, or the generation of the flood, or the generation of Babel there is no mention of date or time. It just mentions that 'on this day' in relation to these subjects - they were simply not important to G-d. Again this is comparable to another parable - to a pearl that falls into the sand. We sift through the sand to find the pearl, not because of the sand that surrounds it. Similarly, all the generations where only valuable in that they led to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and this is why Genesis spends so much time talking about their lives and what happened to them. Thus, all the people who led up to the Jewish people are likened to the women who the king married without a marriage document. However, G-d found a pauper - the Jewish people who were poor because they originated in Egypt without Torah and Mitzvot, but had good forbears - Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. G-d therefore said it isn't fitting to make the Jewish nation like the others, but rather to write her a dowry, and to write her a marriage document - the Torah, and to write a date commemorating the event, as it says in the verse "the third month after the Jews had left Egypt"(Exodus 19:1). For this reason our verse mentions time, date and place. The whole purpose of the creation was for the Jewish people. Even though all of this is clear, one needs to SEE and TASTE this statement. It is known that with the giving of the Torah the Israelites achieved perfection, which was lacking to the other nations of the world who refused to receive the Torah. Therefore after they received the Torah, G-d wrote them a marriage document, a date, a dowry, with the making of the tabernacle and an altar which allowed them to atone for their sins. Why then does the Torah write this only now? However the will of G-d in this was even though he had given them the Torah, the Mitzvot and the Mishkan and its vessels, the Jews had not achieved their intended purpose. The whole purpose of the Torah and the Mishkan is for the atonement of sins. However, when G-d gave the Torah he arrived with his heavenly entourage and the 4 encampments of the divine presence. This is reflected in the Talmud where it states that the angels showed love and the encampment of angels camped like the order of the 4 flags which reflect the 4 angels Gabriel, Michael, Noriel and Refael. When the Jewish people saw this, they wanted to cleave to G-d (in the same way as the angels) with these 4 flags, and 4 encampments. In this way, they would achieve the complete connection to G-d and fulfillment of his desire and will. The 4 flags represent the 4 camps of the divine presence and the 4 letters of G-d's name. This is expressed in the verse: כאומרו נרננה בישועתך ובשם אלהינו נדגול ימלא ה' כל משאלותיך. This hints to the notion that just as G-d fulfils the requests of the Jewish people by giving them the flags that they desired from the giving of the Torah, so too G-d will fulfill our desires to stand in times of trouble.

THIS MONTH SHALL BE UNTO YOU THE BEGINNING OF MONTHS. This is the first commandment which the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded Israel through Moses. Therefore it says here [that the Eternal spoke unto Moses and Aaron] in the land of Egypt,⁹⁷Verse 1. for the rest of the commandments of the Torah were given to him on Mount Sinai. It may be that the intent of the expression, in the land of Egypt, is to exclude the city of Egypt, just as our Rabbis have said:⁹⁸Mechilta, Introduction. “In the land of Egypt. This means outside the city.”
Now Scripture should have first said, Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying:⁹⁹Verse 3. This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, and so on to the end of the chapter. [Why then is the verse, Speak ye, etc., mentioned after the verse, This month, etc.?] It is because Moses and Aaron — [as mentioned in Verse 1: And the Eternal spoke unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying: This month, etc.] — are in the place of Israel. Saying it to them is equivalent to saying it to Israel in all their generations. In the following verse, however, He repeats by saying, Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, in order to command them something which is not binding for all time, namely, the buying of the paschal offering in Egypt on the tenth day of Nisan.¹⁰⁰In subsequent generations, the paschal offering may be purchased at any time (Pesachim 96a). Ramban’s thought is thus clear. With the commandment, This month shall be unto you, etc., applying as it does for all time, it is sufficient for Scripture to mention only Moses and Aaron in connection with it, since they are in place of Israel for all times. But since the command mentioned in Verse 3, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, applied only to the paschal offering in Egypt, He therefore preceded it again by saying, Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, the Israel of that time.
