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/Shemot. If they increase we’re in trouble!

Here are the pharaoh’s words in this week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Exodus 1:1-6:1):

“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/Bereishit, 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.

---

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.

—

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.

 

The people we now call Jews have had many names over the past four millennia.  The names they chose for themselves changed as they evolved from a cluster of Canaanite tribes, to an ethnic group with their own religion and country, to the scattered adherents of a religion and ancestry, to the varied people we know as Jews today.  So did the names other people called them.

Click on this link: Shemot: Hebrews versus Children of Israel for an improved version of the essay I wrote in 2013 on two ancient names for the people we call “Jews” today: Hebrews and Israelites.  In the Ancient Near East, the word corresponding to “Hebrews” (ivrim) meant outsiders, while the words corresponding to “Israelites” (benei Yisraeil) meant the children of an active engagement with God.

Both names appear in the Torah portion Jews are reading all over the world this week, Shemot (“Names”).  It is the first portion in the book of Exodus, also called Shemot in Hebrew.

At least Jews who follow the cycle of Torah readings are opening the book of Exodus again.  But what about Jews who pay little attention to the religion, yet stand firm in their ethnic identities?

A few of my friends in the United States fit that description.  And so do most of the one hundred Jews in Split, Croatia, according to a Jewish man I met in Split’s only surviving synagogue.  The survivors of World War II dismissed their parents’ religion.

“We gather mostly to eat dinner together,” said the man who called himself Albert to English speakers like me.  His eyes twinkled.  “We eat kosher lobster!  We get it straight from the fisherman, and he tells us which lobster is kosher.”

The Jewish community also dedicates itself to maintaining the synagogue, which was created in the 16^th century out of the upper floors of two older stone houses inside the wall of Diocletian’s Palace.  The interior of the sanctuary was remodeled in 1728, and has been maintained that way.

During the past year, a rabbi has been coming down from Zagreb about once a month to lead a service.  The first service he led lasted three hours, Albert said.  “We were thinking 45 minutes.  People started to get up and leave.  Afterward I told him he could come back, but we had to have a shorter service.  He asked how long, and I said: 35 minutes.  He said he couldn’t lead a service in only 35 minutes.  I said okay, you can pray as long as you as you want to, but after 35 minutes we’ll go downstairs and have dinner.  He got the idea.”

*

I converted to Judaism 33 years ago, but I am still aware of the difference between being an ethnic Jew and being a Jew for the religion.  I can never have a Yiddish-speaking grandmother.  I will never acquire the Ashkenazi taste for herring, either pickled or in sour cream.  (I do not know what the traditional Jewish foods were for Croatians.  Not lobster!)  I will never know what it is like to grow up Jewish; I can only guess based on reports from my Jewish friends and memories of how as a child I was excluded and teased for other reasons.

I cannot be described as a “religious Jew” either, because in some ways I am not very observant, and my beliefs are idiosyncratic.  Yet I remain passionately engaged with the religion.  The longer I am away from the two Jewish communities I belong to in Oregon, the more I notice that I am a Jew and I can never be comfortable with any other religion.

When we visit old synagogues in Europe, I always take time to decipher the phrases written in Hebrew letters over the ark or on the wall.  (For my own Torah study I use the Masoretic text, which includes vowel markings (nikudim).  But the words on the walls are always painted or carved without vowels, like the writing in a Torah scroll, and like modern Hebrew in Israel.  I hope to get better at reading unvoweled Hebrew when we spend a month in Israel at the end of this winter.)

Each time I pronounce a phrase in Hebrew and then translate it to myself, my heart lifts, and I feel a surge of homecoming.

The Hebrew over the ark on the east wall of the only synagogue in Split is in Aramaic, but I managed to read it.

Du lifney mi atem omdim, “Know before whom you stand.”  (Talmud Bavli, Berakhot 28b)

It’s a tall order.  But as a Jew, as an adopted member of the children of Israel, I will keep striving to do so.

