(This is my fifth post in a series about the interactions between Moses and God on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv, and how their relationship evolves. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim, you might try: Mishpatim: The Immigrant.)

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The first conversation between God and Moses on Mount Sinai leads to frustration on both sides. God keeps ordering Moses to go back to Egypt and lead the Israelites out; Moses keeps trying to excuse himself from the mission.

First he protests that he is unworthy of the job. Then he asks what he can tell the Israelites when they demand the name of the god who sent him. His third excuse is that the Israelites will not trust him, and his fourth is that he does not speak well.¹

The first words Moses hears God speak out of the fire in the bush that burns but is not consumed are “Moses! Moses!” Moses manages to answer: “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:4)

And [God] said: “Don’t come closer! Take off your sandals from upon your feet, because the place that you are standing on, it is holy ground!” And [God] said: “I am the God of your father; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, because he was afraid of looking at God. (Exodus 3:5-6)

Two other prophets in the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah and Jonah, try to get out of the job when God first calls them.² But Moses is the only one who hides his face in fear.

Moses also seems to be afraid to tell God no. He can suggest reasons why he is not the right person to be God’s agent, but a flat refusal is more than he wants to risk. And a large part of the reason Moses is so reluctant to return to Egypt is fear. This fear is not irrational. After Moses killed an Egyptian overseer for beating an Israelite laborer, a pair of Israelites taunted him about what he had thought was compassionate act, the pharaoh charged him with murder, and he fled the country.³ Even though a new pharaoh is now the king of Egypt,⁴ Moses is naturally nervous about returning there.

His overriding emotion, fear, is accompanied by a conviction of his own unworthiness for God’s mission. If Moses is an introvert, as I argued in my post Shemot: Not a Man of Words, he would find the prospect of persuading the Israelites in Egypt that he is really God’s agent, and persuading the new pharaoh to change his domestic policy regarding Israelites, a challenge too terrifying to face. Naturally he longs to continue his safe and peaceful life as a trusted son-in-law, husband, father, and shepherd who never has to speak to strangers.

But God answers Moses’ first four objections with reassurances—which fail to reassure him. Finally he resorts to begging God to send someone else.

Anyone but me

And he said: “Please excuse me, my lord! Send, please, by the hand [of whomever] you will send!” (Exodus 4:13)

He is still too afraid of God to say baldly: “I will not go, send someone else!” But that is his underlying message. Twentieth-century commentator Nehama Leibowitz called Moses’ fifth objection a “blank refusal, a final almost desperate rebuttal, as if all his arguments had been silenced and he was left with a barren, bewildered no.”⁵

Yet many commentators view Moses’ final objection as an expression of his humility. Ramban (13^th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, also called Nachmanides) wrote that what Moses means is: “for there is not a person in the world who is not more fit for the mission than I.”⁶

Nineteenth-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch elaborated Moses’ reasoning: “Ultimately the mission will be accomplished; but if undertaken by me, it will initially falter, and You will then have to send ((NP)) someone who is better, more efficient than I am. Rather, send this other one even now.”⁷

Considering how God responds patiently to Moses’ first four objections, he might expect God to be patient with his clumsy “Send, please, by the hand you will send” and infer that Moses is overwhelmed by his own incompetence. Or HaChayim, written by Chayim ben Moshe ibn Attar in the 18^th century, argued: “Moses felt that God had given him leeway and would reply to any reservations he had about accepting such a mission. God wanted that when Moses would finally accept the mission he should do so because he wanted to and not because he had been forced to do so.”⁸

But according to Midrash Tanchuma, a collection of commentary dating as early as the 8^th century C.E., God interprets Moses’ refusal as sheer obstinacy. “The Holy One, blessed be He, rebuked him, saying: Do you believe that your feet are under your control? Thereupon, Moses went to Pharaoh against his will.”⁹ And the next verse in Exodus reports God’s anger (using the biblical idiom of a burning nose).

A human assistant

Then God’s nose burned against Moses, and [God] said: “Isn’t your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know that he can certainly speak, and also, hey! he is going out to meet you. And he will see you, and he will rejoice in his heart. And you will speak to him, and put the words in his mouth. And I, I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you both what you must do.” (Exodus 4:14-15)

Even though God loses patience with Moses, God remains determined to send him to Egypt, and does not punish him. The God character in the Torah is anthropomorphic and does not know ahead of time what humans will do. Although later in the book of Exodus the God character sometimes explodes with anger and kills thousands with sudden diseases, here God remains calm and quickly thinks of a solution.

By this time, God must have noticed that Moses is terrified of speaking to either the Israelites or the pharaoh. But God still wants to use Moses to accomplish the rescue of the Israelites from Egypt. The solution is to recruit a fluent speaker as an intermediary between Moses and the people he is afraid to face. An obvious recruit would be an Israelite elder, a man who is already respected in the community that must be persuaded to follow Moses out of Egypt, as well as knowledgeable about how the Egyptian government operates. The best elder, God decides, is Moses’ older brother Aaron, even though the two brothers have not seen one another for decades. I think God is gambling that the family relationship will make Moses feel safer with Aaron, and Aaron feel more inclined to help Moses.

But why does God mention that Aaron is a Levite, when Moses comes from the same Levite family? According to Ibn Ezra,¹⁰ it is merely a way to distinguish Moses’ brother from other Israelites named Aaron (Aharon, אַהֲרֺן, in Hebrew). Yet God has already distinguished this Aaron from any others by saying “your brother”.

The separation of the tribe of Levi into two categories, Levites and Kohanim (priests who supervise Levites) comes later in the Torah,¹¹ but that did not stop some classic commentators from bringing it in here. Many classic commentators wrote that calling Aaron “the Levite” is a subtle way for God to indicate that in the future Moses and Aaron will change positions. They wrote that God decides to make Aaron, not Moses, the future high priest when Moses begs God to send someone else.¹²

Classic commentators also argued that Moses objected five times to serving as God’s agent not because he was reluctant to do the job, but only because he somehow knew God’s alternative agent would be Aaron, and he did not want his big brother to feel slighted.¹³ (After all, the tradition in the Torah is that the firstborn son holds a higher position than any of his younger brothers, in terms of both inheritance and service as the priest of the extended family.)

According to this argument, God adds that when Aaron sees Moses, “he will rejoice in his heart”, to reassure Moses that he need not object to becoming God’s agent on Aaron’s account.

However, hearing “he will rejoice in his heart” could also reassure Moses that Aaron will be easy to work with. Aaron the friendly extravert will be patient while Moses speaks to him hesitantly, and faithful to Moses’ messages when he transmits them to the Israelites or to Pharaoh.

Moses does not reply to God’s statement that Aaron will speak for him. God proceeds to explain how the process will work:

“And he will speak for you to the people, and it is he [who] will be a mouth for you; and you, you will be as a god for him. And you will take in your hand this staff, with which you will do the signs.” (Exodus 4:16-17)

Moses still does not reply to God. He sees no alternative but to do what God wants. At least God has rearranged the assignment to make it easier for him. He may or may not know that now God is angry with him.

And Moses went and returned to Yitro, his father-in-law, and said to him: “Let me go, please, and I will return to my kinsmen who are in Egypt, and I will see: Are they still alive?” And Yitro said to Moses: “Go with peace.” (Exodus 4:18)

Two characterizations

What is Moses like when he has his first conversation with God?

Above all, he is anxious and fearful. He hides his face when God speaks out of the fire; after God orders him to persuade the Israelites to leave Egypt he asks “What should I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13), objects “But they, they will not trust me, and they will not pay attention to my voice” (Exodus 4:1), and pleads “I am not a man of words.” (Exodus 4:10) In my opinion, Moses is an introvert who knows he cannot put together words fast enough for a conversation with strangers. He is both afraid of facing the Israelite elders, and certain that he will fail to persuade them.

Moses also asks God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11) Even though he grew up in an Egyptian palace and was the adopted son of the previous pharaoh’s daughter, he is not merely humble, but meek and unassertive. He is familiar with court procedures, but he does not expect the pharaoh or his advisers to respect him. Perhaps his lack of an illustrious Egyptian father affected how he was treated when he was growing up.

Moses’ final attempt to excuse himself from being God’s agent is a cry of desperation: “Send, please, by the hand [of whomever] you will send!” (Exodus 4:13) Then he gives up.

What is God like during this first conversation?

The God who speaks out of the fire in the thornbush is like a kind parent trying to reassure an unnecessarily anxious child. When Moses asks “Who am I to go to Pharaoh?”, God says soothingly: “But I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12) When Moses asks what name of God he should give the Israelites, God’s first answer is too abstract; he tells Moses to say: “Ehyeh sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14). Ehyeh could mean I will be, I will become, I have not finished being, or I have not finished becoming. Then God remembers that Moses needs a simpler answer, and orders him to tell the Israelites that the god of their forefathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob sent him. When Moses objects that the Israelites will not trust him, God gives him three miraculous signs he can demonstrate to them.

When Moses tries to excuse himself a fourth time, by saying he is not a man of words, God tries to reassure him by saying “I myself will be with your mouth, and I will instruct you regarding what you will speak.” (Exodus 4:12) Even that reassurance does not calm Moses’ anxiety, and he resorts to asking God to send someone else, anyone but him.

Momentarily God feels a flare of anger—as all parents do when their best efforts fail to make their little ones calm down and cooperate. But then God thinks of a work-around using Moses’ long-lost brother, Aaron. From the God character’s point of view, Moses’ silence might seem sullen. But at least Moses stops resisting and sets off for Egypt.