According to the Midrashic interpretation,¹⁰¹Rosh Hashanah 25b. The process involved witnesses who saw the appearance of the new moon. After their testimony was heard and examined, the chief of the Court then said, “It is hallowed!” and all the people answered him, “It is hallowed! It is hallowed!” This established that day as being the first of the month, and the occurrence of all festivals of that month were accordingly determined. With the Great Court or Sanhedrin no longer functioning in the Land of Israel, the first of the month is established only by calculating when the new moon appears. For a more detailed discussion of this important topic, see my translation of “The Commandments,” Vol. I, pp. 159-163. lachem (unto you) [in the verse, This month shall be unto you], means that “the Sanctification of the New Moon”¹⁰¹Rosh Hashanah 25b. The process involved witnesses who saw the appearance of the new moon. After their testimony was heard and examined, the chief of the Court then said, “It is hallowed!” and all the people answered him, “It is hallowed! It is hallowed!” This established that day as being the first of the month, and the occurrence of all festivals of that month were accordingly determined. With the Great Court or Sanhedrin no longer functioning in the Land of Israel, the first of the month is established only by calculating when the new moon appears. For a more detailed discussion of this important topic, see my translation of “The Commandments,” Vol. I, pp. 159-163. is to be performed only by a Court of experts [as Moses and Aaron were]. And this is the reason it does not say at the beginning [of Verse 2], Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, since “the Sanctification of the New Moon” can be performed only by Moses and Aaron and their like.
Now the purport of the expression, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months, is that Israel is to count this as the first of the months, and from it they are to count all months — second, third, etc., until a year of twelve months is completed — in order that there be through this enumeration a remembrance of the great miracle, [i.e., the exodus from Egypt, which occurred in the first month]. Whenever we will mention the months, the miracle will be remembered.¹⁰²Thus everytime a person says, for example, “the third month,” he implies that it is the third in the order of the months which begins with Nisan, when the exodus occurred. It is for this reason that the months have no individual names in the Torah. Instead, Scripture says: In the third month;¹⁰³Further, 19:1. And it came to pass in the second year, in the second month … that the cloud was taken up from over the Tabernacle of the Testimony;¹⁰⁴Numbers 10:11. And in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, etc.,¹⁰⁵Ibid., 29:1. and so in all cases. Just as in counting the weekdays we always remember the Sabbath-day since the weekdays have no specific name of their own, but instead are called “one day in the Sabbath,” “the second day in the Sabbath,” as I will explain,¹⁰⁶Further, 20:8. so we remember the exodus from Egypt in our counting “the first month,” “the second month,” “the third month,” etc., to our redemption.
This order of the counting of the months is not in regard to the years, for the beginning of our years is from Tishri, [the seventh month], as it is written, And the feast of ingathering at the turn of the year,¹⁰⁷Ibid., 34:22. Now the feast of ingathering is in the seventh month (Leviticus 23:39) and yet Scripture calls it here at the turn of the year, which means the beginning of the new year. Thus we learn that Tishri is the beginning of the year, although in the order of the counting of the months it is the seventh month. and it is further written, And the feast of ingathering, at the end of the year.¹⁰⁸Ibid., 23:16. If so, when we call the month of Nisan the first of the months and Tishri the seventh, the meaning thereof is “the first [month] to the redemption” and “the seventh month” thereto. This then is the intent of the expression, it shall be the first month to you, meaning that it is not the first in regard to the year but it is the first “to you,” i.e., that it be called “the first” for the purpose of remembering our redemption.
Our Rabbis have already mentioned this matter when saying,¹⁰⁹Yerushalmi Rosh Hashanah I, 2. “The names of the months came up with us from Babylon,” since at first we had no names for the months. The reason for this [adoption of the names of the months when our ancestors returned from Babylon to build the Second Temple], was that at first their reckoning was a memorial to the exodus from Egypt, but when we came up from Babylon, and the words of Scripture were fulfilled — And it shall no more be said: As the Eternal liveth, that brought up the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt, but: As the Eternal liveth that brought up and that led the children of Israel from the land of the north¹¹⁰Jeremiah 16:14-15. The expression and that led is found ibid., 23:8. — from then on we began to call the months by the names they were called in the land of Babylon. We are thus reminded that there we stayed [during our exile] and from there, blessed G-d brought us up [to our Land].¹¹¹From Ramban’s “Sermon on Rosh Hashanah,” where he discussed the same topic (Kithvei Haramban, Vol. I, p. 215), it is crystal clear that the author’s intent here was not that the memorial of the redemption from Babylon will thrust aside the memorial of the redemption from Egypt. Rather, the one of Babylon will be added to that of Egypt, so that the names of the months will be reminiscent of the two redemptions together. See Note 114 further, for example. Joseph Albo’s position in his book Ikkarim (Roots), III, 16, that Ramban’s intent here was that after the return from the Babylonian exile, the first memorial was to give way altogether to the second, is thus not correct. For further discussion of this problem see the note in my Hebrew commentary Vol. II, p. 520. These names — Nisan, Iyar, and the others — are Persian names and are to be found only in the books of the prophets of the Babylonian era¹¹²See Zechariah 1:7, etc.; Ezra 6:15; Nehemiah 1:1. and in the Scroll of Esther.¹¹³Esther 3:7, etc. It is for this reason that Scripture says, In the first month, which is the month of Nisan,¹¹⁴Ibid. Thus both memorials are mentioned simultaneously: the first month to our redemption from Egypt, which is the month of Nisan, a name which is reminiscent of our Babylonian exile from which we have also been redeemed. just as it says, they cast ‘pur,’ that is, the lot.¹¹⁵Ibid. In this case too Scripture explains the Persian word pur as meaning lot, just as it explained the name Nisan as being “the first month.” To this day, people of Persia and Media use these names of the months — Nisan, Tishri, and the others — as we do. Thus through the names of the months we remember our second redemption even as we had done until then with regard to the first one.