Does Moses have the temperament of a Levite?

The original Levi in Genesis/Bereishit, Jacob’s third son, is a ringleader in the massacre at Shekhem.  (See last week’s post, Vayechi: Three Tribes Repudiated.)  When Jacob, on his deathbed, prophecies about the future tribes of Shimon and Levi he says:

Accursed be their af because it is fierce, and their wrath because it is remorseless! (Genesis/Bereishit 49:7)

af (אָף) = nose.  (A common biblical idiom for anger is having a hot nose.)

The first mention of the tribe of Levi in the book of Exodus/Shemot (“Names”) is in the announcement of Moses’ birth.  After the first Torah portion (also called Shemot) describes how the Pharaoh calls for all Hebrew male infants be killed by drowning,

A man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi.  And the woman became pregnant and she bore a son and she saw him, that he was good, and she hid him for three months.  Then she was not able to hide him anymore, and she took for him a ark of papyrus …  (Exodus/Shemot 2:1)

He is a “good” baby.  Moses cries only when his mother leaves him in a waterproofed box floating among the reeds at the edge of the Nile.¹  An Egyptian princess has the little ark fished out, and pays the infant’s own mother to be his wet-nurse.

And the child grew, and she brought him to the daughter of Pharaoh, and he became her son, and she called his name Mosheh [Moses], and she said: “Because from the water meshitihu.”  (Exodus 2:10)

Mosheh (מֺשֶׁה) = a Hebrew variant of the Egyptian word moses = gave birth to him.

meshitihu (מְשִׁיתִהוּ) = I pulled him out of water.  (From the verb mashah, מָשָׁה = pull out of water, which sounds like Mosheh.)

Deep or flooding water is used in the Torah as a metaphor for an overwhelming threat—either from human enemies or from God.²  By adopting Moses, the Pharaoh’s daughter pulls him out of the danger of her father’s death decree.

The Torah uses water as a metaphor not only for danger, but for fear.  When people are afraid, their hearts or knees turn into water.³

As a young adult Moses sees an Egyptian man beating a Hebrew slave, and wants to kill the Egyptian.  But fear checks his impulse for a moment.

He turned this way and that, and saw that there was nobody [around].  Then he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.  (Exodus 2:12)

Moses pauses long enough to make sure there are no witnesses (except the Hebrew slave), but not long enough to consider whether killing one Egyptian will do any good.  His rash act does not change any of the customs or institutions regarding the treatment of Hebrews in Egypt.  But it does get Moses into trouble.

And Pharaoh heard of this matter, and he sought to kill Moses.  So Moses ran away from Pharaoh, and he stopped in the land of Midian, and he stopped at the well.  (Exodus 2:15)

There he draws water for a flock shepherded by the seven daughters of the local priest.  The Midianite priest has taken him in and married him to one of his daughters, Moses’ personality changes from watery (fearful) to calm, deliberate, and occasionally fiery.

Moses was tending the flock of Yitro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock behind the wilderness, and he came to the mountain of the God …  Then a messenger of God appeared to him in the heart of a fire in the middle of a bush.  And he looked, and hey!  The bush was burning with the fire, but the bush was not consumed.  And Moses said: “I must turn aside, yes, and look at this great sight!  Why does the bush not burn?”  (Exodus 3:1-3)

Calm and deliberate, Moses notices the subtle miracle and stops to study it.  God calls to him from the bush, and for the rest of his life, whether he likes it or not, Moses is God’s prophet.  (In this week’s Torah portion, Moses tries to turn down God’s mission five times.)⁴

He returns to Egypt to be God’s mouthpiece as God carries out an elaborate plan to free the Hebrew slaves and lead them out of Egypt.  Moses remains impassive during the first nine divine plagues, even though Pharaoh waffles six times, promising to let the Israelites leave and then rescinding his promise.⁵  But when he tells Pharaoh about tenth and final plague, the death of the firstborn, Moses is finally fed up.