To be continued …

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1. See the last three posts in this series: Shemot: Empathy, Fear, and Humility, Shemot: Names and Miracles, and Shemot: Not a Man of Words. (My first post in the series, about when God initiates the conversation by calling to Moses from the fire in the thorn-bush, is: Shemot: A Close Look at the Burning Bush.)
2. Isaiah 6:1-8; Jonah 1:1-3 and 4:1-2.
3. Exodus 2:12-15.
4. Exodus 2:23.
5. Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot (Exodus), Part 1, translated by Aryeh Newman, The Joint Authority of Jewish Zionist Education, Jerusalem, 1996, p. 66-67.
6. Ramban, translation in www.sefaria.org.
7. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 54-55.
8. Or HaChayim, translation in www.sefaria.org.
9. Midrash Tanchuma, translation in www.sefaria.org.
10. 12th-century rabbi Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra.
11. The first priests are Aaron and his sons. The first indication that they give directions to the Levites is in Exodus 28:21, but their duties are formally distinguished from those of the priests in the book of Numbers.
12. E.g. Shemot Rabbah 3:17, Talmud Bavli Zevachim 102a, Rabbeinu Bachya.
13. E.g. Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot Rabbah, Rashi, Da’at Zekinim.

(This is the fourth post in a series about the conversations between Moses and Gold on Mount Sinai (a.k.a. Choreiv), and how their relationship evolves. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, you might try: Yitro: Rejected Wife.)

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Speaking out of the fire in the thornbush, God tells Moses the plan for bringing the Israelites out of Egypt and into Canaan, and concludes:

“And now, come! And I will send you to Pharaoh, and you will bring out my people, the Israelites, from Egypt.” (Exodus 3:10)

Moses immediately begins trying to excuse himself from the mission. But God has an answer to each of his first three objections. God even equips Moses with two miraculous signs he can demonstrate to the Israelites so they will believe their god sent him. (See my posts: Shemot: Empathy, Fear, and Humility and Shemot: Names and Miracles.)

But Moses makes a fourth objection: he can hardly speak at all. His implication is that someone who cannot make himself understood to either the Israelites or Pharaoh would be a poor agent for God.

And Moses said to Y-H-V-H: “Please excuse me, my lord; I am not a man of words, neither in the past, nor the day before yesterday, nor at the time when you speak to your servant [now]—because I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue.” (Exodus 4:10)

(The Hebrew word for “heavy”, kavod, כָּבוֹד, can also mean impressive, magnificent, or glorious, but only the primary meaning, “heavy”, fits this verse. Less literal English translations of Exodus 4:10 change the metaphor from “heavy” to “slow”.)

What does Moses mean when he says he is heavy of mouth and tongue, and therefore not a man of words? One opinion is that Moses has a speech defect, while another line of commentary says he has no trouble with pronunciation, but he cannot find the right words.

Defective pronunciation?

The speech defect camp includes Rashi (11^th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), who wrote that Moses is a stammerer; and 12^th-century rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra, who argued that Moses could not pronounce any of the labials (consonants pronounced with the lips, such as בּ (b) and פּ (p)), and also had trouble with some of the linguals (consonants pronounced with the tongue, such as ד (d), and ל (l)).

The classic midrash invented an episode in Moses’ childhood to account for a speech defect. When Moses was weaned, he was adopted as a son by the pharaoh’s  daughter.¹ In one version of the midrash, “Pharaoh would kiss him and hug him, and he would take Pharaoh’s crown and place it on his head, as he was destined to do when he grew older. … The magicians of Egypt were sitting there, and said: ‘We are afraid of this one who takes your crown and places it on his head, lest he be the one regarding whom we said that he is destined to wrest your kingdom from you.’ Some of them said to behead him, some said to burn him.” (Shemot Rabbah)²  

In another version, “While growing up in Pharaoh’s palace Moses once took the king’s crown and threw it on the ground. The king wanted to execute him on account of this misdemeanor.” (Rabbeinu Bachya’s paraphrase of Pesikta Zutrata)³

In both versions of the midrash, little Moses was presented with a bowl containing a lump of gold and a burning coal. The court agrees that if he reached for the gold, he was smart enough to depose the pharaoh when he grew up, and he would be executed. But if he reached for the coal, he would be allowed to live.

“Immediately, they brought it before him and he extended his hand to take the gold. [The angel] Gabriel came and pushed his hand. He seized the coal and placed his hand with the coal into his mouth, and his tongue was burned.” (Shemot Rabbah)⁴

And God said to him: “Who placed a mouth in the human being? Or who makes [someone] mute or deaf or clear-sighted or blind? Is it not I, God? So now go! And I myself will be with your mouth, and I will instruct you regarding what you will speak.” (Exodus 4:11-12)

The first part of God’s rebuttal supports the speech defect theory; it implies that God is responsible for all the physical characteristics a person is born with, including birth defects. But then why does God promise to “instruct” Moses regarding what to say?

Ibn Ezra wrote: “God told Moses that He would teach him to speak with words that do not contain letters that he had difficulty enunciating.”⁵ Other commentators wrote that whenever Moses was speaking as God’s agent, God would intervene so that Moses’ lips and tongue would operate perfectly.

According to the 14^th-century commentary Tur HaArokh, God “simply told him to go and fulfill his mission, and that He would come to his aid whenever required. Whatever he would be saying to Pharaoh would come out of his mouth clear …”⁶

19^th-century Rabbi S.R. Hirsch added: “In fact, a stammerer is he most fitting one to carry out this mission. Every word that he will utter will itself be a sign. If a man who ordinarily stammers is able to speak fluently when he speaks at God’s command, his every word bears the stamp of credibility.”⁷

Why doesn’t God eliminate Moses’ speech defect altogether? Because Moses does not ask him to, according to the commentators who favor the speech defect theory. And why doesn’t Moses pray to God to remove his speech defect?

“Seeing that Moses, basically, did not wish to assume the burden of leadership at all, he did not pray to God to heal his speech defect. He contented himself with saying that someone with a blemish such as he suffered from was not likely to be the most suitable candidate for the task proposed by God. God, for His part, did not want to heal his speech defect precisely because he had not prayed to Him to do this.” (Tur HaArokh) ⁸

At a loss for words?

Other commentary rejects the theory that Moses has a speech defect, and interprets his statement that he is “not a man of words” as an argument that he is not a persuasive speaker. Being “heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue” is then a metaphor for a general delay in finding the right words to say.  A 2^nd-century C.E. commentary simply states that Moses is not eloquent.⁹

A millennium later, Rashbam and Chizkuni¹⁰ claimed that Moses fled from Egypt before he had completed his education, and has not spoken the Egyptian language since, so therefore he is not fluent in the language spoken by the Egyptian aristocracy.¹¹

Yet Moses grew up with an Egyptian princess as his adoptive mother; he must have been exposed to upper-class Egyptian for years. I suspect Moses is more likely to worry that he will be unable to speak in Hebrew to the Israelites living in Egypt. After all, when he was weaned (at around age three in that culture) the pharaoh’s daughter adopted him, and he left his Israelite birth parents. Only when Moses became an adult did he go to see the people of his birth.

… and Moses grew up. And he went out to his kinsmen, and he saw their forced labor. And he saw an Egyptian man striking a Hebrew man, one of his kinsmen. And he turned this way and that way, and he saw that there was no man, and he struck down the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.  (Exodus 2:11-12)

If Moses had not led a sheltered and insulated life in the palace, he would know that the Israelites doing forced labor on the pharaoh’s building projects were often beaten¹²—and he would know that killing one overseer would not rescue any Israelite from future beatings.

Instead, Moses might well think he can rescue the victim and eliminate the oppressor himself,  as long as he kills the overseer in secret.¹³ But his secret is revealed, and the pharaoh, Moses’ adoptive grandfather, orders him killed. Apparently the society Moses has grown up in has no qualms about summary executions.

Tammi J. Schneider noted in a 2025 article: “Moses does not, however, have a conversation with the Egyptian about his actions before he kills him. Moses is a bit of a hothead. The next day, when Moses finds two Hebrews fighting, he does speak briefly with the offender. The text is silent as to what language they speak, but there is no suggestion that Moses has difficulty doing so … The interaction leads Moses to flee, again with no suggestion that he discussed his plan or actions with anyone; he just acts on his own impulses …

In Midian, he impulsively, without any conversation, drives off the shepherds who are preventing the seven daughters of Reuel from watering their flocks … This pattern suggests that Moses’ problem is not a speech impediment, but an impulse to act before speaking.”¹⁴ Perhaps when Moses is speaking to God on Mount Sinai, he says he is “not a man of words” because he knows he is an impulsive hothead. But there is another possible reason why he does not stop to speak before he acts.

No time for an introvert

While extraverts can think while they speak, introverts need time to figure out what they will say before they start speaking. I am an introvert, and I often want to contribute to a conversation among several people, but by the time I have composed my comment, the conversation has already moved on to another topic. Introverts can only speak well spontaneously about our own areas of expertise. The other situation in which we can speak quickly is when we happen to have rehearsed a remark ahead of time just in case the topic came up.

Many introverts do not trust themselves to come up with the right words before someone else jumps in (with either speech or action). What if Moses is an introvert, but he feels compelled to do something about the abusive overseer before any witness arrives at the scene?

He acts without speaking then. When he goes out to the worksite again the next day, he says to an Israelite who hits another Israelite: “Why do you hit your fellow?” (Exodus 2:13)

(His question is only three words long in Hebrew: “Lamah takeh rei-ekha?” (לָמָּה תַכֶּה רֵעֶךָ).)

Because the stakes are lower, Moses is willing to risk blurting something with no time to think. The guilty Israelite (an obvious extravert) taunts him by saying: “Who made you the man who is an officer and a judge over us? Are you saying you’ll kill me like you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14) Moses turns away in silence, unable to formulate a quick rejoinder.

One advantage introverts have over extraverts is that we can happily spend long periods of time alone. When Moses flees Egypt, he does not take any servants with him, but walks alone across the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula and into Midianite territory.

When he stops at a well there, seven sisters arrive and begin to water their flock, and then some male shepherds show up and rudely drive them away from the well. I think Moses wants to stop the men immediately, but he cannot think of what to say. So he just jumps up and drives them away. The father of the young women takes in Moses and gives him one of his daughters in marriage.

