וילך איש, Rabbi Yehudah son of Bizna in the Talmud Sotah folio 12, is quoted as saying: “why does this verse commence with the word: וילך, “he went?” [The word seems superfluous. Ed.] Answer: “he took the advice of his daughter.” We had been taught that when Amram, eventually Moses’ father, heard of the decree that all male babies had to be drowned, he divorced his wife so that he would not produce a child that would be drowned. When his daughter Miriam heard of his reasoning, she accused him of being worse than Pharaoh who only wanted to kill male Jews, whereas he would prevent the birth of any Jews if the people were to follow his example. Not only that, she said, but Pharaoh deprived the Jews only of life in this world, on earth, whereas her father’s policy would also deprive them of their share in the world to come. Amram saw the logic of his daughter and went and re married Yocheved, the wife he had just divorced. Nonetheless, according to the plain meaning of the text, what is reported here as Amram getting married to Yocheved and siring Miriam and Aaron, took place prior to the decree of Pharaoh to drown Jewish boy babies; however seeing that the Torah was interested in reporting to us what transpired later, it commenced with telling us about when Amram got married first and to whom, i.e. a daughter of Levi, many years his senior.

ותרא אותו כי טוב, “and when she saw (realised) that he was good (healthy) etc.” seeing that Moses was born to his mother after a pregnancy that had lasted only six months, she noted when examining the baby in detail, that all of Moses’ fingernails and toe nails were fully developed just like those of a baby after a nine month pregnancy, she realised that he was healthy and would survive the critical months ahead of him. She had no problem hiding him for three months as she had not been due to give birth during that period. When she was asked about the baby she had born by her neighbours, she would say that she had already complied with the kings’ decree and had thrown him into the Nile. A different interpretation views the word טוב as a hint that Moses had been born without a foreskin. The custom of reciting the line: הודו לה' כי טוב, “praise the Lord for He is good,” is recited during the circumcision ceremony, as a reminder that Moses did not need to be circumcised.

ותצפנהו שלשה ירחים, “she hid him for a period of three months.” Precisely during which three months did she hide him? Moses was born on the seventh day in the month of Adar, so that his mother hid him for twentythree days during that month; she hid him during both the month of Nissan and lyar, so that the last day of the three months was the sixth day of Sivan, the date on which in due course, the Torah would be revealed to lsrael. The reason why the Torah makes an issue of the mother of Moses hiding him for three months is that the Egyptians had decreed that the last of those days would be the day on which the Jewish saviour would be born. By rights, they should have cancelled the decree to drown Jewish boy babies, but seeing that they did not do so, shows that hatred of the Jews, more than fear of a Jewish saviour was their principal concern.

ולא יכלה עוד הצפינו, “and she could not hide him any longer;” according to Rashi, she had given birth to him one day into the seventh month of her pregnancy. The Egyptians had demanded to examine her on the day following. If you were to ask that according to the Talmud in Sotah 12 Yocheved was already 3 months pregnant when her husband remarried her, how could Moses have been born after a six month pregnancy? We must therefore say that the Egyptians examined her already after six months after she had remarried. This would be nine months after she had become pregnant from her husband. The Egyptians knew that sometimes babies are born and survive after being born during the seventh month of pregnancy. Moses, on the other hand, was born three months after Yocheved had been remarried. This is why she could not hide him for longer than an additional three months.

תיבת גומא, a basket made from the kind of reeds that grew along the banks of the river Nile and served as camouflage.

ותחמרה, “she made it waterproof from the inside;” the letter ה at the end does not have a dagesh.

ובזפת, “and she tarred it from the outside;” if the bitumen had been on the outside, the waters would dissolve it gradually. She had intended to recover Moses from there as soon as she had been examined and not been found pregnant anymore.

על שפת היאור, “by the banks of the river.” She had been unable to step into the Nile waters to completely cover that basket and hide him from all directions. She could only hide him so that he could not be seen by river traffic passing by. This is why the daughter of Pharaoh did not discover him until she had descended to actually bathe in the river. Her servant maids walking alongside the river bank did not see the basket. (Rash’bam.)

לרחוץ על היאור, “to bathe in the waters of the river; other examples of the word על meaning “in,” instead of “on, or above,” are found in: Genesis 27,40 על חרבך תחיה, “you will live with the use of your sword.” Also Exodus 12,7: על הבתים אשר יאכלו אותו בהם, “in the houses that they will eat it in.

ונערותיה, “and her servantmaids;” this is mentioned here as the Torah shortly will refer to a specific servant maid who went to take the basket in which Moses was lying.