Moses said: “Thus says God: ‘Around midnight I am going out among the Egyptians.  And every firstborn n the land of Egypt dies …’  Then all these, your courtiers, will come down to me, and they will bow low to me, saying: ‘Go, you and all the people who follow behind you!’  And after that I will go.”  And he went away from Pharaoh chari af.  (Exodus 11:4-5, 8)

 chari af = in anger.  chari (חָרִי) = in the heat of.  af (אָף) = nose.

After that, the Israelites and their fellow-travelers complain and criticize Moses five times during the journey to Mount Sinai, but Moses only loses his temper once, when he tells them not to try to save any manna for the next day (except on Shabbat), and some of them do it anyway, so the divine food gets maggots and stinks.⁶

Moses does not become angry or hot-nosed again until he comes down from the mountain and sees the people worshiping a golden calf.

And as he came near the camp, he saw the calf and the dancing.  Vayichar, the af of Moses, and he threw down the tablets from his hands and he smashed them at the bottom of the mountain.  (Exodus 32:19)

vayichar (וַיִּחַר) = and it got hot.

Moses loses his temper only a few more times in the books of Leviticus/Vayikra and Numbers/Bemidbar.  He expresses his anger by yelling at people or talking to God.  He hits a rock, but after his youthful murder he never hits another human being.⁷  God’s anger, on the other hand, burns frequently and causes plagues that kill thousands of people.

Moses even manages to transform the temperament of his fellow Levites.  In the book of Exodus the tribe of Levi is violent when it carries out Moses’ command to run through the camp and slaughter all the golden calf worshippers.⁸  After that the Torah records only one more violent act by a Levite; he skewers two intruders in the Tent of Meeting.⁹  Moses ordains five of his Levite relatives as priests, and assigns the rest of them to assist with the work of the sanctuary.  Since they are responsible for the holy work, the Levites are the only tribe he does not muster for battle.

*

Although Moses begins life strongly associated with water, he overcomes his early watery fear.  He has the fiery heart of a Levite, but his passion is for God and for the Israelite people.  His anger at the golden calf worshippers might be considered fierce and remorseless, like that of his tribe’s founder, Levi.  But then instead of flipping to the dangerous side of water and behaving like an overwhelming flood, Moses succeeds in setting limits on both his watery and his fiery natures.  Like the bush on the dry mountain, Moses is not consumed by fire.

Is Moses simply born “good”, like a placid baby?  Or do his encounters with God teach him to stay patient and level-headed even when outrageous things are happening?

I believe each human being is born with a natural temperament, a tendency to react to adversity with fight or with flight, with anger or melancholy or fear or serenity.  But I also believe that we can gradually modify our own natures if we keep reflecting on our experiences and questioning ourselves.  Moses modifies his nature as he struggles to deal effectively with a capricious and often angry God.

How can we modify our own natures?

—

1. Exodus 2:6.
2. 2 Samuel 22:17 & Psalm 18:17; Psalms 32:6, 69, 88:17-18, 124, and 144.7; Hosea 5:10; and Job 22:11.
3. Joshua 7:5, Ezekiel 7:17, Psalm 22:15, and Job 27:20.
4. Exodus 3:11, 3:13, 4:1, 4:10, and 4:13.
5. Exodus 8:4-11, 8:21-28, 9:27-35, 10:8-11, 10:16-20, and 10:24-27.
6. Moses becomes angry about the manna in Exodus 16:20. He does not get angry when the people complain in Exodus 14:10-14, 15:23-25, 16:2-8, or 17:1-4.
7. Leviticus 10:16, Numbers 16:15, and Numbers 31:14. We can also assume Moses is angry in Numbers 20:10, when he yells at the people before hitting the rock.
8. About 3,000 in Exodus 32:26-29.
9. Only priests are allowed to enter the Tent of Meeting, and only well-defined holy activities are permitted there. The other Levites have a duty to guard the sanctuary from unauthorized entry.  When a Shimonite and a foreigner enter it to fornicate in Numbers 25:7, Pinchas grabs a spear and runs it through the couple.