And Moses the introvert is content to shepherd his Midianite father-in-law’s flock alone in the wilderness. Once he takes the flock all the way to Mount Sinai, and God speaks to him out of a fire in a bush.

Naturally Moses is reluctant to abandon his peaceful life and afraid to return to Egypt—especially on a mission that will require him to speak to a lot of strangers about critical matters. So he tries to convince God that he is not the right man for the job. But he does not dare keep God waiting while he formulates excuses.

No wonder the four objections Moses the introvert makes are disorganized and indirect.

First Moses asks: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11) He pauses, perhaps searching for more words, and God promises to be with him so he will succeed.

Moses asks a second question: “And they say to me: ‘What is his name?’ What should I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13) He probably means that he does not even know the name the Israelites in Egypt use for their god. But God dips into theology and gives him two divine names related to the verb “to be” or “to become”. Then Moses manages to give the reason why he asked for a name: “But they will not trust me, and they will not pay attention to my voice.” (Exodus 4:1) In response, God patiently gives Moses two minor miracles he can perform again in Egypt.

But Moses is still afraid of returning to Egypt, and afraid that he will not be able to handle the job. So he grasps at a fourth excuse, reminding God that he is not a man of words.

If Moses had had enough time to plan his speech to God, he could have made a more coherent and convincing argument. He might have said (without pausing to let God interrupt): “But if I went, nobody would believe me! The Israelites wouldn’t believe me and follow me because I don’t speak Hebrew! And the new pharaoh wouldn’t believe me and let the Israelites go because the old pharaoh laid a murder charge on me and I ran away! So please send someone else!”

However, even if God had given Moses lots of time to figure out what to say, and he had then presented God with the argument above, it would not have let him off the hook. God would still have promised him success, still have given him two small miracles to induce the Israelites to believe him, and still have promised to feed him the right words.

And Moses, still not reassured, would still have resorted to begging God to send someone else.

To be continued …

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1. Exodus 2:1-10.
2. Shemot Rabbah 1:26, translation in www.sefaria.org.
3. 14^th-century rabbi Bachya ben Asher (“Rabbeinu Bachya”) paraphrasing 11^th-century Tobias ben Eliezer’s Pesikta Zutrata; translation of Bachya in www.sefaria.org.
4. Shemot Rabbah, ibid.
5. Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, translation in www.sefaria.org.
6. Tur HaArokh, by Rabbi Jacob ben Asher (c. 1269 – c. 1343), translation in www.sefaria.org.
7. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 53.
8. Tur HaArokh, ibid.
9. Seder Olam Rabbah 5:2, 2^nd century C.E.
10. Rashbam (12^th-century rabbi Shmuel ben Meir) and Chizkuni (a 13^th century collection of commentary).
11. Da-at Zekinim, a 12^th-13^th century collection of commentary, upped the ante by claiming that the pharaoh and his advisors spoke 70 languages, and would ridicule Moses if he could not answer them in the same tongues.
12. Exodus 1:11-14, 3:7-9.
13. In Exodus 2:12, Moses glances around first, then kills the Egyptian without a witness, then buries the body in the sand.

(This is the third post in a series about the interactions between Moses and God on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv, and how their relationship evolves. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Beshallach, you might try: Beshallach: See, Fear, Trust, Sing.)

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Moses is shepherding the flock of his Midianite father-in-law when he approaches the “mountain of God”, called Choreiv or Sinai, and turns aside to examine a fire in a thornbush that does not burn the branches. God speaks out of the fire, ordering him to lead the Israelites from Egypt to the land of Canaan. But although Moses feels empathy for the oppressed Israelites, he does not want the job. Either fear or deep humility drives him to find one objection after another.

Who am I?

His first excuse for not going to Egypt, which I discussed in last week’s post, Shemot: Empathy, Fear, and Humility, is: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

And God replies: “But I will be with you.” (Exodus 3:12) Moses is not encouraged, but he does not argue with God. He moves on to his next question.

Who are you?

Then Moses said to the elohim: “Hey, I come to the Israelites and I say to them: ‘The elohim of your father sent me to you.’ And they say to me: ‘What is his name?’ What should I say to them?” (Exodus 3:13)

elohim (אֱלֺהִים) = god, gods, God. (A general term, not a name of God.)

Many commentators have offered insights about Moses’ request for God’s name, insights based on the assumption that Moses already knows all the names of God that have already been mentioned in the book of Genesis, and so do the Israelites in Egypt.¹ But why should we make this assumption? Moses grew up in an Egyptian household. He did not even go out to look at the Israelite men doing forced labor until he was an adult, and he fled to Midian shortly after that. There is no reason to think he learned any names of God from the Israelites—or that the book of Genesis had been written yet.

The only name of God that Moses might know is God’s four-letter personal name, Y-H-V-H. Some modern commentators theorize that Y-H-V-H was originally the name of a Midianite god.² If so, the author(s) of this story in Exodus could have drawn from a tradition that Moses’ father-in-law, a Midianite priest, taught him the God-name Y-H-V-H.

But even so, Moses would not expect that a Midianite god-name could help him gain the trust of the Israelites in Egypt.

Moses’ request for a name of God to tell the Israelites seems more like an extension of Moses’ first objection: he is not qualified for the job in Egypt, he is out of his depth. He knows the names of a number of Egyptian gods, but he does not know the name of the God speaking to him now from out of the fire in the bush. How can he be the prophet of a God he does not even know?

Another reason for Moses’ request for a name is that he is afraid the Israelites will not believe he is the agent of their God. What could he possibly say or do that would make them trust him?

But Moses, who has already hidden his face from God out of fear, hides his real question behind a more polite one: Suppose he goes to Egypt and the Israelites ask for God’s name. What should he say?

An unhelpful reply

And Elohim said to Moses: “Ehyeh what ehyeh.” And [God] said: “Thus you must say to the Israelites: Ehyeh sent me to you.” (Exodus 3:14)

ehyeh (אֶהְיֶה) = I will be, I will become, I have not finished being, I have not finished becoming. (The root verb hayah, הָיָה = was, became. The prefix e-, אֶ indicates both the first person singular and the imperfect form of the verb. Biblical Hebrew often uses the imperfect as a future tense, but it can also mean the action has not been completed.)

Commentators have a field day with this verse. But its theological implications do nothing for Moses’ dilemma. I can imagine him shuddering at the thought of what would happen to a stranger who showed up in Egypt and tried to explain “Ehyeh what ehyeh” to the Israelites.

Perhaps God hopes Moses will ponder “Ehyeh what ehyeh” in the future and learn something about the nature of God. But clearly he needs a different answer to his question about what name to give if the Israelites ask him to identify the God who sent him.

Then Elohim said further to Moses: “Thus you will say to the Israelites: ‘Y-H-V-H, the elohim of your fathers, the elohim of Abraham, the elohim of Isaac, and the elohim of Jacob, sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is how I will be remembered from generation to generation.” (Exodus 3:15)

Y-H-V-H (י־ה־ו־ה) = the four-letter personal name of God (also called the tetragrammaton), spelled without hyphens in the Hebrew bible and Jewish prayers. For less sacred uses, Jews insert typographic marks such as hyphens, or replace the tetragrammaton with a synonym. (For possible etymologies of Y-H-V-H,see my post: Beshallakh & Shemot: Knowing the Name.)

The book of Exodus does not say whether the name Y-H-V-H was passed down among the Israelites during the 200 or more years they live in Egypt. Nor does it say whether the Israelites still tell stories about Abraham, Isaac, and/or Jacob. But even if they were familiar with the tetragrammaton and the three patriarchs, would knowing these names help Moses with his mission?

The God speaking out of the fire in the bush seems to think so, because God continues:

“Go and gather the elders of Israel, and you must say to them: “Y-H-V-H, the God of your fathers, appeared—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—saying: ‘I have definitely noticed you and what is being done to you in Egypt. And I said I will bring you up from the misery of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites …’ And they will listen to your voice. Then you will come, you and the elders of Israel, to the king of Egypt … and you will say to him: ‘Y-H-V-H, the God of the Hebrews, has met us. So now please let us go on a journey of three days into the wilderness, and we will make slaughter-sacrifices to Y-H-V-H, our elohim.’” (Exodus 3:16-18)

Then God predicts that the pharaoh will not let the Israelites leave until after God has stricken Egypt with “wonders”, and that when they do leave, the Egyptian people will send them off with silver, gold, and clothing.

Moses is not convinced. He is too fearful, and maybe also too humble, to believe God will make everything come out all right.

Trust in miracles

And Moses replied, and he said: “But they, ya-aminu not in me, and they will not pay attention to my voice. Indeed, they will say: ‘Y-H-V-H has not appeared to you!’” (Exodus 4:1)

ya-aminu (יַאֲמִינוּ) =they will trust, they will believe.

Perhaps Moses does not expect any sympathy from the Israelites because he remembers when he returned to the scene of his sole crime (the murder of an Egyptian man who was beating an Israelite), and saw two Israelite men fighting. He asked one Israelite why he was striking the other, and the Israelite replied:

“Who appointed you as an officer and judge over us? Are you going to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14)

How can Moses protest that the Israelites will not believe him when God has just said “And they will listen to your voice”? Listening implies a willingness to believe what is said. The 16th-century commentator Sforno wrote that Moses was not referring to his first speech to the Israelites, but to later events.