החודש הזה לכם, even though other nations do not know the institution of “new moon,” you will have such an institution, so that the months can be numbered by ordinal numbers, i.e. “the second, the twelfth,” etc. (compare Esther 3,7) This is the month from which you will begin dating important events in your history/calendar, for this is the month in which you attained your freedom as a people. Whenever the Torah refers to an event by naming the month in which it occurred or would occur, the ordinal number used is relative to this month, the month of Nissan, which rates as the “first” month. This is spelled out even more clearly in Exodus 19,1 בחודש השלישי לצאת בני ישראל ממצרים, “in the third month, after the Exodus of the Children of Israel from Egypt.” The date of the Exodus from Egypt remained uppermost in the way our prophets recorded important historical events, as for instance, in Kings I 6,1 when the completion of Solomon’s Temple is dated as having occurred in the 480th year after the Exodus from Egypt.

will I be towards you “I am the Lord your God” (Ex. 20:2). Now the reason he split the fifty days into separate calculations, one at the conclusion of “chomer” (i.e., 50 days), the other at the conclusion of “lethech” (i.e., the ensuing 15 days), is to represent the “manna” that descended upon them at the culmination of thirty days [from their exodus] on the fifteenth day (sic) of Iyar. From that point, for an [additional] fifteen daysthe numerical equivalent of the number of seah in a lethechon that day they arrived in the Sinai desert on the first day of the month of Sivan. Now in the name of Rav Hai I found a most fitting thing: “So I bought her to me etc.,” (verse 2) I have established her atonement indemnity money as a light sum, for whosoever states: “My valuation is incumbent upon me to contribute to the sanctuary, should he be from the age of sixty and above” his valuation shall be fifteen shekels (Lev. 27:7). This sum of fifteen shekels is, according to this interpretation, symbolized by the fifteen pieces of silver of v. 2): Now the “chomer” of barley [represents] the valuation of a male aged twenty and above until sixty, viz. fifty shekels (see Lev. 27:3), the amount of redemption money of a chomer of barley which is similarly fifty silver shekels (See Lev. 27:16: “And if a man shall dedicate to the Lord some part of his field...the seed of a “chomer” of barley shall be valued at fifty shekels of silver.”) Now regarding the lethech of barley, the amount for redeeming a field containing a lethech of barley for the sanctuary is twenty-five shekels, which is [equal to the sum of] the valuation of someone from one month up to five years, which equals five shekels (Lev. 27:6), and that of one from five years up to twenty years, in which cases, “the valuation shall be twenty shekels (Lev. 27:5),” totalling twenty-five shekels. After all this display of affection [by allowing for such relatively easy absolution,] I said to her: [3] You shall remain as mine for many days; you shall not play the harlot by turning to other gods, for, if you do play the harlot, your children shall remain for many days... having neither king nor prince nor sacrifice in the Temple in Judah. nor pillar The pillar of Baal in Samaria of the kings of Israel. nor ephod of the Urim and Tummim, which discloses to them hidden things. teraphim They are images constructed, having in mind a particular hour established, at which time they speak of their own accord and tell of hidden things. So does Jonathan translate: and there shall be no ephod or oracle.

בחדש השני [IN THE SECOND YEAR] IN THE SECOND MONTH [THE CLOUD DEPARTED] — Consequently you must say that they spent at Choreb twelve months less ten days, since on the New Moon of Sivan (the third month) they encamped there (Exodus 19:1) and did not journey until the twentieth of Eyar of the following year.