Exodus: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13a 13b 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30a 30b 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38a 38b 39 40
Sedra 4,
BeShallach
Exodus
13:17 – 17:16
13:17 VA YEHI BE SHALACH PAR'OH ET HA AM VE LO NACHAM ELOHIM DERECH ERETS PELSIHTIM KI KAROV HU KI AMAR ELOHIM PEN YINACHEM HA AM BIR'OTAM MILCHAMAH VE SHAVU MITSRAYIMAH
וַיְהִי בְּשַׁלַּח פַּרְעֹה אֶת הָעָם וְלֹא נָחָם אֱלֹהִים דֶּרֶךְ אֶרֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּים כִּי קָרוֹב הוּא כִּי אָמַר אֱלֹהִים פֶּן יִנָּחֵם הָעָם בִּרְאֹתָם מִלְחָמָה וְשָׁבוּ מִצְרָיְמָה
KJ (King James translation): And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:
BN (BibleNet translation): And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that YHVH did not lead them by the way of the land of the Pelishtim, although that was near; for Elohim said: "Lest per chance the people repent when they see war, and they return to Mitsrayim."
ELOHIM: For the very first time in the Book of Exodus, the god in question is Elohim, not YHVH; a new text, and a new story.
PELISHTIM: It is highly questionable whether there were any Pelishtim at the time of Mosheh (it is highly questionable whether there was ever this Mosheh, but leave that aside); according to the Bible itself, they didn't start arriving until the period of the later Judges (though, as per my notes there, the period of the Judges may in fact be pre-Mosaic), probably after the fall of Knossos around 1300 BCE, but to the Redactor the south-western coast of Kena'an had been the land of the Pelishtim for so many centuries it was natural to call it that. Once again we have a pretext to date the written-text from the context.
In the version that we are about to read, the 3-day journey into the desert to celebrate the Pesach seems to have been abandoned, at least by the Redactor, at least for the moment. The text will continue with them marching south-east into the heart of Sinai, to the sacred mountain that gives that desert its name (and no, you won't find it there on the adjacent map, or any other map - archaeologists and theologians have, for centuries now, accepted the Biblical version about to follow, and moved Mount Sinai out of Sinai into the Hejaz, into what was then Midyan and is now southern Jordan/north-west Saudi Arabia, so that really it should be called Mount Nefud).
If the entire story is in fact Midyanite, and Midyan was in fact the goal, then a crossing of the Red Sea – at any point – was entirely unnecessary. Look at the map. It would have been so much easier to enter Midyan by land, well north of the Red Sea, through the southern Aravah, where Eilat and Aqaba now stand. Amalekite land however. We will see later why Mosheh, or YHVH, or Elohim, chose not to go through Amalekite land at this stage of the journey.
13:18 VA YASEV ELOHIM ET HA AM DERECH HA MIDBAR YAM SUPH VA CHAMUSHIM ALU VENEY YISRA-EL ME ERETS MITSRAYIM
KJ: But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.
BN: But YHVH led the people about, by the way of the desert, to Yam Suph; and the Beney Yisra-El went up armed out of the land of Mitsrayim.
CHAMUSHIM: I have borrowed a commonplace translation in order to comment on it, because: how on earth does this get translated as "armed", unless it is a description of Ach-Mousa driving the Hyksos out of Egypt? I am not entirely sure what the KJ means by "harnessed" either, but you can find "in martial array" here, and "in orderly ranks" here, "ready for battle" here - so I am clearly not alone in identifying the Ach-Mousa story here, though I do appear to be alone in wondering why, if they were this ready for battle (and no, I have no idea where the Habiru slaves got all these weapons, let alone the training), they were nonetheless unwilling to go east through Pelishtim territory.
A sentence that takes some working out, because it sounds like Mosheh swore an oath to take Yoseph's bones, but actually it is saying that Yoseph swore an oath that YHVH would remember to remind someone to find and take the bones when they left, which infers that Yoseph must somehow have known what would happen to his people after his death, bearing in mind that, when Ya'akov, his father, died, he didn't need any oaths, he simply organised the funeral (Genesis 50) So yet another piece of evidence for the much later invention of this tale.