Moses’ quiet life as a shepherd for a band of Midianites ends when he sees a bush that keeps burning without being consumed.  When Moses comes closer, God speaks to him and gives him a mission:  to return to Egypt and tell Pharaoh to let the Israelite slaves go.

Moses tries five times to refuse the job.  (See next week’s post, Shemot & Va-eira: Uncircumcised, Part 2.)  But God will not let him get out of it.  Finally Moses gives up, takes the flock home, and gets permission from his father-in-law to go to Egypt.

As soon as he leaves, God speaks again, warning him that despite the miracles to come, Pharaoh will not let set the Israelites free to worship their own god.

“Then you shall say to Pharaoh: Thus said God: My firstborn son is Israel.  And I say to you: Let my son go, and he will serve Me—[or] hey, I will be slaying your firstborn son!”  (Exodus/Shemot 4:22-23)

God has plans for the Pharaoh and Egypt that include the tenth plague, “death of the firstborn”.  God creates this miracle in the Torah portion Bo, and Pharaoh’s firstborn son dies.  But why does God give this information to Moses in Shemot (“Names”, the first Torah portion of the book of Exodus/Shemot)?

The sudden focus on firstborn sons comes after Moses leaves for Egypt with his wife and two sons, and immediately before a mysterious passage in this week’s Torah portion that commentators call the “Bridegroom of Blood” episode.

On the way, at a lodging-place, God met him and sought to put him to death.  And Tzipporah took a flint, and she cut the foreskin of her son, and she touched it to his raglayim, and she said: “Because you are a bridegroom of bloodshed for me!”  And it/he desisted from him.  That was when she said: “A bridegroom of bloodshed by the circumcision”.  (Exodus/Shemot 4:24-26)

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

God is uncharacteristically silent in this brief, spooky tale.  And the language is so ambiguous, the only clear information is that one of Moses and Tzipporah’s two sons still has a foreskin, and she circumcises him.

Which son is uncircumcised? 

The birth of Moses and Tzipporah’s first son was reported earlier in this week’s Torah portion:

She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Geirshom, for he said: “A geir I have been in a foreign land.”  (Exodus 2:22)

Geirshom (גֵּרְשֹׁם) = a name used for three men in the Hebrew Bible.¹  Moses says he chose the name because it combines two words:

geir (גֵּר) = stranger, resident alien.

sham (שָׁם) = there.

Moses and Tzipporah’s second son is not mentioned until after the Israelites have left Egypt and are near Mount Sinai.  Then Moses’ father-in-law arrives, bringing Tzipporah—

And her two sons, of whom the name of one was Geirshom, because he said “Geir I have been in a foreign land,” and the name of the other was Eliezer, because “Eli of my father was my ezer and rescued me from the sword of Pharaoh.”  (Exodus 18:3-4)

Eliezer (אֱלִיעֶזֶר) = a name used for at least eight men in the Hebrew Bible.²  The name combines two words:

eli (אֱלִי) = my God.

ezer (עֶזֶר) = help, aid.

This is the first time in the book that a second son is mentioned.³  When was Eliezer born and named?  Moses sends Tzipporah and their son(s) back to his wife’s father, Yitro (Jethro), after the “Bridegroom of Blood” episode, and before Moses and Aaron meet near Egypt proper.  He does not see his wife again until Yitro brings her to him in Sinai, along with both sons.  A consistent story requires that Moses named Eliezer before he left for Egypt.

When his second son was born, Moses must have been remembering his youth in Egypt, including his Hebrew parents, his adoption, the death sentence Pharaoh imposed on him when he was a young man, and his flight to Midian.⁴  Pharaoh’s gods would not have helped him, nor would the Midianite gods he had never worshiped.  So, I imagine, Moses credits his parents’ God with helping him escape.  Given Eliezer’s name, it is reasonable to assume that he then circumcises the infant in honor of the God of his parents.