“Once the people will see that Pharaoh will refuse to let them go, they will lose faith in me and will not listen to my promises … for they know that when God says something it will be so. They will not be able to account for my failure except by claiming that I am an impostor.” (Sforno)³

The God character in this story is patient, and responds with a new approach. According to 14^th-century commentary by Rabbeinu Bachya: “This is why God had to equip Moses with the ability to perform certain miracles to help convince the people that he was no charlatan.”⁴

Then Y-H-V-H said to him: “What is this in your hand?” He said: “A staff.” And [God] said: “Throw it to the ground!” And he threw it to the ground, and it became a snake. And Moses fled from its face. Then Y-H-V-H said to Moses: “Reach out your hand and grasp it by its tail!” And he reached out his hand and got a firm hold on it, and it became a staff in his fist. [God said] “So that ya-aminu that Y-H-V-H, the elohim of their fathers, the elohim of Abraham, the elohim of Isaac, and the elohim of Jacob, appeared to you.” (Exodus 4:2-5)

Here God gives Moses exactly what he asked for. Demonstrating this miracle is indeed likely to make the Israelites trust him and believe that their own god sent him.

And Moses, who has been consistently fearful from God’s first words to him until he flees from the snake that used to be his own staff, now summons his courage and grabs the snake firmly. At that moment, at least, he trusts God to protect him.

Why does God pick this particular miracle? 12^th-century commentator Abraham ibn Ezra wrote that God started with Moses’ staff for practical reasons. “God gave Moses a sign via an object that was always with him, the staff, Moses’ walking stick, as is the custom with elders. Moses would not appear as a shepherd before Pharaoh.”⁵

Why does God make the staff turn into a snake? 19^th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote that the transformation of staff to snake and snake to staff will demonstrate to the Israelites that God has the power to overturn both human authority and hostile forces (two different descriptions of the pharaoh).

“You have been sent by the one sole God Who, if He so desires, can cause the very thing on which man relies for support, and which serves him as an instrument of his authority, to turn against him. Conversely, if He so desires, God can take a hostile force that is feared and shunned by man and place it into his hand as an accommodating support and tractable tool.” (Hirsch)⁶

Another line of commentary claimed that both the staff-snake miracle and the following miracle demonstrate that God is in charge of life and death.

And Y-H-V-H said further to him: “Please place your hand in your bosom!” And he placed his hand in his bosom [the front fold of his robe], and he took it out, and hey! His hand had tzara-at like snow! Then [God] said: “Return your hand to your bosom!” And he returned his hand to his bosom. Then he took it out of his bosom, and hey! It was restored as his flesh. (Exodus 4:6-7)

tzara-at (צָרַעַת) = a skin disease characterized by dead-white patches of skin.

16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, following 14^th-century Rabbeinu Bachya, explained both miracles this way: “Here is a staff which is an inert object, and the hand which is something very much alive. I will demonstrate that I can kill that which is alive and bring to life that which is dead. I will make your hand useless and your staff will suddenly come alive.”⁷

Commentators have also pointed out that the second miracle points at Moses’ inappropriate speech even more than the first, since the Talmud considered tzara-at a divine punishment for evil speech.⁸

And Hirsch added: “For it demonstrates that not only the staff, but also the hand that holds and guides the staff, is subject to God’s control. … even if man seeks to withdraw into himself and rely only on himself, he cannot be sure of himself. If God wishes, He can plant discord even within man’s inner self.”⁹

After providing Moses with these two miracles for demonstration purposes, God says that if the Israelites do not believe him after the first sign, they will believe him after the second. But if even that does not work,

… and they do not listen to your voice, then you must take some water of the Nile, and you must pour it out on the dry land, and the water that you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry land. (Exodus 4:9)

Moses does not ask for a fourth miracle to demonstrate his bona fides. Instead he moves on to another excuse to stay home in Midian, another reason why he is not the right person for God’s mission.

To be continued …

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1. For example, Ramban (Nachmanides), Or HaChayim, and Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote that Moses was really asking which attribute of God would rescue the Israelites from Egypt, because that would be important information for the Israelites.
2. E.g. Israel Knohl, https://www.thetorah.com/article/yhwh-the-original-arabic-meaning-of-the-name.
3. Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, translated in www.sefaria.org.
4. Rabbeinu Bachya (Rabbi Bachya ben Asher), translated in www.sefaria.org.
5. Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, translated in www.sefaria.org.
6. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 50.
7. Sforno, ibid.
8. E.g. Rashi and 14^th-century rabbi Jacob ben Asher in Tur HaArokh.
9. Hirsch, p. 51.

(This is the second post in a series about the interactions between Moses and God on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv, and how their relationship evolves. If you would like to read one of my posts about this week’s Torah portion, Bo, you might try: Bo: Pride and Ethics.)

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The pharaoh of Egypt dies, and the murder charge against Moses expires. But Moses continues to live in the wilderness east of Egypt with Yitro, a priest of Midian. He marries one of Yitro’s daughters, they have two sons.

Back in Egypt, there is a new pharaoh, but he is still subjecting the Israelites to forced labor.

And the Israelites moaned from the servitude, and they cried out, and their cry went up to God, from the servitude. And God paid attention to their groaning, and God remembered [God’s] covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. (Exodus 2:23-24)

Divine miracles are necessary, but not sufficient, to bring the Israelites out of Egypt. A human intermediary is also needed: a prophet and leader to speak to Pharaoh and to lead the Israelites from Egypt to Canaan. For this job, God picks Moses.

Why does God choose Moses?

By the time God calls Moses’ name on Mount Sinai, Moses has already exhibited some character traits that make him a good choice. For one thing, he is curious about why the fire in the thorn-bush does not burn it up, and takes a closer look. (See last week’s post, Shemot: A Close Look at the Burning Bush.) A prophet must be open to hearing from God, and a leader must notice and investigate anything out of the ordinary.

Another of Moses’ helpful character traits is empathy for the underdog. When Moses sees an Egyptian man beating a Israelite, he first checks to see if there is anyone else around (to help, or to witness). Seeing no one, he strikes down the Egyptian and buries him in the sand. Although Moses is an adopted son of an Egyptian princess, he does not try to command the Egyptian overseer to cease. Either he is afraid that the Egyptian will strike him next, despite his apparent status, or he is so humble he does not believe he has any authority over an Egyptian overseer (perhaps because he carries no authority with anyone related to the pharaoh by birth rather than adoption).

When Moses goes back the next day, he sees two Israelite men fighting. He is not afraid to speak up to them, and he asks one Israelite why he is striking the other.

And [the Israelite] said: “Who appointed you as an officer and judge over us? Are you going to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was frightened, and said [to himself]: “Surely the matter is known!” (Exodus 2:14)

Pharaoh condemns Moses to death for the murder of the Egyptian, and Moses is too humble—or frightened—to fight the charge. He immediately flees into the wilderness. After several days he stops at a well where seven female shepherds are beginning to water their flock. When a group of male shepherds arrive and shove them away from the well, Moses fights them off, then helps the women draw water. They take him home to their father, who adopts him into the family. Out of either fear or humility, Moses never mentions that he used to live like a prince in Egypt, nor that he is wanted for murder.

Moses’ empathy for the underdog results in his flight to Midian. His curiosity draws him to the “mountain of God”, and then to God’s manifestation in a divine fire. Another character trait needed for God’s mission is humility, but so far Moses seems to be more motivated by fear of authority. When he kills the abusive Egyptian he is afraid that the pharaoh will find out, and when the pharaoh orders his execution he is afraid he will be found. Naturally he is nervous about the God on the mountain, too. In last week’s post, we saw how God gradually leads Moses up to the point where he can hear God call his name. Once Moses has responded to God’s second call by saying “Here I am”, God lets him know which god is calling.

Moses hides his face

And [God] said: “I am the God of avikha; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, because yarei of looking at God. (Exodus 3:6)

avikha (אָבִיךָ) = your father, your forefather. (The plural would be avoteykha,אֲבוֹתֶיךָ, “your fathers”.)

yarei (יָרֵא) = he was afraid, he was in awe.

Why does God start off by saying “I am the God of your father” in the singular? The classic midrash¹ assumed that God meant Moses’ biological father, Amram.

“The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘If I appear to him in loud voice, I will terrify him; in soft voice, he will take prophecy lightly.’ What did He do? He appeared to him with the voice of his father. Moses said: ‘Here I am; what does Abba want?’ The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘I am not your father, but rather the God of your father. … The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’. Moses was joyful and said: ‘Abba is enumerated with the patriarchs. Moreover, he is greater, as he was mentioned first.’” (Shemot Rabbah 3:1)²

But the book of Exodus itself does not depict Moses as so naïve and childlike. Furthermore, Moses might not even remember his father’s voice, since the pharaoh’s daughter took him into her palace when he was about three years old, after Moses’ mother had weaned him. And he would be unlikely to refer to Amram as “Abba”, the equivalent of “Dad”. So I prefer the commentary that says God refers to the collective “forefather” of the Israelites, then elaborates by citing the three patriarchs who are the forefathers of the Israelites: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.³

Why does Moses hide his face in fear (or awe) only when he hears that the God who is addressing him is the God of the Israelites? Perhaps he is not afraid of looking at other gods; he must have done it all the time when he lived with royalty in Egypt. But he takes the God of the Israelites, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, more seriously.

Maybe he is frightened because he believes the God of his birth family has more power over him than any other god would. Maybe he is overwhelmed by awe because he is humble, and knows he is unworthy of being addressed by any God.

Or maybe he is frightened because he intuits that God would not speak to him except to ask him to do something terribly dangerous.

Moses’ first attempt to get out of the mission

Although Moses has hidden his face, God goes on speaking to him, filling in some backstory:

“I have definitely seen the suffering of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their outcry in the face of their oppressors, for I am acquainted with their pain. And I have come down to rescue them from the hand of Egypt and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey,⁴ to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. … And now, come! And I will send you to Pharaoh, and you will bring out my people, the Israelites, from Egypt.” (Exodus 3:7-8, 10)

Despite God’s careful attempt to bring Moses to the right balance of fear and courage to receive the divine message, Moses does not respond with the equivalent of “Yes, sir!” Instead he starts making excuses why he should not go.

But Moses said to God: “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring out the Israelites from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

Is this humility, or is it the first excuse that comes to Moses’ mind to get out of what sounds like a difficult and dangerous job?

