Shabbat Parashat Shemot - 5786

Shabbat Parashat Shemot - 5786

Rabbi Hal Miller

  And He said, "for I shall be with you, and this is the sign for you that I have sent you: when you take the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain." [Shemot 3:12]

There is an obvious question here, "what sign?" It is not clear and obvious from the verses what this refers to. A simple reading would indicate that the sign that God sent Moshe to save the people is that they will worship on Mount Sinai, but how is that a sign for this? Malbim asks two more questions in this, "how can something that has not yet happened serve as a sign for an event that precedes it? Also we do not see that Moshe asked for a sign."

Rav Hirsch and Or HaChayim address Malbim's last point about Moshe asking for a sign. Both look at the preceding verse [Shemot 3:11] where Moshe asks "who am I" that he could perform this mission. Moshe knew that God would be with him to ensure success in taking Israel out of Egypt, but he did not know how to convince the rest of the players, both Egyptian and Israeli, that he represented God before them. Thus his "who am I" is his request for a sign.

But what is the sign? Rav Hirsch says that "your seeing your unsuitability makes you suitable", meaning that in the eyes of the people, without having Divine backing, nobody of Moshe's apparently low status would dare to step forward like this, and his doing so was the sign for them. But the simple reading of the verse would indicate that "sign for you" is in the singular, meaning it was for Moshe.

Rashi says the sign is the burning bush itself, that "just as you saw the thornbush performing My mission without being consumed, so too you will go on My mission and not be harmed." Or HaChayim disagrees with Rashi that Moshe had doubts about God's ability to save the people, rather He is saying that if He had doubts about Moshe, He would have chosen somebody else instead. Thus the sign is as the verse ends, the fact that the entire people would worship on this mountain was a sign that Moshe would succeed.

Ramban looks at the situation from a different angle. He says that God, through Moshe, could have rescued the people from right where they were in Goshen, but since He had promised to bring them to the land of Canaan, there was a need to involve relocation. Moshe already believed in God, thus our verse mentions the going out from Egypt and worshiping Him as a sign to the people rather than to Moshe. Ramban also says that our verse is providing a sign to Moshe along the lines of Rashi that God would protect him.