Exodus Wilderness

Rabbeinu Bahya

Shemot, Chapter 13:17

Rabbeinu Chananel wrote that G’d had a different reason for leading the Israelites through the desert. He needed an excuse for demonstrating miracles for the people. Had G’d led the Jewish people by the most direct route and had influenced the Philistines to let them travel through their country unmolested, this would have been such a minor miracle that it would not have impressed the people with an appreciation of how G’d had exerted Himself on their behalf. G’d’s desire to demonstrate His power and ability to triumph over what appeared to be insurmountable difficulties made it necessary for Him to lead the people through an inhospitable desert. By leading the people through the desert G’d forced Himself to come up with the heavenly manna as the solution to their food problems, with the extraction of water from a rock and the traveling well as the solution to their water problems, with the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire as the solution to problems of an inhospitable climate, etc., etc. The further the Israelites traveled from civilization the greater were the miracles required to keep them alive and well.

It is characteristic of G’d’s השגחה פרטית, benevolent providence for the righteous, that He performs miracles within miracles. We find, for instance, that when Chananyah, Mishael, and Azaryah were thrown into a fiery furnace by Nebuchadnezzar because they refused to accept him as a deity and to bow before his golden image, G’d could have saved them by the simple expedient of extinguishing the fire in that furnace (Daniel 3,27). Instead, G’d’ troubled Himself not only to allow these men to walk around within that flaming kiln as if they and their garments were totally oblivious to the infernal heat, but He visibly increased the heat and the fire within that kiln; He showed Nebuchadnezzar a vision of three unbound men enjoying themselves within that flaming kiln totally unperturbed by what Nebuchadnezzar thought he had accomplished. Nebuchadnezzar was enabled to look through opaque thick walls, another miracle. When G’d saved Daniel from the den of lions (Daniel 6,23), He also could have done so by means of lesser miracles such as simply killing the lions in that den. Instead, G’d chose to leave the lions alive but to prevent them from harming Daniel. In other words, the miracle within the miracle was that G’d interfered with the lions’ instincts in order to demonstrate His power.

We find something similar in the Book of Judges when Gideon was commanded to fight the Midianites. Seeing that the Midianites were described as "as numerous as the sand of the sea," (Judges 7,12) G’d could have allowed ten or twenty thousand men to fight them and their victory would surely have been credited to G’d seeing that even such a number of men would have been greatly outnumbered by their opponents. However, G’d chose to allow only three hundred men to go to war against Midian thus increasing the miracle and as a result His reputation. The prophet states that G’d wanted to ensure that no Israelite would be able to take credit for the victory (Judges 7,2). Actually, in response to the call that the faint-hearted Israelites should return home, ten thousand remained after twenty-two thousand had departed. G’d told Gideon specifically that the remaining ten thousand men were still far too numerous to fight against Midian! (7,4). They were to be tested by the manner in which they would lap up water to drink from a pond or river. The people who lapped up water like a dog were chosen as soldiers in G’d’s army, whereas those that drank like human beings, i.e. bringing the water to their mouths instead were sent home! (7,7).

Israel went up armed... Moshe went up with the bones of Yoseph...

see https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/96430

Mahx Note:

You put out Your right hand, The earth swallowed them.

We can read in Targum Jonathan:

"The sea spake to the earth, Receive thy children: but the earth spake to the sea, Receive thy murderers. And the sea was not willing to overwhelm them, and the earth was not willing to swallow them up. The earth was afraid to receive them, lest they should be required from her in the day of the great judgment in the world to come, even as the blood of Habel will be required of her: whereupon Thou, O Lord, didst stretch forth Thy right hand in swearing to the earth that in the world to come they should not be required of her. And the earth opened her mouth and consumed them."

And why is the assurance by the oath of the right hand? For at the left hand there is the divisions of discernment and the severity of strict justice and the fearsome display of the beauty of all-silencing sovereignty. But at the right hand is the unity of wisdom and the kindness of love and mercy and the beauty of grace for salvation. It was determined by the One who sits upon the Throne of thrones that מידה כנגד מידה, measure for measure, the force that planned that the children of Israel should be forever a slave to the earth should end by itself being swallowed up by the earth. This meant, therefore, that it was not from the left side, from the place of strict justice directly that the forces of Egypt were condemned, but rather from the right side, from the place of love and salvation for Israel that punishment came to the forces of Egypt.

And this also, a few verses later, we read in our parsha:

Terror and dread descend upon them; Through the might of Your arm they are still as stone— Till Your people cross over, O LORD, Till Your people cross whom You have ransomed.

And concerning this Targum Jonatan says:

Through the power of Thy mighty arm, let the terrors of death fall upon them, let them be silent as a stone, till the time when Thy people, O Lord, shall have passed the streams of Arnona, till the time when Thy people whom Thou didst ransom shall have crossed the dividing current of Jabeka.