Some of each, according to Tze-enah Ure-enah: “That is, Moses said: I am lowly and I should speak with a king? Perhaps he will kill me?”⁵

But S.R. Hirsch saw Moses’ first excuse as humility without any thought of self-preservation: “Was he not entitled to doubt whether he had the imposing, overpowering strength of personality required to transform a nation of slaves into a people of God?”⁶

Joanathan Sacks offered a different argument why Moses would be reluctant to give up his life in Midian for the sake of the Israelites in Egypt: “He may have been Jewish by birth, but he had not suffered the fate of his people. He had not grown up as a Jew. He had not lived among Jews. He had good reason to doubt that the Israelites would even recognise him as one of them. … why should he even think of becoming their leader? Their fate was not his. He was not part of it. He was not responsible for it. He did not suffer from it. He was not implicated in it.”⁷

Nevertheless, Sacks pointed out, after he has given God several reasons why he should not be the one to go to Egypt, Moses finally submits and accepts the job, for the same reason he struck down the Egyptian man beating the Israelite laborer. When he sees people suffering, he cannot walk away. His empathy for the underdog is a more important qualification for God’s mission than personal courage.

Moses gets an answer

Then [God] said: “But I will be with you, and this is your sign that I myself sent you. When you bring out the people from Egypt, you will serve God on this mountain.” (Exodus 3:12)

Why does God answer “But I will be with you”? One explanation is that God intends to reassure Moses that he will not have to face the pharaoh alone, or the Israelites (who taunted him when he returned to the scene of his crime).

“One says “I will be with you” only to someone who is afraid.” (Shemot Rabbah)⁸

Adin Steinsaltz explained that God means: “I am not asking you to act on your own strength; you are merely a messenger.”⁹

On the other hand, “God was with him” is a biblical idiom for success. For example:

And God was with Joseph, and he was a successful man, and he was in the house of his Egyptian master. And his master saw that God was with him and everything that he did God made successful in his hand.” (Genesis 39:2-3)

So when God tells Moses “I will be with you”, God might be promising him that his mission will succeed. And Moses’ very success would be a sign to the Egyptians and the Israelites that God sent him on the mission.¹⁰

Hirsch wrote that God’s “I will be with you” means that God knows Moses is unable to succeed on his own—and this is the very the reason why God chooses him for the mission. He imagined God explaining:

“I need someone who is the wisest and at the same time the humblest of all men. Your marked inadequacy will stamp the work I intend to accomplish through you with a ‘sign’ for all time to come that what you achieved could have been achieved only at My command and by My power. Your very inadequacy will attest to the Divine character of your mission. Without this proof, Israel’s deliverance would be regarded as no different from other events in world history that glorify the power of men.”¹¹

So Moses is the most qualified person to be God’s prophet because he is the least qualified person to face the pharaoh and lead the Israelites.

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Moses does not argue with God about God’s reply “I will be with you”. But he does generate another question, as he flounders for a convincing reason why God should not send him to Egypt after all.

To be continued …

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1. Midrash is a type of commentary that makes additions to the text in order to flesh out the story or to connect it with a mystical tradition.
2. Shemot Rabbah, 10^th-12^th centuries, translation in www.sefaria.org.
3. E.g. Ibn Ezra, 12^th century; Ramban, 13^th century; Rabbeinu Bachya, 14^th century.
4. See my post: Ki Tavo: Milk and Honey.
5. 17^th-century commentary Tze-enah Ure-enah, translation from Yiddish in www.sefaria.org.
6. 19^th-century rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 35.
7. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation, “Who Am I? Shemot”, reposted Jan. 16, 2025.
8. Shemot Rabbah.
9. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem, 2019, quoted in www.sefaria.org.
10. This is the opinion of Rashi (11^th-century rabbi Shlomoh Yitzchaki), and 16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno. (The Torah is ambiguous about whether the sign proving God sent Moses will be Moses’ success in liberating the Israelites from Egypt, or what will happen when they serve God on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv.)
11. Hirsch, p. 36.

(I intended to post this last week, since it examines part of the first Torah portion in the book of Exodus, Shemot, but I didn’t finish it in time because I was sick. Now I am making it the first of a series of posts about how God and Moses interact on Mount Sinai, a.k.a. Choreiv. Meanwhile, if you would like to read one of my posts on this week’s Torah portion, Va-eira, try this one: Va-eira: Taking a Stand at the Nile.)

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Moses is born under the general death sentence that the pharaoh has issued against all male newborns of the Hebrews. His mother hides him, one of the pharaoh’s daughters finds him, and his sister arranges for this Egyptian princess to adopt him. Moses grows up in the safety of the royal palace.

But he knows he is a Hebrew by birth. The narrative of the first Torah portion in the book of Exodus, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), confirms this by saying that when Moses had grown up,

… he went to his kinsmen and he saw their forced labor. And he saw an Egyptian man beat a Hebrew man, one of his kinsmen. (Exodus 2:11)

Moses looks around, then kills the Egyptian. The pharaoh finds out, and once again Moses is under a death sentence. He flees the murder charge, walking alone all the way across the Sinai Peninsula to the land of Midian. A Midianite priest gives Moses shelter and marries him to one of his daughters.

Once again, Moses has been adopted and lives in safety—as long as he never goes back to Egypt.

Then God calls and orders him to do just that.

This is the first time Moses hears from God. If the divine call is not impressive enough, he might ignore it. If it is too overwhelming, he might go insane, or at least decide he is seriously ill, and fail to answer. What kind of approach will make Moses at least listen and respond to God’s order to return to Egypt and ask the new pharaoh to let the Hebrews go?

To answer that question, we need to examine the words the Torah uses in the description of Moses’ call to prophecy.

The place

And Moses was a shepherd of the flock of his father-in-law Yitro, a priest of Midian. And he led the flock ahar the midbar, and he came to the mountain of ha-elohim, to Choreiv. (Exodus 3:1)

ahar (אַחַר) = behind, afterward.

midbar (מִדְבָּר) = wilderness, i.e. any area that is neither farmed nor near a permanent settlement.

ha-elohim (הָאֱלֺהִים) = the gods, God.

Choreiv (חֺרֵב) = the mountain on the Sinai Peninsula called “Sinai” in other strands of the story.¹ (From the root verb charav, חָרַב = dried up, made desolate.)

First God waits until Moses has traveled far from his home. Although many English translations skip the word ahar and just say Moses led his flock into the wilderness, Moses’ home (in his father-in-law’s encampment) is probably already in the midbar. The Midianites were nomadic tribes living along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Aqaba and also closer to the Sinai Peninsula, in the hills north of the Egyptian port of Eilat. Moses would have avoided any Midianite campsites near that port. So he lives in the midbar of Midian.

Now Moses leaves his home in the wilderness and leads the flock even farther away from civilization, “behind” the wilderness, to the mountain of God. Why does he go there?

16^th-century rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, like many classic commentators, wrote: “He wanted to pray and meditate there in complete isolation and concentration.”²

Since Moses might see another shepherd in the wilderness, he takes the flock behind the wilderness, to the foot of Mount Choreiv: a mountain so dry nothing grows on it except thornbushes. But there is no previous indication in the Torah portion that Moses is a prayerful or meditative man. If anything, he is impulsive, quick to attack in order to rescue the underdog.

An alternate explanation is that Moses is looking for a new grazing site, and accidentally wanders to a place that is poor for grazing, but significant for other reasons.

“Apparently, Moses has never been to this mountain before—it must have been in a somewhat remote area. That is why the passage starts off by explaining the special circumstances that led him to this mountain at this time: he had led his flock ‘beyond the wilderness,’ some greater distance than usual, presumably in search of a good grazing site.” (Kugel)³

A third possibility is that Moses’s father-in-law, Yitro, has told him about this mountain associated with a god. As a Midianite priest, Yitro would know of any numinous sites in the region. Later in the book of Exodus, Yitro says:

“Now I know that Y-H-V-H is greater than all the gods.” (Exodus 18:10)

This implies that he already knew about the God whose personal name is the Tetragrammaton, Y-H-V-H; he simply had not known that this particular god was the most powerful. Moses is a curious man; just as he left the comfort of the palace to observe the forced labor of the Hebrews, he might now decide to check out the mountain of the god (ha-elohim), who turns out to be the God (ha-elohim), Y-H-V-H.

Later God will speak directly to Moses’ mind without preliminaries, wherever Moses happens to be. But for the first contact, God waits until Moses arrives at Mount Choreiv. If Moses already associates this mountain with a god, he will be more inclined to listen when God does speak to him.

The fire

The first thing God does when Moses arrives is to make something appear in a thornbush.

And a malakh of Y-H-V-H appeared to him belabat fire in the middle of the sneh. And he looked, and hey! the sneh was burning in the fire, but the sneh was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2)  

malakh (מַלְאַךְ) = messenger. (When a human sends a malakh, it’s another human. When God sends a malakh, it looks like a man but turns out to be God, or it sounds like a human voice but turns out to be God’s voice. Some English translations call a malakh of God an angel.)⁴

belabat (בְּלַבַּת) = in a flame of; in the heart of. (Some commentators derive the word from labah (לַבָּה) = flame, flame-shaped spear-head. Others derive the word from leiv (לֵב) = heart, mind, consciousness; courage; interior, middle.)⁵

sneh (סְנֶה) = thornbush. (This is the accepted translation; it may be the cassia senna shrub, called sene in Arabic. In the entire Hebrew Bible, this word appears only in Exodus 3:2-4 and Deuteronomy 33:16—which is a reference to Exodus 3:2-4. Commentators have suggested that the other name for Mount Choreiv, Mount Sinai, may be derived from sneh—or the other way around!)

