ויהי לנחש, “it turned into a serpent.” Why did G–d show Moses this miracle by using a serpent rather than any other creature? It symbolised that just as the bite of a snake not only hurts but results in the death of the victim, so Pharaoh and his servants would not only “bite” the Hebrews but would by their treatment of them cause their deaths. Moses being asked to grasp the tail of that serpent and turn it back into his staff, was to symbolise that Pharaoh and his servants would become dried out as the wood of his staff. Any hand afflicted with the plague of tzoraat had automatically become ritually unclean, as we know from Leviticus 14,6. Moses placing his hand back within the folds of his tunic symbolically restores the entire Jewish people to ritual purity which it had lost through contact with the Egyptians. When the Torah reports in verse 7 that והנה שבה כבשרו, “and lo, his hand looked again like the rest of his flesh,“ this was a hint that the Jewish people’s state of ritual impurity would be reversed.

!ויאמר השב, He said: “put it back.’ Seeing that examination of people smitten with this disease revolve around their being isolated, closed in, the Torah here used an expression similar to that of closing a drawer, instead of the word שים, “place,” which we might have expected.

והיו לדם, “they will turn into blood. (the waters)” This was to serve as a sign that in the future the Egyptians would be slain through the dying of their firstborn and the drowning of the soldiers riding the chariots at the sea of reeds.

ויאמר משה בי אדוני, Moses responded by saying: בי אדוני, “please O Lord, etc.” Moses pointed out that he had been asked to face Pharaoh and his advisors who had command of all seventy languages, and would ridicule him when addressing him in any of these languages which he did not have any command of. They would then add: “In whose name and language do you come to speak to us?” G–d reminded him that it had been He who had enabled Adam to give the proper names in the in all the languages to all of His creatures. (Genesis 2,20) [It did not say there שם in the singular mode, but in the plural mode, i.e. that he named each animal in each of the seventy languages.] If He had been able to enable Adam to do this, Adam who had eaten from the tree of knowledge, it would require only a minor adjustment of Moses’ faculties for him to be able to do so also, and He implied that He would do so immediately, seeing that he had been selected to perform much greater deeds than had Adam. An alternate interpretation of G–d’s response: The words: מי שם פה, “Who has provided a new mouth, etc;” surely the One Who provided the first mouth in the first place at the time of creating human beings with a mouth to express their thoughts. (Attributed to Rabbi Yoseph.) Rabbi Ovadiah interpreted the answer as a rebuke to Moses, who was surely aware of G–d’s abilities, and if He had given Moses a mouth to speak with, He was surely also aware of Moses’ speech defect, and did not need a reminder from him. It is within My power to remedy this. [G–d did not say that He would remedy this, and if so when He would do so. Ed.]

שלח נא ביד תשלח, “please entrust this mission to someone Whom You have been in the habit of entrusting such missions to.” Moses implied that just as those messengers of G–d had been provided with a mouth without impediment, he too would be prepared to accept the mission if his speech impediment were to be remedied first.

וראך ושמח בלבו, “as son as he sees you he will rejoice in his heart.” The reason why G–d had to tell him this was that Moses had not wanted to usurp the status of his older brother as he feared that this might lead to his becoming jealous of him. (Sh’mot Rabbah 2,27. G–d told him that he had no reason to worry about this, and that He had already commanded Aaron to be on his way to be reunited with his brother whom he had not seen or heard from for many decades. (Exodus 4,27) Moreover, G–d also told him that all the people in Egypt who at one time had sought to have him executed had already died so that he did not have anything to fear for the safety of his person.

כי מתו כל האנשים, “for all the men have died, etc.’” the sages are interested in knowing who precisely these men were and they came to the conclusion that they were Datan and Aviram [who had snitched to Pharaoh that Moses had killed an Egyptian. Ed.] The problem with that interpretation is that these two men are still reported as alive during the revolt of Korach. (Numbers 16,1) The answer given by our sages who were well aware of the fact that Datan and Aviram were still alive at the time when G–d spoke to Moses at the burning bush, was that whereas at the time when Moses had killed the Egyptian these men were very wealthy and therefore very influential, by now they had become impoverished and frustrated old men completely devoid of any influence, i.e. not much better than the dead. Our author, after quoting the Talmud tractate Nedarim, folio 64 that not only the poor but also the blind, the ones stricken with tzoraat, and the ones not blessed with having children, are considered as if dead already, proceeds to prove that Datan and Aviram were neither blind, nor afflicted with tzoraat, nor childless. The expression becoming impoverished, in Hebrew: ירדו מנכסיהם, almost has the same numerical value as the word מתים, “the dead.” (difference of 1)

בני בכורי, “My son, My firstborn.” This is the first time the Torah officially acknowledges the sale by Esau of his birthright to Yaakov (Israel).

ויהי בדרך במלון, “It was on the way, at the inn;” Rashi, explaining why the location was necessary to be given here, explains that the word מלון was chosen for what an inn represents. It represents the comfort it can offer the traveler in an otherwise hostile environment. Moses is criticised for not having his priorities right, and in paying attention first to the comforts offered instead of dealing with the law to circumcise his son at the earliest opportunity, i.e. the eighth day. This seems questionable, seeing that immediately after leaving the inn the baby would be exposed to the dangers of traveling in the desert. We must therefore assume that this took place after the meeting of Moses and Aaron, when the latter had already told Moses not to expose both his wife and his family to these dangers but to let them go back to Midian. He did so although members of the tribe of Levi such as Moses and Aaron were not required to perform menial labour in Egypt. Therefore, seeing that they intended to turn back home, there was no excuse for not performing the circumcision at once. Tzipporah would have stayed on at the inn until the infant had recovered from the circumcision. This is why Moses was punished.

אז אמרה, “then she said, etc.” what is the reason for the introductory word: אז, “then,” at this point? At first Tzipporah was not sure when she saw that the angel stopped at the part of the body that is subject to circumcision whether it was on account of the delay in circumcising the infant, or whether it was on account of her attitude to circumcision altogether. It had become clear to her now that the problem was the delay in circumcising the infant. When she had performed the circumcision and the angel had desisted, and she had thrown the foreskin at his feet (either Moses, or the baby’s), she realised that the problem had been the delay in performing this commandment. She told her husband then that he was about to be punished for the delay, she had been given back to her husband (or her son) for having performed the commandment in his place. (Attributed to Rabbi Eliyahu Cohen)