But let us ignore this and accept the translation. Why were we not told this before, and how did he get hold of the bones, at all, let alone in the hurry of departure? Two possible explanations. One, it's the Redactor again, needing to tie up Jewish loose ends a thousand years later. More interesting, if we are indeed in the business of covenant renewal for the former, pre-Hyksos, religion, then the bones of Yah-Suph (a viable reading of Yoseph in the circumstances of this chapter, though generally it seems unlikely), the former priest of the sun-city of On (Heliopolis), who served as shaman and chief counsellor to the [previous dynasty's?] Pharaoh, would be of significant cultic status in performing the renewal rites; and even more so the bones of Osher (Osiris), manifest in those of his representative on Earth. Think of the significance of the corpse of Saint Mark to the Venetians, or the multiple "burial-sites" of Arthur in the west of England, of Celtic Pádraig (later Christian St Patrick) in Eireland.
13:20 VA YISU MI SUKOT VA YACHANU VE ETAM BI KETSEH HA MIDBAR
Where exactly was Sukot (see my note to Exodus 12:37)? It could of course be anywhere that they pitched their tents, or at least put up their temporary booths; the one where they stopped at the end of the journey was on the other side of the river Yarden (Jordan). What matters more than the geography is that the journey begins and ends at a place with the same name, and not just any name, but the name of one of the major harvest festivals, alongside Passover, which we have just witnessed, and Shavu'ot, which will coincide with the giving of the Law, and become, in later Judaism, the annual ceremony of covenant renewal, exactly as is happening here, now.
ETAM: Or EYTAM? The name comes up on several occasions, sometimes with a Yud, sometimes, as here, without it. They appear to be two different places, as the two links here confirm.
13:21 VA YHVH HOLECH LIPHNEYHEM YOMAM BE AMUD ANAN LANCHOTAM HA DERECH VE LAILAH BE AMUD ESH LEHA'IR LAHEM LALECHET YOMAM VA LAILAH
pey break
ELOHIM: For the very first time in the Book of Exodus, the god in question is Elohim, not YHVH; a new text, and a new story. PELISHTIM: It is highly questionable whether there were any Pelishtim at the time of Mosheh (it is highly questionable whether there was ever this Mosheh, but leave that aside); according to the Bible itself, they didn't start arriving until the period of the later Judges (though, as per my notes there, the period of the Judges may in fact be pre-Mosaic), probably after the fall of Knossos around 1300 BCE, but to the Redactor the south-western coast of Kena'an had been the land of the Pelishtim for so many centuries it was natural to call it that. Once again we have a pretext to date the written-text from the context.
In the version that we are about to read, the 3-day journey into the desert to celebrate the Pesach seems to have been abandoned, at least by the Redactor, at least for the moment. The text will continue with them marching south-east into the heart of Sinai, to the sacred mountain that gives that desert its name (and no, you won't find it there on the adjacent map, or any other map - archaeologists and theologians have, for centuries now, accepted the Biblical version about to follow, and moved Mount Sinai out of Sinai into the Hejaz, into what was then Midyan and is now southern Jordan/north-west Saudi Arabia, so that really it should be called Mount Nefud).
If the intention was never a festival at the mountain but flight to Kena'an, then, as per this verse, they would have marched due east along the Mediterranean coast where Goshen lies, through the marshes of the Nile delta known as the Sea of Reeds, around Lake Sirbonis, across Wadi el-Arish and into what we now call the Gaza Strip, a journey of about a hundred miles. Instead, because the epic of the founding of Yisra-El required the forty-year wilderness journey, and for some reason a Midyanite base, Mosheh has taken instead the most illogical route imaginable to Kena'an, almost due south into the western fringes of the world's most arid desert, passing the Bitter Lakes on their eastern side, through some of the bleakest copper mining regions in the world, and on and on still further south, reaching the Red Sea at that point where it starts to branch into the gulfs of Suez and Aqaba, more or less where Sharm el-Sheikh stands today. Each of us will have to make up our own minds whether Yam Suph is the Red Sea, or the Sea of Reeds. If it was the Red Sea, it makes for the most amazingly circuitous journey, as we shall see. It is also physically impossible even for Mosheh travelling on his own, by donkey, to have reached that point of the Red Sea in the time that the story tells us; and he wasn't one person, he was about 1.5 million people. It would have taken weeks!