What does Moses see in the fire? Is it an image of a man, like many a divine malakh? Or is it the image of a flame in the fire?⁶

19^th-century rabbi Hirsch insisted Moses saw the image of a man, i.e. an angel:

“The angel appeared in the center of the fire, and the fire was in the center of the thorn bush. The thorn bush was not enveloped by flames, and the impression it made was not that of a thorn bush engulfed in flames without being consumed. … Rather, the fire was within the bush and the angel was within the flames.”⁷

Another 19^th-century commentator, Shadal, elaborated:

“Now the bush was on fire, but it was not really burning, but was surrounded by flames like a burning object, since the fire was flashing between the thorns, but did not take to them, and thus at first Moses saw the fire amid the bush, and the bush flashing with fire, and then he saw that it was not burnt, and he said: ‘Let me turn aside to see’ why this bush is not burning.”⁸

On the other hand, even if belabat means “in the heart of”, it can be interpreted not as “in the middle of”, but rather in terms of the human heart as the seat of passion. In the mid-20^th-century Menachem Mendel Kasher wrote:

“The bush resembles the heart. It too can burn without being consumed.”⁹

And at the end of the 20^th century Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg added:

“For the angel appears by means of the heart’s fire; he cannot exist without it.”¹⁰

What is the purpose of all these special effects in the thornbush? Shemot Rabbah, a collection of midrash on the book of Exodus from circa 1200 C.E., plays on the meaning of leiv as “courage” when it explains:

 “In a flame (belabat) of fire” – to give him courage (lelabevo), so that when he arrives at Sinai and sees those fires, he will not fear them.”¹¹

According to Chizkuni in the 13^th-century:

“God wanted Moses to get used to such a phenomenon so that when the time came for the revelation at Mount Sinai, he would not become frightened by either it or the lightning.”¹²

Why does the messenger appear to him in a sneh? Tur HaAroch gave a simple answer in the 14^th century, pointing out that the area around the thornbush would be uncontaminated by feces, since no animal would risk being jabbed by the thorns. God forbid that God should appear in a contaminated (tamei) place!

Da-at Zekenim, a compilation of Torah commentary from the 12^th-13^th centuries, says:

“The reason that God chose this bush to reveal Himself in was that one could not construct a deity or symbol of a deity out of the bush.”¹³

Even though other religions in the Ancient Near East elevated certain trees to divine status, Moses is not about to start worshiping a thornbush. Another message God might be communicating, according to two medieval commentaries, is that there is no place vacant of the divine presence, not even a thornbush.¹⁴

Passing the test

And Moses said: “Indeed, I will turn aside, and I will look at this great sight; why doesn’t the sneh burn up?” And Y-H-V-H saw that he had turned aside to look, and Elohim called to him from the middle of the sneh: “Moses! Moses!” And he said: “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:3-4)

elohim (אֱלֺהִים) = god, gods, God.

Some commentary suggests that God’s whole set-up is a test of Moses’ patience, curiosity, and power of observation. After all, another shepherd might merely think “Oh, a fire. Better herd the sheep away from it.” This practical but automatic thinking is not suitable for a prophet and leader of people, who must figure out the underlying causes of problems. Only after Moses turns aside to examine the bush does God call to him.

On the other hand, piquing Moses’ curiosity might be just the first step in leading him to accept that he is facing God. Rabbeinu Bachya wrote in the 14^th century that the story shows Moses going through three levels of understanding. First he sees the fire with his physical eyes and goes to investigate. “If he had realized it was a heavenly fire, he would not have approached. Once he saw this fire he became stronger through seeing the angel … This means that first he saw the flame, and only after did he see the angel within the fire. Once he became stronger through seeing the angel, he saw the Divine Presence in a prophetic vision. … Because this was the beginning of Moshe’s prophecy, God wanted to orient him little by little and lift him up from one (spiritual) level to the next until his mind would be strong enough.”¹⁵

Why does God call Moses’ name twice? There are only three other places in the Hebrew Bible where God calls someone and repeats his name. In Genesis 22:11, God calls “Abraham, Abraham” because does not pay attention the first time. In Genesis 46:2, God calls “Jacob, Jacob” because Jacob is hesitant about going down to Egypt. And in 1 Samuel 3:10, God calls “Samuel, Samuel” because the first three times God called his name, the boy assumed it was the priest, Eli, calling for him, and he got up and ran to Eli before God could tell him a prophecy.

At the mountain of God, Moses is open to learning something new about the burning bush, but he does not expect to hear God calling his name. Probably the first time he hears it, Moses is flabbergasted. Only when he hears his name the second time is he able to respond. Or as Rabbeinu Bachya explained it:

“Seeing that a prophet would become frightened when he heard his name called for the first time, and as a result of his confusion he would misunderstand the divine message which was to follow, his name is called a second time in order to give him time to collect his thoughts. After the second mention of his name he would receive the message God wanted him to receive.”¹⁶

Moses’ reply “Here I am” could mean “I am at Your disposal.”¹⁷ Or it could mean he was ready to listen to God.¹⁸ Or he might have said “Here I am” even though he did not know who was calling to him.¹⁹

Holy ground

And he [God] said: “Don’t come closer! Take off your sandals from upon your feet, because the place that you are standing on, it is holy ground!” (Exodus 3:5)

Why does God wait until this moment, when Moses has already stepped on holy ground with his sandals on? Maybe the situation at the burning bush has been sufficiently mysterious and daunting up to this point, but now Moses needs an extra boost of alarm. According to Rabbeinu Bachya,

“This was to serve as a warning not to be disrespectful, i.e. nonchalant, when he would be addressed by the Shekhinah, “God’s Presence”.²⁰

Telling Moses to stand barefoot on holy ground could also give him a more subtle message. Bachya wrote:

“He was warned to strip off what the shoe represented, i.e. material concerns. The act of removing his shoes was a mental preparation to ready him to become God’s vessel, His prophet. The lesson was that just as a man can take off his shoe at will, so he can divest himself of material concerns and concentrate on spiritual concerns.”²¹

On the other hand, maybe the important thing about going barefoot is feeling the ground under one’s feet. According to the Chassidic text Itture Torah, “Only when one is barefoot can one feel the little stones underfoot. Moses was to lead his people in such a way that he could feel their smallest sorrows.”²²

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After Moses has responded to each step of God’s gradual introduction, from noticing that the bush is not burning up to hearing God call his name, God decides Moses is ready to receive his marching orders. But is he?

To be continued …

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1. Source scholarship of the 20^th century concluded that the mountain on the Sinai Peninsula where God appears is called “Choreiv” in sources E and D, and “Sinai” in sources J and P. However, 21^st-century scholars are questioning the J-E-P-D classification, while continuing to identify different strands in the Torah written by different sources.
2. Rabbi Ovadiah Sforno, 16^th century, translation in www.sefaria.org.
3. James Kugel, How to Read the Bible, Free Press, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2007, p. 210.
4. See my post: Vayeira: On Speaking Terms.
5. Later in Exodus, God leads the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai by means of a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, and this pillar is sometimes called a malakh. See Exodus 14:19-20 and 14:24 at the Red Sea.
6. See Rashi (11^th century) and Ibn Ezra (12^th century) for a detailed analysis of both positions.
7. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash: Sefer Shemos, translation by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, p. 30-31.
8. Shadal is the acronym of 19^th-century commentator Samuel David Luzzatto. Translation in www.sefaria.org.
9. Menachem Mendel Kasher, Torah Shelemah, vol. 8, p. 123, cited in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, edited by W. Gunther Plaut, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, New York, 1981, p. 407.
10. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Particulars of Rapture: Reflections on Exodus, Doubleday, New York, 2001, p. 338.
11. Shemot Rabbah 2:5, translation in www.sefaria.org.
12. Chizkuni is the name of a compilation by Chizkiah ben Manoach, mid-13^th century. Translation in www.sefaria.org.
13. Da-at Zekenim, a compilation 12^th-13^th century French and German commentary,  translation in www.sefaria.org.
14. Shemot Rabbah 2:5 attributes this bit of wisdom to Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha, while Mekhilta DeRabbi Shimon Ben Yochai 3:1 attributes it to Rabban Gamaliel.
15. Rabbeinu Bachya (Rabbi Bachya ben Asher, 1255-1340), translation in www.sefaria.org.
16. Ibid.
17. Da’at Zekenim, ibid.
18. Malbim is the scronym of 19^th-century rabbi Meir Leibush ben Yehiel Michel Wisser.
19. Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, The Steinsaltz Tanakh, Koren Publishers, Jerusalem, 2019, quoted in www.sefaria.org.
20. Rabbeinu Bachya, ibid.
21. Ibid.

Moses hears God speak out of the burning bush on Mount Sinai, and learns that he must act as God’s prophet and lead the Israelites out of Egypt. He tries four times to get out of the job in this week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1), and one of his efforts leads to God making his staff magical.

First Moses hints that he is not qualified, saying:

“Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out from Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11)

Instead of saying why Moses meets the job qualifications, God replies:

“I will be with you, and this will be your sign I myself sent you.” (Exodus 3:12)

In other words, Moses will be frequently reminded that God sent him on this mission, because God will be present for him. As the story continues, God’s presence with Moses is indeed obvious, since God continues to speak to him.

Next Moses asks what name he should call God when he speaks to the Israelites, and God answers at length, giving him more information about his mission as well as about who God is. Then Moses makes his second protest:

“And if they do not believe me, and do not listen to my voice, but say: Y-H-V-H did not appear to you?” (Exodus 4:1)

This time God responds by showing Moses three “signs” he can perform in front of the Israelites to demonstrate that Y-H-V-H¹ is with him. The first sign turns out to be the most important.

God said to him: “What is this in your hand?” And he said: “A mateh.” (Exodus 4:2)

mateh (מַטֶּה) = a shepherd’s staff; a staff serving as an official symbol of authority over a tribe or country; a tribe. (Plural: mattot, מַטּוֹת.)

Moses is holding a shepherd’s staff because he has just led his father-in-law’s flock through the wilderness all the way to Mount Sinai. But this is his last undertaking as a shepherd. After he returns to Egypt, Moses will use his staff to signal divine miracles. He will also become the leader of the thousands of Israelites who follow him out Egypt.

