Shabbat Parashat Shemot - 5785

Shabbat Parashat Shemot - 5785

Rabbi Hal Miller

  God saw the children of Israel and God knew. [Shemot 2:25]

The obvious questions here are what did God see and what did He know? Could God

"learn" something from seeing that He did not already know? We know that God lives

outside of time and knows all that was, is or will ever be, so there is no point at which

He would learn something by observing anything He created. What do the words saw

and knew mean here?

In verse 2:5 the princess of Egypt saw a basket floating in the river. In 2:6 "she opened

it and saw him, the child, and behold a youth was crying". In the first of these verses, it

is easy to understand that 'saw' meant simply to sense with her eyes. But in the second,

"saw him, the child ... a youth" has three different references in a row to Moshe, so it

would seem that she 'saw' three things. One was just a baby, one was that he was

someone special, and one that he represented some level of crying, meaning of the

Jews. Malbim explains this last item that the two verses previous to ours include three

types of cries that the people were crying so God knew the pain in their souls, that with

it they had done teshuvah.

Rashi comments on verse 2:6 that the princess of Egypt saw the Presence of God was

with Moshe. He also notes that the "youth was crying" indicates that Moshe's voice was

far more mature than his chronological age, so she knew that he was someone special.

Thus, even for the princess of Egypt, 'seeing' means more than just sensing with the

eyes, certainly here for God it refers to a higher plane than simple vision. Sforno explains

this as God no longer hid His countenance from the Jews. Rashi also mentions that

God no longer hid Himself from them, thus the word 'saw' seems to imply that the Jews

could 'see' God again, after His having been hidden for a long time.

The Beis HaLevi asks what God knew. He explains that when God wished to redeem the

people, the angel of the Egyptians pointed out that the Jews also were worshiping idols,

but God knew that this was only done under duress.

The word 'knew', vayeida, according to Rav Soloveitchik has multiple meanings. Here it

means that God 'shared' or 'participated in' the sufferings of the Jews. He was ending

His estrangement and rejoining His people.

We can read our verse, then, that the people did teshuvah, which God was awaiting, and

now that they had done so, He re-revealed Himself to them to join with them and rescue

them in His mercy.