The reason for this absurd route given by Elohim is that the people might want to turn back for Mitsrayim when they realise they will have to fight their way into Kena'an, but there is no reason to think that war is any less likely in Midyan, Edom, Mo-Av or Amon, which they will have to pass through, all one and a half million refugees that they are (and where they will indeed have to fight wars). No one is going to be pleased to have them turn up on their border. War is almost inevitable... And anyway, as we shall comment repeatedly when this comes up, if they are fleeing slavery, if they are the cause of the deaths of the first-born men of Mitsrayim, and are about to be the cause of the wipe-out of the remainder when the miraculous waters of the Waters of Escape flood back over them, do they really think they can just go back to Mitsrayim and will be welcomed there?
The problem with trying to weave two completely different stories into one!
The problem with trying to weave two completely different stories into one!
The reason generally given by the commentators, and confirmed as the text progresses, is that Mosheh, or Elohim, needed to eradicate the slave mentality acquired over 430 years, and instill in a new generation a fighting spirit that would enable them to take the land by conquest. Geat idealism, little evidence in human history that this is achievable; the world made the same theoretical statement after the Holocaust, but nothing has come of it yet.
An alternate suggestion might be that they were never actually heading for Kena'an, ever, because they had no meaningful connection with Kena'an, except for a few members of the tribe who had once been Bedou there; but that Mosheh had family connections with Midyan, through his wife and the years of his exile; that his intention was always to go to Midyan, and that this is actually a Midyanite and not a Yisra-Eli legend. Evidence shown previously suggests that Mosheh's god was the Midyanite volcano-god, named as YHVH in the Yisra-Eli, though probably the Midyanites had their own name. The placement of Sinai where it is on the map, above, adds weight to this inconvenient hypothesis.
The view taken by Elohim here prefigures the report of the spies two years' hence. But when that report comes (Numbers 13:32) it will be described as "an evil report of the land", and YHVH, in response (YHVH in that version, not Elohim) will be roused by it to indignant fury: "And YHVH said to Mosheh: "How long will this people despise me? And how long will they not believe in me, for all the signs which I have wrought among them? I will smite them with the pestilence, and destroy them, and will make of thee a nation greater and mightier than they." (Numbers 14:11-12) - the Isaiac "how long?" once again. Which makes rather a nonsense of this verse, and is in fact nonsensical itself, because why, given this verse, would he bring them back to that exact point two years later, in order to react exactly as he had predicted that they would. YHVH tales and Elohim tales and Mosheh-Midyan tales - the problem of trying to amalgamate at least three different versions of a mythological story with one that was probably historical (the Ach-Mousa tale), and then claim the final outcome as authentic history!
13:18 VA YASEV ELOHIM ET HA AM DERECH HA MIDBAR YAM SUPH VA CHAMUSHIM ALU VENEY YISRA-EL ME ERETS MITSRAYIM
וַיַּסֵּב אֱלֹהִים אֶת הָעָם דֶּרֶךְ הַמִּדְבָּר יַם סוּף וַחֲמֻשִׁים עָלוּ בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
KJ: But God led the people about, through the way of the wilderness of the Red sea: and the children of Israel went up harnessed out of the land of Egypt.
BN: But YHVH led the people about, by the way of the desert, to Yam Suph; and the Beney Yisra-El went up armed out of the land of Mitsrayim.
As to the arms and training, from what we have heard so far, they have taken large quantities of jewellery and fine clothing, but no hint of weaponry. Oh, and for the information, the only other occasion when the Tanach uses CHAMUSHIM is in 2 Kings 1:9-12, where it is "a company of fifty soldiers", as you would expect from the root CHAMESH = 5.
13:19 VA YIKACH MOSHEH ET ATSMOT
YOSEPH IMO KI HASHBE'A HISHBIY'A ET BENEY YISRA-EL LEMOR PAKOD YIPHKOD ELOHIM
ET'CHEM VE HA'ALIYTEM ET ATSMOTAI MI ZEH IT'CHEM
KJ: And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.
BN: And Mosheh took Yoseph's bones with him; for he had sworn an oath to the Beney Yisra-El, saying: "YHVH will surely remember you; and you shall carry up my bones away hence with you."
