Episode #19 Bondage and Redemption

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman discusses the purpose of the enslavement of the Jewish people in Egypt and how it transformed them.

Chapter Nineteen

Bondage and Redemption

Joseph’s brothers may have thought that by selling him into slavery they had expunged him from their lives, but the opposite turned out to be true. A high Egyptian official bought Joseph and, recognizing his skill and intelligence, appointed him major domo of his household. One thing led to another, and Pharaoh discovered the young Hebrew genius and installed him as viceroy over all of Egypt.

Years later, a great famine struck the region, and people from surrounding countries came to Egypt, which had become the breadbasket of the ancient world under Joseph’s astute management. When Joseph’s hungry brothers arrived, a dramatic series of events led to a tense confrontation between Joseph and his brothers and their subsequent reunion. Joseph then invited his family to relocate to Egypt and settle in the land of Goshen in the Nile Delta. The story is recorded in great detail in the Torah, and there is no point in reviewing it here.

At this point, the proliferation of the family was underway. The one-to-one patriarchy was at an end. Although the family still numbered fewer than one hundred and fifty people, not yet a tribe, not even a clan, more like a large extended family, the seeds for the future nation were planted.

Joseph’s favor and protection provided a comfortable and prosperous life for his rapidly growing family in Goshen. The Egyptians watched with consternation as an entire foreign nation was coalescing within their borders before their very eyes. The fledgling nation did not give the Egyptians any cause for concern or alarm. They were never less than unwaveringly loyal to the Egyptian royal house. Nonetheless, the Egyptians feared that Joseph’s family aspired to take over the rich Egyptian breadbasket of the ancient world and drive out the local population.

According to Egyptian records, Egypt had been invaded and conquered by a Semitic people from Western Asia, known to history by the Greek name Hyksos, which means foreign rulers. The Hyksos introduced horse-drawn chariots and improved weaponry to Egypt, but they also tyrannized the native population until they were driven out about a century before the arrival of Joseph’s family. Perhaps the Egyptian experiences with the Hyksos had caused them to become xenophobic.

The solution for the Egyptians was the total enslavement of the growing Jewish population. Since it is not easy to enslave a free, independent and sophisticated people, it was accomplished gradually over many years. In total, the Jewish people were in Egypt for two hundred and ten years, and they were enslaved for about eighty years. We know this is true, because it is recorded in the Torah. There is also archaeological proof for the bondage on the Merneptah stele.[1] The enslaved people were not herded into concentration camps. They did not live in slave barracks. They lived in tiny huts in neighborhoods populated by common Egyptian people.[2] Their slavery consisted of forced labor for the crown with only subsistence compensation.

The bondage in Egypt was crucial for the formation of the Jewish people. The formative event of Jewish nationhood was the stand at Mount Sinai where the entire people had an astonishing prophetic encounter with God, which will be described in Chapter 21, and they entered into an everlasting covenant with Him. They agreed to accept the Torah, and He agreed to make them His chosen nation. In this role, they would be entrusted with the fulfillment of the purpose of creation, which was, as explained in Chapter 4, that the entire earth would be filled with knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea. They would live on a higher plane, studying the word of God and bringing His light to the nations.

But with passage of time, the new generations might begin to doubt whether such an event had actually taken place. Perhaps it was just a legend, a beautiful myth. How did God ensure that the Jewish people would never forget their divine mission? How did He ensure that the covenant at Sinai would never fade from their collective memory?

He accomplished this by ushering in a brief age of revelation during which events were not necessarily constrained by the laws of nature God had instituted in the world. He broke the shackles of the Jewish people with the most spectacular miracles the human race had ever seen. Then He led them to Mount Sinai and gave them the Torah, which codified the commemoration of these miraculous events. Therefore, from the very beginning, the memory of the Exodus and the subsequent encounter with God was woven into fabric of Jewish life, and it has remained so for the nucleus of the Jewish people for all time, as has been discussed at great length in Chapter 5.

In order to produce an unshakable collective memory, however, it was perhaps not necessary that the Jewish people be enslaved for nearly a century. A year, a month or even a day would have been sufficient, although the memory was undoubtedly enhanced by the pain and suffering of the extended bondage. The extended bondage served to prepare them in the “iron cauldron of Egypt”[3] for the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai.

The need for the length and severity of the Egyptian bondage, as discussed in Chapter 16, was to prepare them to receive the Torah. Had they arrived at Mount Sinai as farmers, traders, teachers, rabbis, soldiers, sailors, craftsmen, grocers, bakers and so forth, people with property, reputations, social status and other accomplishments and identities, the Torah would have been superimposed on all those layers. There would not have been an unobstructed connection of the Jewish soul and the Torah. The two would not have been perfectly fused together. In order to receive the Torah, the Jewish people had to be reduced to raw human beings, stripped of possessions, of status, of honor, of dignity, of liberty. Only in this state would their very souls be connected with the Torah.

The combination of their long bondage that stripped away all the outer layers of their humanity and the spectacular exodus that etched their experiences into their collective memory prepared the Jewish people to arrive at Mount Sinai and receive the Torah from God. The deterioration of the state of the Jewish people in bondage, however, extended far beyond being reduced to raw human beings, as a close reading of the text reveals.

When God sent Moses to redeem them, there was a need for Moses to establish his credentials as a divine messenger. How would they know he wasn’t an impostor? Therefore, God gave him instructions.

