And He saw our affliction – There are two questions that this passage raises. How does the proof text from Exodus 2:24 teach us that the verse in Deuteronomy is about the forced separation of couples? And how do we even know that the Egyptians actually oppressed the Israelites in this fashion? There is no clear and unequivocal verse that states this in the Bible. There are several steps in arriving at the conclusion that these verses are speaking about the ‘forced separation of the sexes’ by the Egyptians. First, we note that both verses contain the word Vayar, “And he saw.” In classic rabbinic hermeneutics, this is a Gezera Shava, in which we can draw an inference of a connection between verses based on similar words being used in both verses. Second, the Hebrew word for “And he saw” implies something more than simply seeing. After all, it should have been enough to say that God remembered His covenant with the forefathers and therefore redeemed them. This was already foretold. However, the Bible implies here that God saw the severity of their oppression and decided to redeem the Israelites sooner than he had told Abraham he would. (Abraham was told the Israelites would be in Egypt 400 years.) Third, we have already been told, in Deuteronomy 26:5, that the people were afflicted, so the expression in this verse “God saw our affliction,” also implies something more than normal affliction. We can conclude that the affliction here was of some type that was never decreed against the Israelites in the first place.We must figure out what it adds to our understanding of the verse. Fourth, we can conclude from elsewhere in the Bible that the word for affliction implies sexual oppression of some sort, such as in Genesis 39:49 in which Laban threatens Jacob: “If you afflict my daughters…” Rashi interprets this to mean that if he denies them the rightful conjugal rights, he will have broken their agreement. The word Inui has a sexual connotation here and this can be connected to other uses of this verse in the Bible. Fifth, the word Anyenu, “our affliction” in Deuteronomy is strange. Normally the word should have been Eenuyenu for “our affliction.” This word implies a different type of oppression by the Egyptians. Since the text of the Bible already said that the Egyptians afflicted them, it should have been enough to say “And God saw” without the repetition of this word.