הולכות ,ונערותיה, “and her servantmaids “walking,” Rashi, while interpreting the word as meaning “walking towards her death,” quotes a traditional explanation in the Talmud Sotah 12 according to which it is short for “being on a path which leads to death,” as in Genesis 25,32, where Esau is quoted as saying: הנה אנכי הולך למות, “here I am pursuing a path that will result in my death;” The scholar in the Talmud has the servant maids warning the daughter of Pharaoh who was actually going to use the waters of the Nile as a mikveh, ritual bath, in order to cleanse herself from the desecrations that were a daily occurrence in her father’s palace, by warning her that even when other people might disregard the king’s command surely his own daughter would not dare do so? They warned that by doing so she would condemn herself to death by execution. When hearing what her maidservants had said to Pharaoh’s daughter, the angel Gavriel struck them so that they fell to the ground. At this point there surfaces a divergence of opinion between two scholars, one saying that the word אמתה, as distinct from the word נערות for the servant maids used by the Torah previously, refers to the servant maid who had been spared by the angel, as it is not fitting for a princess to remain without at least one of her attendants. The other scholar does not understand the word אמתה as “her servant maid,” but as “her arm,” i.e. the arm of the princess which had been miraculously lengthened to the extent of about 2,5 meters for this purpose. Rashi, for reasons of a grammatical nature, rejects the second opinion offered in the Talmud, saying that if correct the letter מ in that word would have to have a dot, dagesh in it. He adds that further proof is the fact that the letter א in the word is vocalised with an abbreviated vowel chataf patach.

ותפתח ותראהו “she opened (the basket) and she saw him;” who is the subject of the suffix הו in this line? Seeing that at that point Pharaoh’s daughter did not yet know if the infant was an abandoned girl or an abandoned baby boy, the word ילד, is used which is neutral. After she opened the basket, she realised that it was a crying baby boy. Another exegesis: she suddenly noticed an older boy crying, i.e. Aaron, seeing that he was the brother of the baby in the basket. Noticing Aaron, she immediately came to the conclusion that the baby boy in the basket must be one of the Hebrews. Our sages, commenting on the fact that the baby Moses is once called ילד, and once נער in the same verse, teaches that his mother had made a wedding canopy inside that basket. (Sotah 12) She did so as she worried she might not merit seeing him get married.

מן העבריות, “from amongst the Hebrew wet nurses. Egyptian wet nurses would refuse to nurse Hebrew children. (Avodah Zarah 26).

ותלך העלמה, “the young lady went, etc.” The reason why the Torah calls her by the description עלמה, is because she concealed the fact that she was the baby’s sister.

היליכי, some commentators claim that this word is from the root הלך as in הולכה, the letter י taking the place of the letter ו. Similar examples occur with the mode: ,היטיבי .היניקי

והניקהו לי, “and nurse him for me.” The letter ק has the vowel chirik under it.

ותקרא שמו משה, “she named him: Moses.” According to our sages this proves that she converted (by immersing herself in the Nile) to Judaism and learned the Hebrew tongue.) She commemorated the miracles of his having been saved from the waters of the Nile by expressing this in her choice of name. An alternate explanation: the daughter of Pharaoh did not know any Hebrew, but the plain meaning of the text is that his mother Yocheved called him Moses. When the daughter of Pharaoh wanted to know the meaning of this name, she explained to her that in Hebrew the word משה derived from המשכה, means drawing something, pulling it. When hearing this, the daughter of Pharaoh agreed wholeheartedly with the name given to this infant, for in her own words: “I have pulled him out of the water.” She added that in the future she hoped that what she had done for that infant he would do for others when he would grow up, that is, that he would pull the Jewish people out of Egypt. (Midrash hagadol)

וין את המצרי, “he struck the Egyptian (dead).” He found that he had committed a capital offence according to the seven laws that all of mankind must obey. His offence was that he had raped someone else’s wife, and the Torah had forbidden this when writing in Genesis 2,24: ודבק באשתו, “he is to cleave to his wife,” and not to the wife of another man. (According to Tossaphot, Kidushin 21.) There was no need to warn that Egyptian beforehand in order to make him culpable for the death penalty as we derive from Genesis 20,3: “you are going to die on account of the woman (Sarah whom you have taken captive)”, and Avimelech had not first received warning.

ויטמנהו בחול, “he buried him in the sand.” Apparently there was sand at hand which was meant to be used in construction of houses.

מי שמך לאיש שר ושופט, “who has appointed you as lord or judge?” The word איש here was a reference to Moses’ youth, to the fact that he was below the minimum age for having risen to such a position.

ולכהן מדין שבע בנות, “and the priest of Midian was father of seven daughters;” Yitro was the High Priest in Midian, and the Torah had to explain that the reason none of his sons was tending his livestock was the fact that he only had daughters. Another explanation: Yitro had dissociated himself from paganism, and after that no one was willing to tend his flocks after he had been officially ostracized by his townsfolk.

למה עזבתן, “Why did you abandon him?” According to Rashi, when Yitro heard that the waters from the well had risen at the approach of Moses, he realised that this man was someone special. The expression דלה דלה לנו, implies that the waters rose towards them as a result of Moses’ assistance.

ויתן את צפורה בתו למשה, “He gave his daughter Tzipporah to Moses (as a wife.)” What is the significance of the name “Tzipporah?” She had run towards Moses like a bird (צפור) An alternate interpretation: she was beautiful as the morning at the time of sunrise. She lit up the atmosphere in the morning. The Aramaic word צפרא means: “morning;” it is used to describe how welcome the morning is. Our author quotes Ezekiel 7,7 “the day is near,” as well as Judges 7,3: as a bird flies from Mount Gilad,” to support his point.

