Or HaChaim on Exodus 3:18/אור החיים על שמות ג׳:י״ח

1 ושמעו לקולך, "they will listen to your voice, etc." G'd added the apparently superfluous word לקולך when the word לדבריך would have sufficed, in order to convince Moses that the people would believe him even if he did not reveal to them an additional name of G'd. The word קול implies something that is effective only for those who actually hear it. דברים are effective even if not heard directly. G'd wanted Moses to know that anyone who would hear Moses' voice, i.e. the good tidings he would convey, would believe him as there was no impediment such as a lack of faith standing in the people's way. Moses would not even have to perform miracles in order to gain the confidence of the Jewish people.

2ה׳ אלוקי העברים נקרה עלינו, "G'd, the Lord of the Hebrews has manifested Himself to us, etc." G'd revealed here that although He did not want that His four-lettered name be associated except with the Hebrews, and that this was the reason He had not revealed it except to the Hebrews, He wanted the Egyptians to know about this name so that when Moses would appear to Pharaoh citing that attribute of G'd, the latter could not claim that he had never heard of such a G'd. He was not familiar with that name because he had not qualified for familiarity with such an exalted name of G'd seeing he was a contemptible person.

3נקרה עלינו. "manifested Himself to us." G'd did not want Pharaoh to think that Moses was in regular communication with G'd day by day. It is also possible that the choice of the word נקרה, i.e. a chance encounter, was to forestall Pharaoh demanding to see that Moses and Aaron would receive communications from G'd on a regular basis.

4ועתה נלכה נא, "and now let us go, etc." Moses used the word "now" to indicate that this request was an urgent one, requiring immediate action; G'd had not said that these sacrifices were to be offered on a specific date. It is also possible that Moses wanted to indicate to Pharaoh that as far as he was aware this march into the desert for three days in order to offer sacrifices there was a one time affair.

5שלושת ימים. "Three days." Moses had to make it appear that the Israelites meant to go for only three days because G'd told him in verse 22 to tell the Israelites to borrow silver trinkets from the Egyptians. Unless the Egyptians would believe that the Jews planned to return they would not lend them the silver trinkets.

6This explains also why G'd announced the matter of borrowing the silver trinkets already now, 12 months before the Israelites would actually "borrow" these trinkets. Had that instruction been issued only on the night of the Exodus (when the Torah mentions it as being carried out) it would have been difficult to carry out. We might have assumed that mentioning it at this juncture was merely to make the Israelites believe that the Exodus was really at hand. This is not correct, however. We believe that the reason we have proposed, i.e. that in order to make the eventual request for these trinkets plausible, the Egyptians first had to be under the impression that all the Jewish people really wanted was a three day religious holiday in the desert, away from Egyptian urban areas.

7We still have to account for the fact that G'd instructed Moses to deceive Pharaoh by asking for a three day religious pilgrimage when in fact he did not mean for the people to return to Egypt at all? G'd appears to have tricked the Egyptians both regarding the nature of the Israelites' departure and regarding the nature of the "borrowings." Actually, everything G'd told Moses to say was perfectly just and fair. Firstly, inasmuch as the Israelites had performed many decades of slave labour for which the Egyptians had not paid any wages, they were entitled to recompense themselves, if only partially. Sanhedrin 91 records a disputation in front of Alexander the Great on that subject when the Egyptians demanded the return of these borrowed trinkets. The representative of the Jews at that time, a certain Gevihah ben Pesisah, succeeded in making the Egyptians withdraw their claim seeing that what the Jews had taken was so much less than what had been owed them at the time of the Exodus. Still, why did G'd have to resort to trickery? Surely G'd was capable of executing all His designs without having to resort to some form of deception!

8We must assume therefore that the reason G'd deceived the Egyptians (on both counts) was in order to orchestrate the pursuit of the Jews by the Egyptian army and the crossing of the sea as well as the drowning of the Egyptian cavalry. Had the Egyptians not felt themselves deceived by the Israelites they would never have undertaken a chase. Compare what we have written on Exodus 14,5 that Pharaoh had a change of heart.