Now God demonstrates that Moses is no longer holding a mere shepherd’s staff.

Then (God) said: “Throw it to the ground.” So he threw it to the ground, and it became a nachash, and Moses fled from it. Then God said to Moses: “Reach out your hand and grasp it by its tail.” And he reached out his hand and took hold of it, and it became a mateh in his palm. (Exodus 4:3)

nachash (נָחָשׁ)= snake, serpent. (Words from the same root include the verb nichash, נִחַשׁ = practice divination, the noun nachash, נַחַשׁ = bewitchment, magic curse, and nechoshet, נְחֺשֶׁת = copper, copper alloy.)

Then God gives Moses two more signs for the Israelites. For the second sign, is he puts his hand into the fold at the bosom of his robe, and when he pulls it out his hand looks white and scaly. When he repeats the action, his hand returns to normal.² For the third sign, God says,  Moses will pour some water from the Nile on dry ground, and it will turn into blood.³

Once Moses has demonstrated the signs to the Israelites, God says, they will believe that God appeared to him.

Moses does perform all three signs in front of the elders of Israel when he arrives back in Egypt, and they believe he is God’s prophet.⁴ But the only one of these signs he uses in front of Pharaoh is the staff trick. (See next week’s post, Va-eira: Snake Staff, Part 2.)

But the three signs are not enough for Moses, who does not want to be a prophet in the first place. So he makes two more attempts to talk God out of giving him the job. He says he is a slow and clumsy speaker, but God promises to tell him what to say. Finally, Moses simply begs God to send someone else.⁵ God gets angry, then promises to appoint his brother Aaron to help him. And Moses resigns himself to returning to Egypt.

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Moses’ staff could turn into anything surprising, and the transformation would prove that he is a channel for the miraculous power of God. So why does God choose a snake for this sign?

Snake as deceiver

One explanation is that a snake is the opposite of a staff. A snake is a flexible animal that moves with whiplash speed. It can shed its dead skin and emerge alive. And in the story of the Garden of Eden, the snake is clever and deals in deception and half-truths.⁶

Some early commentators claimed that the first time God changed Moses’ staff into a snake, it was a personal message to Moses that he had slandered the Israelites when he said they would not believe him—just as the snake in the Garden of Eden had slandered God by implying that God had lied about the effects of eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.⁷

A staff, on the other hand, is a long stick of dead wood, hard and inflexible. It is reliable, strong enough to lean against without breaking—and therefore a good symbol for a chieftain or a king. 19^th-century Rabbi S.R. Hirsch wrote:

“… מטה [mateh] denotes (a) an extension of the hand, upon which man can lean for support as he stands on the ground; (b) an extension of man’s sphere of power; it is a symbol of his authority. This sign in Moshe’s hand will show the people that, if God so desires, the thing on which a person leans for support and with which he wields his authority can turn into the very opposite: a serpent. … Conversely, if He so desires, God can take a hostile force that is feared and shunned by man and place it into his hand as an accommodating support and tractable tool.”⁸

Snake as phallic symbol

Both a staff and a snake are obvious phallic symbols. I suspect that when this story was told orally, the verbal image of a snake stiffening into a staff in Moses’ hand drew snickers from the audience.

The staff and the snake represent two aspects of power. The staff stands for legitimate authority. The snake stands for creative subversion—the power of the trickster. Perhaps one way God uses the staff and snake is to demonstrate, first to Moses and then to the Israelites, that ultimate power over everything belongs to God.

Furthermore, God only makes the snake harmless enough for Moses to pick up with his bare hand when a demonstration of Moses’ status as God’s prophet is required. This demonstration happens first to Moses himself on Mount Sinai, then to the Israelites, then to Pharaoh and his court.

When Moses sets off for Egypt with his wife Tziporah and their two small sons,

Moses took the mateh of God in his hand. (Exodus 4:20)

Moses’ staff is now called the staff of God because God has imbued it with the power to miraculously turn into a snake (and to signal or initiate other miracles in the future).

An incident on Moses’ journey to Egypt shows that the snake can also be dangerous as a phallic symbol.

On the road, at a lodging-place, God confronted him and sought to kill him. Then Tziporah took a flint, and she cut the foreskin of her son, and she touched it to his raglayim, and she said: “Because a bridegroom of blood you are to me!” (Exodus 4:24-25)

raglayim (רַגְלַיִם) = a pair of feet, a pair of legs—or a euphemism for genitals.

The Torah does not say how God “sought to kill him”. But since the next sentence refers to a foreskin and genitals, the Talmud and Exodus Rabbah imagined the angel of death swallowing Moses from his head down to his genitals, where Moses’ circumcision stops the process.⁹ Rashi wrote:

 “The angel became a kind of serpent and swallowed him [Moses] from his head to his thigh, spewed him forth, and then again swallowed him from his legs to that place. Tziporah thus understood that this had happened on account of the delay in the circumcision of her son.”¹⁰  (For a fuller discussion of the “Bridegroom of Blood” episode, see my post Shemot: Uncircumcised, Part 1.)

The staff that turns into a snake and back is God’s phallic symbol, not Moses’. Moses is merely another of God’s tools. In next week’s Torah portion, Vayeira, God makes Moses use the staff to impress the simple-minded people in Egypt, from Israelite slave to Egyptian monarch. It would be easy for me, as a feminist, to mock these displays of male power. Yet perhaps they are necessary to get some people’s attention.

And once they are paying attention, they might consider the difference between a man with a staff of office on whom you can depend, and a man in authority who is more like a poisonous snake. Which kind of authority is Pharaoh?

What about our leaders and authority figures today?

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1. For an explanation of God’s personal name, indicated by Y-H-V-H, see my post Lekh-Lekha: New Names for God.
2. Exodus 4:6-7.
3. Exodus 4:9.
4. Exodus 4:28-31.
5. Exodus 4:13.
6. Genesis 3:1-6.
7. C.f. Ramban on Exodus 4:3. (Ramban is the acronym of 13^th-century Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, also called Nachmanides.) For the snake’s implication that God was lying when God said eating from the Tree of Knowledge would result in death, see Genesis 3:2-5.
8. Samson Raphael Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash, Sefer Shemos, translated by Daniel Haberman, Feldheim Publishers, Jerusalem, 2005, p. 50. (Hirsch was a 19^th-century German rabbi and commentator.)
9. Talmud tractate Nedarim 32a, Exodus Rabbah 5:8, both written circa 300-600 C.E.
10. Translation from www.sefaria.org. Rashi is the acronym for 11^th-century Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki.

Demagogue (noun): a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power. (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

Egypt has too many immigrants! says the pharaoh says at the beginning of the book of Exodus, in the Torah portion Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1). If the immigrant population increases any more, we’re in trouble!

“Hey, the Israelite people are countless, more numerous than we are! Come, let us use our wits, or else they will increase. Then it will happen that war will be proclaimed against us, and [these people] will actually join our enemies and make war against us, then go up from the land!” (Exodus/Shemot 1:9-10)

A few centuries before, in the book of Genesis, a pharaoh appreciated Joseph’s service so much he invited Jacob’s clan of 70 people to migrate from Canaan to Egypt. Now they have so many descendants that some of the native Egyptians are nervous. The pharaoh escalates their fears by predicting both that the Israelites will rise against the Egyptians, and that they will leave Egypt and, presumably, stop contributing to its economy.

Today demagogues in many western nations spread the notion that immigrants and their descendants will take away jobs, use up public resources, and change the culture of the country. Why did the pharaoh at the beginning of the book of Exodus raise the specter of civil war instead?

The scenario the pharaoh describes in this week’s Torah portion may have actually happened when a Semitic people called the Hyksos conquered northern Egypt and ruled it from 1638 to 1530 B.C.E.. A recent analysis of teeth found in skeletons in the remains of Aravis, their capital in the Nile delta, indicates that the Hyksos came from an established immigrant community within Egypt.¹

None of the pharaohs in the book of Exodus are named, but the first one to speak is sometimes identified with Ramesses II, who ruled in 1279–1213 B.C.E. and built a new capital city, Pi-Ramesses, near the old site of Avaris. During his reign Canaan was a colony of the Egyptian Empire, populated by Semites but controlled by Egyptian administrators and soldiers. Nevertheless, historical memory of the Hyksos might have haunted Egyptians.

After fomenting fear and loathing of the Semitic Israelites living in Egypt, the first pharaoh in Exodus takes two actions. First he takes advantage of the anti-Semitism he has revived to get free labor for his own projects.

Then they set over them [the Israelite men] overseers for corvée labor in order to oppress them with their forced labor, and they built cities of warehouses for Pharaoh: Pitom and Rameseis. (Exodus 1:11)

Native Egyptians are probably glad their pharaoh is conscripting resident aliens instead of them. However, this corvée labordoes not address the pharaoh’s original claim that the Israelites are dangerous because they might fight on the enemy’s side in a war. Even though the Israelite men are supervised by Egyptian overseers, they might revolt if an army from another country promised them liberation.

(The first book of Kings provides an example of rebellion due to forced labor. King Solomon imposes corvée labor on his own people, sending Israelite men in shifts to quarry stone in Lebanon for building Jerusalem’s new temple. Unlike the Israelites in Egypt, Solomon’s laborers work in the quarries one month, then get two months off at home.² The levy continues for further building projects in the northern part of Solomon’s kingdom.³ When Solomon’s son and successor, Rechavam, announces he will work the northern Israelites harder, they revolt and set up their own kingdom.⁴)  

The first pharaoh in Exodus, besides taking advantage of the anti-Semitism he has revived in order to levy forced labor, attempts to commit gradual genocide. He orders the midwives for the Israelites to kill the male infants of Israelite women, but let the females live.⁵ Perhaps his rationale is that the boys would grow up to become soldiers fighting against the native Egyptians. A more efficient way to commit genocide would be to kill the girls as well, since they will give birth to future generations. But the cultural assumption was that girls could be trained as servants and concubines and safely absorbed into the Egyptian population. Why deprive the native Egyptians of a class of docile domestic servants?