ותלד בן, “she gave birth to a son;” there is no mention of her having been pregnant first; this is to tell us that she remained looking like an unmarried virgin, slim throughout her pregnancy. (Pessikta Zutrata)

ויקרא את שמו גרשום, “he called his name Gershom.” If we were to be judgmental, Moses should have given his son a name that reflected his miraculous escape from Pharaoh and his police. Moses did not mention this until his second son was born whom he called appropriately “Eliezer,” i.e. “My G-d Who is my helper.” We may explain this as Moses feeling that as long as Pharaoh was still on the throne he was still in danger regardless of where he had found temporary refuge. We see proof of this when G-d told him in Exodus 4,19 that all the people who had sought his death had died in the meantime. This meant that the Pharaoh whom he had known had died also. Immediately Moses heard this he responded when his second son was born. Compare 4,24 where Moses is punished while at the inn for having delayed circumcision of his second son, seeing that he was no longer in danger as G-d had told him. [This suggests that Eliezer may have been as much as 50 years younger than his older brother. Ed.] A different interpretation: when Gershom had been born Moses was still a newcomer in Midian, and he felt like an alien there. If he had called the first son Eliezer, he would have endangered himself by hinting that he had needed to escape from Egypt as a common criminal and had only been saved by Divine intervention. By the time Eliezer was born, he felt at home in Midian, hence the time had come to thank the Lord for his deliverance from danger.

ויהי בימים הרבים ההם, “It was during these many years, etc;” the reference is to the 400 years that G-d had told Avraham that it would take before His promise to him that his descendants would be redeemed from the land in which they would be slaves would be fulfilled. The Jewish people in Egypt now felt that the time for them to be redeemed had arrived.

הרבים ההם, “these many.” When times are bad (for the people under discussion) then the expression for “many” used in the Torah is רבים. When times are good, even for a long period, they are referred to as מעטים, “few.” The reason is that as soon as the good times are over, the people who have enjoyed them consider them as having been too short.

וימת מלך מצרים, “the King of Egypt died.” G-d advanced the time of his death. As soon as that king had died, G-d appeared to Moses at the thorn bush and told Moses to go back to Egypt. Seeing that all the people who had been interested in killing him or seeing him killed had died already, (4,19) G-d did not want Moses to be in a position of refusing the leadership of the Jewish people due to fears for his personal safety. He had already found sufficient arguments to decline G-d’s request as we will read shortly, without raising the subject of his personal fear. He went as far as telling G-d to look for someone else. (4,13)

ויאנחו בני ישראל, “the Children of Israel were groaning;” they were well aware that their G-d had decreed a period of 400 years of mixed bondage and being treated as aliens at the time He concluded the covenant of the pieces with Avraham in Genesis chapter 15. They had mistakenly thought that the period of 400 years commenced from the day that covenant had come into force. They did not know that if they had paid close attention to the wording of that covenant, they would have realised that the countdown could not have started until the day Yitzchok was born, as the promise was not to him (Avraham) but to Avraham’s descendants (Compare Genesis 15,4). A different interpretation of the reason why the Israelites are described as groaning at this point: As long as the old king had been alive, they had hoped that with his death the harsh decrees against them would “die” also because the custom was that a new king would free all prisoners. But now the decree of their enslavement was not cancelled. When they found out that they had hoped in vain, they groaned and prayed to G-d, as they were on the verge of giving up hope. [This was the first time in 86 years that they prayed to G-d. Ed.]

את נאקתם, “their moaning;” they complained about the physical abuse they had to endure from the Egyptian taskmasters. Compare 3,7: ואת צעקתם שמעתי מפני נוגשיו, “and I have heeded their outcry because of their taskmasters.”

ויזכור א־לוהים את בריתו, “G-d remembered His covenant;” part of the covenant had been the promise that the people maltreating the Israelites would be punished by Him. (Genesis 15,14) The period of 400 years slavery which is reckoned from the birth of Yitzchok had now come to an end.

וירא אלהים את בני ישראל, “G-d saw the Children of Israel;” the words “He saw,” mean that “He paid attention to what He saw.” He paid attention to their suffering. Other examples of similar constructions in the Torah are: Exodus33,12, ראה, אתה אומר אלי, “See, You say to me;” or Exodus 12,13: וראיתי את הדם, “when I see the blood, etc.”

וידע א־להים, “G-d knew.” A construction similar to Proverbs 27,23: ידוע תדע פני צאנך, “make sure that you know the looks of your flocks;” G-d summoned His mercy in order to react to their problems. Another exegesis of the repeated name of G-d here: the expression וירא אלהים, refers to G-d seeing what the Egyptians were doing to the people publicly; the expression וידע אלהים, refers to G-d seeing what they were doing to the Israelites where no one saw it. This is also how our sages in the Haggadah shel Pessach understand this verse, i.e. the first expression refers to the Egyptians making it almost impossible for the Israelites to maintain marital relations. The second expression tells the reader that although due to the intimate and private nature of having marital relations there were no witnesses to these sufferings, G-d goes on record that He is a living witness. Nothing can be concealed from Him.