But the name Geirshom has no reference to God.  Moses feels rootless and alienated when he names his first son, perhaps even alienated from his parents’ God. The name Geirshom and the “Bridegroom of Blood” scene inspired a pre-Talmudic story that Moses and his Midianite father-in-law agreed that Moses’ first son would not be circumcised.⁵

It makes sense that Moses’ firstborn son, Geirshom, is the uncircumcised one.

Whom did God seek to put to death?

Did God seek to kill Moses, or his uncircumcised son?  In the Talmud Bavli, Nedarim 32a, two rabbis gave two different opinions.  Rabbi Shimon b. Gamaliel said the “satan”, the spiritual adversary, came to kill the boy who was uncircumcised.  Rabbi Yehudah b. Bizna said God sent two angels of death to swallow up Moses because he had neglected to circumcise his son.  Moses could hardly represent God in Egypt when he had left his own firstborn son outside the covenant between God and the Israelites.

Commentators are still divided on the question of whom God sought to kill.  One theory is that the “Bridegroom of Blood” scene foreshadows God’s announcement in Exodus 12:7 and 12:12-13 that when the tenth and final miracle arrives, “the destroyer” will strike down the firstborn son of everyone in Egypt—except the Hebrews who have painted lamb’s blood on the doorposts and lintels of their houses.⁶  The act of painting blood on the doorways resembles the circumcision in the “Bridegroom of Blood” scene—as long as it is Moses’ uncircumcised son Geirshom whom God intends to kill on the way to Egypt.

However, I think God seeks to put Moses to death, because in the verses immediately preceding the “Bridegroom of Blood” scene, God is addressing Moses.  No other male is mentioned between verse 23 and verse 24.

And there is another reason for God to attack Moses.  In next week’s post, Shemot & Va-eira: Uncircumcised, Part 2, I will explore God’s anger at the man God has chosen as a prophet.

The God-character in the Torah is, after all, an anthropomorphic version of second Isaiah’s God:

            Forming light and creating darkness,

            Making peace and creating evil,

            I, God, do all these.  (Isaiah 45:7)

God gives with one “hand” and takes away with the other.  It is up to us human beings to find meaning in the twists of our life stories.

—

1. The name Geirshom refers to the firstborn son of Moses and Tzipporah in Exodus 2:22 and 18:3, Judges 18:30, and 1 Chronicles 23:15-16 and 26:24. It is used for a son of Pinchas/Phineas in Ezra 8:2, and for a son of Levi in 1 Chronicles chapter 6.
2. The first Eliezer in the bible is Abraham’s steward in Genesis 15:2. Moses’ son Eliezer is mentioned in Exodus 18:4 and 1 Chronicles chapter 23.  At least six other men named Eliezer appear in Ezra 8:16, 10:18, 10:31, and 10:23; 1 Chronicles 7:8, 15:24, 26:25, and 27:16; and 2 Chronicles 20:37.
3. Modern biblical scholarship explains that a redactor combined two or more accounts of the exodus: one (sometimes called J) in which Moses and Tzipporah have only one son, and another (sometimes called E) in which they have two sons.
4. Exodus 2:11-15.
5. Jethro said to him: ‘The son that is born to you first will be given over to idolatry [and hence will not be circumcised]; those born thereafter can be given to the worship of [your] God.’ He accepted the condition … For that reason did the angel seek to kill Moses at the inn, whereupon “Zipporah took a flint and cut the foreskin of her son.”  (James L. Kugel, How to Read the Bible, Free Press, New York, 2007, p. 219, translation from Mekhilta de R. Ishmael, Yitro.)

At this point, Moses’ father-in-law Yitro is still a Midianite priest, and might well want his grandson to worship the gods of Midian.  (It is an unrealistic detail, however, for Yitro to call his own religion “idolatry”!)

6. For example, see Serge Frolov, “A Murderous Bridegroom”, in www.thetorah.com.