And still today an effort is being made by the children of Israel to pass the streams of Arnona and cross the dividing current of Jabeka completely. And the innermost heart of all the nations of the earth looks on and is silent as a stone in anticipation in the terror of death. For if such judgment as has been seen has come in the living tree of Israel, what shall come in the dry tree of the nations, that empire coveting the inheritance of God, planted by Pharaoh, in which there is heard no word of life?

They came to Mara...

It is in this way that:

"You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain, The place You made to dwell in, O LORD, The sanctuary, O LORD, which Your hands established."

And here as Targum Jonatan says:

Thou wilt bring them in, and plant them on the mountain of Thy sanctuary, the place which Thou hast provided before the throne of Thy glory, the house of Thy holy Shekinah, which Thou, O Lord, hast prepared, Thy sanctuary that with both hands Thou hast established.

For then, in that end, it shall be with both hands that God judges the world and creates "a new heaven and a new earth," Isaiah 65:17. As it is written,

“Therefore behold, the days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when they will no longer say, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ but, ‘As the LORD lives, who brought up and led back the descendants of the household of Israel from the north land and from all the countries where I had driven them.’ Then they will live on their own soil,” Jeremiah 23:7.

For in that day the nations will be divided, and those who bless themselves in Abraham will know that their punishments are for the chastisements of salvation from the right hand, and those who curse Israel with the final Pharaoh will sit in darkness awaiting strict justice without hope.

But the children of Israel shall step out of the waters of death to serve God in the Temple of His light so soon as they cast the dry wood of slavery to self-reliance into the bitter waters of the wilderness. For all the miraculous provisions of God in the wilderness appear to the unbelief of self-reliant eyes to be bitter waters. But when the dry wood of unbelief is cast into the bitter waters at God's command they become waters of life.

Mahx Note:

Place a jar of mana before the Pact, הָעֵדֻ֖ת, to be kept.

Targum Jonatan says: "before the testimony" to be kept.

This was in obedience to the instruction to place it before the LORD.

Rashbam explains this to mean:

לפני העדות, in front of the Holy Ark.

The unusual syntax, starting the verse in a way of stating that it was in accordance with the LORD's commandment, that does not clearly seem to be needed following the verse before, seems to be added in order to place strong emphasis upon the relationship in God's mind between the testimony of the mana and the testimony of the ark of the covenant and the mercy seat upon the ark, where the LORD's presence was manifested. It is as if God is making a point of saying that both of these are one testimony.

כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר צִוָּ֥ה יְהוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה וַיַּנִּיחֵ֧הוּ אַהֲרֹ֛ן לִפְנֵ֥י הָעֵדֻ֖ת לְמִשְׁמָֽרֶת׃

Literally, "As which commanded Hashem to Moshe, rested it Aaron before the testimony to be preserved."

The testimony of the mana is the testimony that has come from the beginning of the redemption, when God would not take Israel out of Egypt the easy way, by way of the territory of the Philistines, because the temptation would be too great to trust in the slavery of all that they knew and had learned in Egypt. Instead, He brought them through the wilderness, where they had no one to trust in but Him. And this finally led them to where all their provision was mana. The jar of mana, therefore, has the power to indicate to us that this also is the testimony of the ark and the cover of the ark. Even as the mana was provided as food for those who are redeemed, not the easy way but, through the wilderness experience, so the Torah was provided, and is provided in the wilderness, for those who, through a harsh life experience, are being redeemed from slavery to this world and to what they know and have learned from the slavery of this world. For redemption is to live and think and have all ones consciousness and feeling together with God and not in isolation and alienation from God, according to the slavery of Egypt, according to the slavery of this world.

Mahx Note:

He said, “It means, ‘Hand upon the throne of the LORD!’ The LORD will be at war with Amalek throughout the ages.”

Targum Jonatan has this:

And he said, Because the Word of the Lord hath sworn by the throne of His glory, that He by His Word will fight against those of the house of Amalek, and destroy them unto three generations; from the generation of this world, from the generation of the Meshiha,(Mashiach), and from the generation of the world to come.

Sanhedrin 20b:11 has this:

It is taught in a baraita: Rabbi Yosei says: Three mitzvot were commanded to the Jewish people upon their entrance into Eretz Yisrael: To establish a king for themselves, and to cut off the seed of Amalek in war, and to build for themselves the Chosen House in Jerusalem. But I do not know which one they are obligated to do first.

Sanhedrin 20b:12 has this:

When the verse states: “The hand upon the throne [kes] of the Lord: The Lord will have war with Amalek from generation to generation” (Exodus 17:16), you must saythat this means they are obligated to establish a king for themselves first, before waging war with Amalek, and the verse is interpreted as follows: “Throne of the Lord” is nothing other than a symbolic name for a king, as it is stated: “Then Solomon sat on the throne [kisei] of the Lord as king”(I Chronicles 29:23), indicating that a king sits on “the throne of the Lord.”