“Go assemble the elders of Israel and say to them, ‘The Lord God, the Lord of your ancestors, appeared to me, the Lord of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, saying, ‘I have surely remembered you (pakod pakadeti es’chem) and … I will bring you forth from your suffering in Egypt.’ And they will listen to you, then you and the elders of Israel shall come to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘God … came upon us, and now, please let us go …’ But I know the king of Egypt will not let you go … And I shall stretch out My hand and strike Egypt … and then he will let you go … and when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Let each woman borrow from her neighbor silver objects … and you will drain Egypt.”[4]

The unusual phrase pakod pakadeti was the secret code that would assure the elders he was not an impostor. God had promised Jacob and Joseph that He would redeem the Jewish people, and He had given them the code word that would signal the impending Exodus. The code was a closely held secret that Moses, who had been away from Egypt for sixty years, could not possibly have known. When they heard these words, they would listen to him and accept him as their redeemer.

But then we read, “And Moses responded and said, ‘But they will not believe me, nor will they listen to me, for they will say, ‘God has not appeared to you.’” And then God told Moses that he should show them a specific series of supernatural signs, and then all doubt would be removed.[5]

The commentators are amazed that Moses would object that they would not believe him after God had assured him that they would. The explanation, I believe, is as follows.

God told Moses to assemble the elders and to go together with them to Pharaoh and demand that he emancipate the Jewish people. There was no need for the people themselves to be involved in the process. They could carry on and await their redemption. Would the elders accept Moses? God assured Moses that when he spoke the code words they would listen to him.

But later in his instructions, God told Moses to have the people drain Egypt of its wealth, because He had promised Abraham that his descendants would merge from their bondage with great wealth. This then was also part of the redemption process. God instructed Moses effectively to enlist not only the elders but also the common people.[6]

Therefore, Moses appropriately objected, “But they will not believe me, nor will they listen to me.” God had only assured him that the elders would listen to him when he mentioned the code words, but He had not assured him that the people would listen to him. But why wouldn’t they listen to him? Why wouldn’t they accept the guidance of the elders? Furthermore, what is the meaning of the double language − they would not believe him and they would not listen to him?

This leads us to an understanding of the level to which the Jewish people had sunk during their century of bondage. According to the Kabbalists, there are fifty shaarei tumah, gates of defilement. The Jewish people descended to mem-tess shaarei tumah, forty-nine gates of defilement, but they never descended to the fiftieth. Had they descended to the fiftieth, they would have been unredeemable.[7] What does this mean? I am not a Kabbalist, but I would nonetheless like to offer an explanation.

People in deep antiquity needed to relate to a deity. Atheism did not appear until the time of the Greeks, which will be discussed in a later chapter. As discussed in Chapter 10, the Rambam, in his description of the origins of paganism, writes that in the beginning all people believed in the one God. In the time of Enoch, however, people could no longer relate to a totally transcendent, totally unknowable God. They believed that He created the world and turned it over to the stars and the lower gods, and that they could worship God by worshipping His emissaries to whom they could relate. In the fullness of time, however, “the honorable and holy Name was forgotten by all of civilization,” and they forgot that God exists.[8]

The last thread of their connection to God was the knowledge of His honorable and holy Name. This refers to the Tetragrammaton, composed of the four letter yud, heh, vav and heh, which is His actual Name and not a Name that identifies a particular power. This Name is so holy that it may not be pronounced as read but as Havayah, a rearrangement of the letters. Once the Tetragrammaton was forgotten, the world descended into full-blown paganism.

The forty-nine gates of defilement are increasingly lower levels of paganism. Descent to the fiftieth level comes when the Tetragrammaton is forgotten. The Jewish people in Egyptian bondage in their sorrow and agony also embraced the Egyptian gods who were more approachable, thinking that perhaps they would ease their condition. They sank lower and lower until they reached the forty-ninth level of defilement. Bu they never sank to the fiftieth level. They never forgot Havayah.

Moses, knowing the level to which they had sunk, objected that he could not convince the common people to join the redemption process. First, he said, “They will not believe me.” The people were not privy to the secret code words. They were also mistrustful of the elders who might just be trying to extricate them from paganism.

Moreover, said Moses, “They will not listen to me, for they will say, ‘Havayah has not appeared to you.’” They would not listen to him, because they would say that it is not possible that Havayah sent him. Havayah is far too transcendent to appear to a human being. He may have fooled the elders, but they were convinced that Havayah would never speak to a human being or have any other contact with the material world. They would see him as an impostor. Therefore, God showed him a series of supernatural signs and assured him that the people would be convinced.

This explanation is practically explicit in two later verses. “And Moses and Aharon went and assembled all the elders of the people of Israel. And Aharon conveyed all the words God had spoken to Moses, and he performed the signs before the eyes of the people.”[9] The message was to the elders, and they accepted it because of the code words. The supernatural signs were performed for the benefit of the people.

[1] See Reinman, The Hesterville Bible Trial pp. 467-472.

[2] We discern this from Moses’ instructions to them immediately prior to the Exodus to borrow valuables from their neighbors before leaving Egypt (Shemos 3:22).

[3] Devarim 4:20.

[4] Shemos 3:16-22.

[5] Ibid. 4:1-2.

[6] Rashi, Shemos 11:2.

[7] Ohr Hachaim, Shemos 3:7.

[8] Mishneh Torah, Avodah Zarah 1:1-2.

[9] Shemos 5:29-30.