At the end of the book of Genesis, Jacob’s family fled a famine in Canaan and relocated to Egypt, where Jacob’s eleventh son, Joseph, had risen to power. The Torah portion from this week begins the book of Exodus. We are told in Genesis, and it is reiterated in Exodus, that the total number of Israelites who migrated to Egypt is 70. Over the ensuing years:
The Israelites were fertile and prolific; they multiped and increased very greatly, so that the land was filled with them.
A new king arose over Egypt . . . And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us. Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground. So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor . . . (Exodus 1:7-11)
Tradition tells us that the Israelites were oppressed by the Egyptians for 400 years until Moses, the greatest prophet in Jewish tradition, leads the Israelites out of bondage. But archeological evidence does not support this narrative. Scholars mostly agree that the Israelites did not live in Egypt for 400 years, but there is evidence that the Israelites were subjugated by the Egyptians for about 400 years. The kingdom of Egypt extended into Canaan, and the local Canaanites were forced to do work for the Egyptians— sometimes at the cost of leaving their personal work undone.
Our stories frequently equate being fertile to having divine favor, and in this story the Egyptians perceive the abundant fertility of the Israelites as a threat. Pharaoh hopes that oppressive forced labor will help to control the growing Israelite population, but that does not work. Next Pharaoh speaks to Puah and Shiphrah, the midwives of the Hebrews, and tells them to kill the newborn Hebrew boys. Puah and Shiphrah are afraid of the power of the Israelite god, so they do not do as Pharaoh instructs and when questioned they lie to Pharaoh about it. In his frustration, Pharaoh next passes a decree that EVERY newborn male—Hebrew or Egyptian—will be cast into the water.
This decree against his own people is not explained in the Torah, but the medieval sage Rashi (1040–1105) draws on earlier rabbinic midrash when he tells us that Pharaoh’s astrologers told Pharaoh that a deliverer had been born, but they did not know if he came from an Egyptian family or an Israelite family.
Most of us are familiar with the story of Moses as the person who leads the Jews out of bondage from Egypt. Every year, we retell the story during our Passover seders—but while reading our haggadot, we never mention Moses! As we have learned, the Judaism we practice today is a construct of the Rabbis. The ancient Rabbis led their followers in opposition to the priests at the Temple who oversaw animal sacrifice. It is possible that the Rabbis deliberately left Moses out of the traditional Passover reading because Moses is said to be of the priestly class, and the Rabbi were trying to get distance from the priesthood.
Even so, although we recognize Moses as a leader and our greatest prophet, we do not recognize him as a “savior.” The story of a king being warned by an astrologer about the birth of a “savior” is found in the Christian Testament. In the book of Matthew, King Herod is approached by the magi (or astrologers) who say:
Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star in the east and have come to pay him homage. (Matthew 2:2)
Similar to Pharaoh, Herod plots to find the newborn boy and destroy him. When Jesus’s father, Joseph, is warned in a dream to escape before Herod can find them, his family escapes (ironically) to Egypt!
Christian Testament scholar Reginald Fuller (1915-2007) states in the Harper’s Bible Commentary that the narrative of Jesus is:
. . . governed by a certain correspondence with the story of Moses and the Exodus . . . The flight into Egypt recalls the protection of the infant Moses from the plot of a wicked tyrant; the massacre of the innocents recalls the slaying of the Hebrew children by Pharaoh; the return from Egypt is explicitly linked to Israel’s Exodus from Egypt. To some extent, Matthew portrays Jesus through the Gospel as a new Moses, the founder and lawgiver of the true Israel who in his career recapitulates the story of Moses and the Exodus.
This use of ancient text but making is bigger and better is repeated often in the Christian Testament. Here we see it in the stories of Moses / Jesus. We also see it in the miraculous conception of children (Sarah in the Hebrew Bible and Mary in the Christian Testament), and in the raising from the dead (Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite woman in the Hebrew Bible and Jesus raising Lazarus in the Christian Testament), to cite just a few examples.
The blog is Tara Keiter’s interpretation of the Temple Israel of Northern Westchester Torah Study session. Misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Jaech taught are the responsibility of Tara Keiter.