9You will find a sign that we are on the right track when you read Shemot Rabbah 14,3 that during the plague of darkness the Jews who were not affected by this discovered the secret hiding places of the Egyptians so that at the time of the Exodus they could prove that the Egyptians lied when they claimed not to possess the items the Jews wanted to borrow. The question is, of course, why, if G'd already enabled the Jews to discover these trinkets, why did He not allow them to help themselves at once? It was only a few days prior to the Exodus! No doubt G'd wanted that the Egyptians should remain under the impression that the Jews were only borrowing these trinkets so that once they realised they had been deceived they would feel morally entitled to pursue the Jews and to retrieve these items.

10Now let us look at the legality of the matter. If the Jews had helped themselves to what they discovered in the homes of the Egyptians during the days of darkness they would have been perfectly in order. When a person is forcibly deprived of his possessions there is no law which prevents him to take back what was his. Jacob used subterfuge to compensate himself for what Laban had tricked him out of. The Talmud tells of an occurrence involving three great sages in Yuma 83. When two of them were swindled out of money they had deposited with the innkeeper, they resorted to deception in order to retrieve what was rightfully theirs. Not only did their action not involve a forbidden practice but they did what David refers to in Psalms 18,27 as a practice employed by G'd Who engages in being wily with those who have been devious themselves.

11In our situation the matter is even more clear-cut. If you examine the text, you will find that Moses (at G'd's behest) did not utter a single lie. He never mentioned a word about the Israelites ever returning to Egypt. Furthermore, Moses was careful that the deceptive words could not be attributed to G'd himself but only to the Israelites, if at all. The words starting with: "and now we want to go," were to be spoken by Moses, Aaron and the elders. They were not part of what G'd had said. If the Torah had not inserted the word ועתה, we would indeed have assumed that they said, quoting G'd: "Now let us go three days travel into the desert, etc." In chapter 5, verse 1 we do indeed find that Moses quoted G'd saying: "send My people off so that they can celebrate for Me in the desert." He did not mention any time frame at that time. It was only the Israelites who added (in 5,3) "let us go for three days into the desert, etc." While it is true that at that point the Israelites did not say ועתה, they simply assumed that the word ועתה Moses had mentioned in 3,18, was sufficiently clear. The fact that even the Jews had not lied to the Egyptians is proven by history. The Jews who left Egypt celebrated only in the desert seeing that the whole generation died before they came to the land of Canaan. While it is true that many of the children of that generation entered the Holy Land and celebrated there also, it was not the minors who had negotiated with Pharaoh about their release from bondage. People under twenty years of age were under no obligation to offer sacrifices to G'd. The Israelites also did not lie when they asked for the silver trinkets as the Torah says: "they asked for, etc." Initially, they borrowed these trinkets. When the Egyptians did not pay them the wages owed, they kept the trinkets as partial payment. They planned to present the Egyptians wih a bill for the balance at a future date.

12One problem has bothered me for a long time; why did G'd not simply drown the Egyptians who deserved drowning by letting the river Nile spill over? This would have been the appropriate punishment for the people who had drowned the Jewish babies in the Nile. Why did G'd wait till the Egyptians had pursued the Jewish people and He had to perform a major miracle by splitting the sea and allowing the Jews to cross on dry land? Also, why the devious method of the Jews borrowing the silver instead of their helping themselves to it during the days of darkness? After all, according to the interpretation of the Midrash the meaning of Exodus 11,23 that the Jews "had light in their dwellings" is that they had light "even in the Egyptians' dwellings?" Perhaps G'd was motivated by two considerations. 1) The splitting of the sea and everything connected with it aggrandised His name amongst mankind in a way that could not have been achieved by any other means. 2) G'd applies the yardstick of "measure for measure." Sotah 11 states that the Egyptians had cleverly inveigled the Israelites into slave labour by sweet-talking them into such patriotic service, whereas gradually they became more and more cruel and demanding. G'd orchestrated the steps leading to redemption in a similar fashion. First He had Moses speak about a three day religious holiday for Pharaoh's labourers as well as borrowings of the Egyptians' silver and of their fancy garments. G'd gradually upped the ante, just as the Egyptians had done in their treatment of the Jews. At the same time G'd was still careful so that even the Jews themselves did not utter a lie. The prophet Micha was quite correct (Micha 7,20) when he characterised one of the greatest Jewish virtues with the words: "You give truth to Jacob."