Parashat Shemot: On the Human Role in Redemption

The book of Exodus tells the story of God’s redemption of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. But the story of redemption does not begin with God. It begins with human beings taking courageous action. God does not act until he sees that human beings care.

The first human beings to care are women. The midwives Shifrah and Puah, in an incredible act of bravery, defy Pharaoh’s order to kill newborn Israelite males. This is the first act of Israelite resistance, and it sets the stage for a growing movement of compassion and bravery.

The story of the saving of a specific Israelite baby, Moshe, comes next, and here, too women are at the center, three women who perform three quiet, private acts of redemption. His mother, acting against Pharaoh’s orders, bravely hides him and then carefully sets him out in a basket on the Nile. His sister stands watch, on the look-out to be of assistance when the moment is right. The daughter of Pharaoh sees him, hears his cries, and takes pity on him, adopting him as her own. The bravery, compassion and caring in all three are remarkable. Building on the movement begun by Shifrah and Puah’s act of passive resistance in refusing to kill babies, these women are actively involved in protecting the life of this one endangered baby, Moshe, and raising him into adulthood.

Moshe’s personality is formed by the acts of these women. Just as the Torah tells us of three actions done on Moshe’s behalf as a young child, the Torah also tells us of three actions he himself takes upon growing up. First, he steps out of his comfortable castle life to “see” the suffering of his brethren (vayar bisivlotam), and seeing (vayar, again) an Egyptian hitting an Israelite, kills the Egyptian (2:11). Like his sister, he has become a person who looks out for the welfare of his brethren. And like his two mothers, he has become one who views the suffering of others with great compassion, and has the bravery to defy authority. The second story has Moshe trying to break up a fight between two Israelites, and the third tells of his rescue of 7 maidens in distress at the well in Midian. This third story again displays the characteristics of courage, compassion and caring he learned from his own rescuers.

But Moshe does not just repeat what he has learned. He builds upon it, taking the resistance movement one step further. He doesn’t just act to protect and rescue the person in distress, but he also actively tries to fight the aggressor, killing the Egyptian, rebuking the fighting Israelite, and chasing away the harassing shepherds at the well. He does not just save, but fights and judges.

At this point, the resistance movement has gone as far as it can go in human hands. Moshe understands the need to translate compassion and bravery into fighting terms, but when he does so, he is threatened with death and must run away to preserve his life. God must enter the fight. And so He does in the many chapters and 10 plagues which follow.

But we should remember that the story did not start with God. Yes, the Torah tells us that God heard the people’s cries and “saw” (vayar) their pain, but He is not the first to have done so (2:25). The daughter of Pharaoh is the first to have heeded an Israelite cry, and Moshe is the first to have “seen” their suffering. In a way, God’s compassion and caring are drawn down to earth by these human actions, and His will to redeem is provoked by these signals of a ready human partnership in the project of redemption.



Some Loose Ends on the Relationship Between the Two Sets of Three Stories:

I noted above that the Torah tells us of three actions done by three women in preserving the life of the young Moshe, and then of three actions done by Moshe as a grown up. I am trying to think through the parallels between these two sets of three. Here is what I have come up with. Please feel free to add your own ideas as a comment:

1. The two first actions both involve hiding. Yocheved, Moshe’s mother, hides him. Moshe hides the Egyptian he has killed.
2. The two second actions both involve an activity among peers or brethren, though in opposite attitudes. Miriam, Moshe’s sister, stands guard for her brother. The two Israelites fight. Also, the word used for Miriam’s standing, vatetatzev, sounds somewhat similar to the word used for the Israelites’ fighting, nitzim.
3. In both the third cases the one(s) being rescued are unrelated to the rescuer. They are foreigners or strangers, and the act of salvation is done despite this distance. The daughter of Pharaoh saves Moshe, an Israelite, and Moshe, an Israelite raised by an Egyptian, saves the 7 Midianites. The midrash makes a big deal out of the daughter of Pharaoh’s action for this reason, calling her Bityah or Batyah, “daughter of God” because God says, “Since you called Moshe your son, I will call you My daughter.” Also, both rescues take place alongside a body of water.