But the midwives disobey the pharaoh.

Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them: “Why have you done this thing and let the boys live?” And the midwives said to Pharaoh: “Because the Ivriot are not like the women of Egypt, because [they are] chayot. Hey! Before you come to them to serve as a midwife, they have given birth.” (Exodus 1:18-19) 

Ivriot (עִבְרִיֺּת) = female Hebrews.  (Plural female of Ivri, עִבְרִי. The term Ivri may be related to the term habiru in letters sent from Canaan to Egypt in the 14^th century B.C.E.. The habiru were a marginal social class of outsiders, often outlaws or mercenaries. In Hebrew, Ivri is related to the verb avar, עָוַר = pass through, cross over; an ivri is a boundary-crosser or a nomad. Today the Hebrew language is called Ivrit, עִבְרִית.)

chayot (חָיוֹת) = wild animals.

The midwives probably refer to the Israelite women as Ivriot and chayot in order to sound as if they are as anti-Semitic as the pharaoh.⁶ They get away with their excuse; the pharaoh refrains from punishing them.

Although classic commentary says the two spokeswomen for the midwives, Shifrah and Puah, and actually Moses’ mother and sister, Pharaoh would hardly respond positively to their excuse if they were Semites! But why would the Israelite women use Egyptian midwives? The Torah offers no explanation. Why complicate a juicy story?

Even though the pharaoh lets the midwives off the hook, he still needs to pander to the masses he has inflamed. So he incites the native Egyptians to take violent action.

Then Pharaoh commanded his entire people, saying: “Every son that is born, you shall throw him into the Nile. But every daughter you shall keep alive.” (Exodus 1:22)

Vigilante groups of Egyptian men must have responded by searching Israelite houses, seizing infant boys, and drowning them. The next two sentences in the Torah portion are:

And a man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived, and she gave birth to a son. And she saw him, that he was good, and she hid him for three months. (Exodus 2:1-2:2)

This baby boy is Moses, who is later adopted by a daughter of the pharaoh who does not share her father’s anti-Semitism.

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I believe the pharaoh in this story acts unethically by inciting murder, by imposing corvée labor on residents of his country in a time of peace, and by encouraging prejudicial acts against native-born children of an immigrant population. But not everyone today would agree with me. Demagogues have risen in more than one modern Western nation in the 21^st century, and a few have even been elected as heads of state.

Since the pharaoh in this week’s Torah portion is an absolute ruler, he can issue inflammatory orders without fear of reprise. I pray that all demagogues who incite violence in our time will be brought to justice.

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1. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/first-foreign-takeover-ancient-egypt-was-uprising-not-invasion-180975354/
2. 1 Kings 5:27-31.
3. 1 Kings 11:26-28.
4. 1 Kings 12:1-20.
5. Exodus 1:16.
6. Exodus 1:17-19. See my post Shemot: Disobedient Midwives.

What if someone who should have moral authority orders you to do something immoral?

The Israelites have lived in Egypt for generations when the first Torah portion of Exodus, Shemot (“Names”) begins. But they are still not native Egyptians, and the new pharaoh thinks that in the event of a war, they might join the enemy. And there are too many of them!

Pharaoh’s first attempt at population control is to conscript the Israelite men for corvée labor building cities. Assigning this hard labor to a large immigrant population may be popular among native Egyptians. But why does Pharaoh think it will reduce the Israelite population? Ibn Ezra suggested that they were driven ruthlessly so that the semen of the men would dry up. Chizkuni wrote that Pharaoh expected they would be too overworked to engage in marital intercourse.¹

Yet the Israelite population keeps on increasing.²

Then the king of Egypt said to the midwives of the Ivriyot, of whom the first was named Shifrah and the second was named Puah—he said: “When you deliver [the children of] the Hebrew women, then you must look at the pair of stones. If it is a son, then you must kill him, but if it is a daughter, vachayah.” (Exodus/Shemot 1:15-16)

Ivriyot (עִבְרִיֺּת) = Hebrews. In Genesis through 2 Samuel, Egyptians and Philistines sometimes call an Israelite an Ivri as an ethnic slur implying the person is a foreigner with low social status.

vachayah (וָחָיָה) = and/then she shall live. (A form of the verb chayah, הָיָה = lived.)

Women giving birth in ancient Egypt squatted or kneeled on two parallel stones or bricks. A midwife knelt in front of the woman and caught the baby as it came out between the stones, while two women stationed on either side gave the laboring woman physical and emotional support.

Since only Shifrah and Puah are named in the passage above, some Jewish exegesis imagines only two midwives for hundreds of thousands of Israelite women.³ A more reasonable interpretation is that Shifrah is the foremost midwife, perhaps the head of her guild, and Puah is her second-in-command.

Although Shifrah and Puah are Semetic names,⁴ it is hard to believe that Pharaoh would give Israelite midwives instructions to kill every male newborn among their own people.⁵ Furthermore, Pharaoh would not want the Israaelites to know about his order; if they did, they would stop using Egyptian midwives.⁶ We must assume that midwifery was monopolized by native Egyptians, and Pharoah expects professional Egyptian midwives to obey the king and feel no concern over the deaths of immigrant children.⁷

But Pharaoh is wrong.

And the midwives feared the gods, and they did not do what the king of Egypt spoke to them. Vatechayeyna the boys. (Exodus 1:17)

vatechayeyna (וַתְּחַיֶּיןָ) = and they kept alive. (Another form of the verb chayah.)

What does it mean that the midwives fear the gods? One meaning of “fearing God” in the Torah is feeling awe and respect for God. The other meaning is being averse to doing an immoral deed.⁷ Torah assumes that a sincerely religious person is an ethical person. Here “fearing the gods” means that the midwives have strong moral intuitions.

But they also face a moral dilemma. For millennia cultures throughout the world assigned a high moral value to maintaining an orderly society by doing one’s duty, respecting each person’s station in life, and obeying legitimate authorities.⁸ (This moral value continues in traditional cultures today.) A king’s subjects have a duty to respect his authority and obey his orders. And who could be a more legitimate authority than the pharaoh, who is the sacred mediator between the people and the gods, maintaining the balance of the world?⁹

On the other hand, two universal moral intuitions are that it is wrong to harm another human being, and that it is wrong to abuse one’s power by oppressing others.¹⁰ Killing the baby boys is a case of harming humans without justice. (These infants are innocent, healthy, and wanted by their parents.) The fact that Pharaoh ordered the killings indicates that he is abusing his power and acting as an oppressor.

When people face circumstances in which two or more moral values conflict, we have to either choose the most important  value in that situation, or act for a non-ethical reason. If the midwives were to make a non-ethical choice, they would obey Pharaoh’s orders and avoid any trouble with the government.

Instead, they apparently decide that Pharaoh’s unreasonable order proves that despite his birth and position, he is no longer a legitimate authority. The moral thing to do is to save the lives of the infant boys and disobey the oppressor.

Shifrah and Puah are brave enough to do what they believe is right. Instead of submitting to Pharaoh’s authority, they “fear the gods”—and “the gods” are a higher authority.

And the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them: “Why did you do this thing, vatechayeyna the boys?” And the midwives said to Pharaoh: “Because the Ivriyot are not like the Egyptian women, for they are chayot before the midwife comes to them, and they give birth.” (Exodus 1:18-19)

chayot (חָיוֹת) = wild animals. (Same spelling as the infinitive plural form of the verb chayah.)

Shifrah and Puah lie to Pharaoh. They invent a story that calls Israelite women Ivriyot who are wild animals in contrast to civilized Egyptian women. This lie appeals to the king’s anti-Semitic prejudice.  Now the midwives have added lying to disobedience, but both of these actions are in service to a higher morality—and saves their own lives, as well as those of the Israelite boys.

And God was good to the midwives. And the people increased and became very mighty. (Exodus 1:20)

Taking the moral high road is not only dangerous at times, but also confusing when the road forks. May we all become as virtuous as Shifrah and Puah, who confront an ethical contradiction, make an independent decision, and act courageously to do what our inner “gods” know is right.

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1. Commentary to Exodus 1:11 by 12^th-century C.E. exegete Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra; and 13^th-century C.E. rabbi Hezekiah ben Manoach, author of Chizkuni.
2. Traditional midrash on Exodus 1:12 imagines that the women went out to their husbands on their lunch breaks and seduced them with mirrors, bantering over who was more attractive. (This story appears in Midrash Tanchuma, circa 500-800 C.E.)
3. Ibn Ezra pointed out that Shifrah and Puah can only be the supervisors of many other midwives.
4. Shifrah is similar to the Hebrew shafrah (שָׁפְרָה) = was pleasing, polished. Puah is similar to a Canaanite name meaning “girl”; alternatively, it might be related to pa-ah (פָּעָה) = groaned (as in childbirth). The Talmud (Sotah 11b) fancifully identifies the two midwives as Yocheved (mother of Moses) and her daughter Miriam, who apparently are using pseudonyms. Although the Torah does include some Egyptian names spelled phonetically, it also sometimes translates foreign names. Examples of foreign names (or titles) translated into Hebrew are Malkitzedek (Genesis 14:18) and Avimelekh (Genesis 20:2).
5. This point was made by 15th-century C.E. commentator Isaac ben Judah Abarbanel, and assumed by 1^st-century C.E. historian Flavius Josephus (Joseph ben Matityahu) in his Antiquties For more detail on the ethnicity of the midwives, see Moshe Lavee and Shana Strauch-Schick, https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-egyptian-midwives.
6. This point was made by 19^th-century commentator Shmuel David Luzzatto.
7. See Genesis 20:11, Jonah 1:12-16.
8. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Random House, New York, 2012, p. 165-169.
9. Shirly Ben-Dor Evian, “The Title ‘Pharaoh’”, https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-title-pharaoh.
10. Haidt, pp. 153-158, 197-205.