S.A.L.T. - Friday

At the heart of the maggid section of the Haggada, we study the verses in Sefer Devarim known as “mikra bikkurim” (26:5-9). The farmer brings his first fruits to the Bet Ha-mikdash and makes a special declaration dictated in these verses, which includes a brief historical review of the Egyptian bondage and redemption. In the Haggada, we go through these verses one clause at a time, associating each with a corresponding verse from Sefer Shemot, in the original narrative of the Exodus.

One verse in “mikra bikkurim” reads, “We cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and the Lord heard our pleas…”  Commenting on this clause, the Haggada cites the following verse from Sefer Shemot (2:23), “A long time after that, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God.” What does this verse from Sefer Shemot add to our understanding of the verse in Sefer Devarim?  What does it show concerning the nature of Benei Yisrael’s plea to God for help?

Let us first take a closer look at that verse in Shemot.  It begins by telling of the death of the Egyptian king, and it then proceeds to describe Benei Yisrael’s “groaning.”  Wherein lies the connection between these two events?  Rashi, based on the Midrash, famously explains that the king of Egypt did not, in fact, die.  He rather contracted tzara’at – often associated with a form of “death” – and his magicians told him that he can cure his illness by bathing in the blood of Hebrew children.  Pharaoh followed this advice, and hence Benei Yisrael’s increased suffering and appeal to God.

Later commentators have noted that this interpretation (albeit Midrashic in nature) appears to contradict the verse itself. The verse states explicitly that Benei Yisrael groaned “min ha-avoda” (“under the bondage”), implying that it was the slave labor, not the killing of children, that accounted for their increased suffering.  How, then, could Rashi explain their sudden intensified groaning as the result of the slaughtering of Hebrew children?  The Levush Ha-ora explains that the words “min ha-avoda” actually form the very basis of this Midrashic reading of the verse.  The Midrash reads the word “avoda” (literally, “work”) here to refer to religious worship (as in “avoda zara” or, “le-havdil,” the “avoda” in the Temple).  Their intensified pleas to God resulted from the religious beliefs of Egypt which led the king to believe that he could cure his illness by soaking his skin in the blood of innocent children.

This could perhaps help us understand what the Haggada adds by invoking this verse to explain the verse in Sefer Devarim describing Benei Yisrael appeal to God.  The Haggada here gives us the background to Benei Yisrael’s cry for help.  We know from the prophet Yechezkel and innumerable passages in the Midrash that much of Benei Yisrael had adopted Egyptian paganism during their stay in the country.  This incident of Pharaoh’s tzara’at perhaps marked a turning point in their attitude towards the Egyptian faith that they had embraced heretofore.  Once and for all, and, painfully, only through the murder of their children, Benei Yisrael came to realize what kind of religion this is. Only then did they “cry to the Lord, the God of our fathers.”  They returned to their own tradition, to their ancestral faith, to find the answers. Having seen what the pagan lifestyle entailed, Benei Yisrael came back to their own origins, and the process of redemption could then begin.

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