וַיִּקַּח מֹשֶׁה אֶת עַצְמוֹת יוֹסֵף עִמּוֹ כִּי הַשְׁבֵּעַ הִשְׁבִּיעַ אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר פָּקֹד יִפְקֹד אֱלֹהִים אֶתְכֶם וְהַעֲלִיתֶם אֶת עַצְמֹתַי מִזֶּה אִתְּכֶם
KJ: And Moses took the bones of Joseph with him: for he had straitly sworn the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you; and ye shall carry up my bones away hence with you.
BN: And Mosheh took Yoseph's bones with him; for he had sworn an oath to the Beney Yisra-El, saying: "YHVH will surely remember you; and you shall carry up my bones away hence with you."
A sentence that takes some working out, because it sounds like Mosheh swore an oath to take Yoseph's bones, but actually it is saying that Yoseph swore an oath that YHVH would remember to remind someone to find and take the bones when they left, which infers that Yoseph must somehow have known what would happen to his people after his death, bearing in mind that, when Ya'akov, his father, died, he didn't need any oaths, he simply organised the funeral (Genesis 50) So yet another piece of evidence for the much later invention of this tale.
But let us ignore this and accept the translation. Why were we not told this before, and how did he get hold of the bones, at all, let alone in the hurry of departure? Two possible explanations. One, it's the Redactor again, needing to tie up Jewish loose ends a thousand years later. More interesting, if we are indeed in the business of covenant renewal for the former, pre-Hyksos, religion, then the bones of Yah-Suph (a viable reading of Yoseph in the circumstances of this chapter, though generally it seems unlikely), the former priest of the sun-city of On (Heliopolis), who served as shaman and chief counsellor to the [previous dynasty's?] Pharaoh, would be of significant cultic status in performing the renewal rites; and even more so the bones of Osher (Osiris), manifest in those of his representative on Earth. Think of the significance of the corpse of Saint Mark to the Venetians, or the multiple "burial-sites" of Arthur in the west of England, of Celtic Pádraig (later Christian St Patrick) in Eireland.
According to Joshua 24:32, Yoseph's bones were laid to rest somewhere in Shechem, "in a parcel of ground which Ya'akov bought from the sons of Chamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of silver, and it became the inheritance of the children of Yoseph", though this verse does seem to be a tag-on at the end of that book, when somebody presumably noticed this verse in Exodus, and realised that YHVH needed another reminder.
Those of you planning to visit Yoseph's Tomb in Nablus (today's name for Shechem) should be aware that the Yoseph in question was a 19th century Rabbi, not a Biblical patriarch, though the tourist-pilgrimage industry has done a very good job of convincing the world otherwise.
וַיִּסְעוּ מִסֻּכֹּת וַיַּחֲנוּ בְאֵתָם בִּקְצֵה הַמִּדְבָּר
KJ: And they took their journey from Succoth, and encamped in Etham, in the edge of the wilderness.
BN: And they took their journey from Sukot, and encamped in Eytam, on the edge of the wilderness.
Where exactly was Sukot (see my note to Exodus 12:37)? It could of course be anywhere that they pitched their tents, or at least put up their temporary booths; the one where they stopped at the end of the journey was on the other side of the river Yarden (Jordan). What matters more than the geography is that the journey begins and ends at a place with the same name, and not just any name, but the name of one of the major harvest festivals, alongside Passover, which we have just witnessed, and Shavu'ot, which will coincide with the giving of the Law, and become, in later Judaism, the annual ceremony of covenant renewal, exactly as is happening here, now.
ETAM: Or EYTAM? The name comes up on several occasions, sometimes with a Yud, sometimes, as here, without it. They appear to be two different places, as the two links here confirm.
13:21 VA YHVH HOLECH LIPHNEYHEM YOMAM BE AMUD ANAN LANCHOTAM HA DERECH VE LAILAH BE AMUD ESH LEHA'IR LAHEM LALECHET YOMAM VA LAILAH
וַיהוָה הֹלֵךְ לִפְנֵיהֶם יוֹמָם בְּעַמּוּד עָנָן לַנְחֹתָם הַדֶּרֶךְ וְלַיְלָה בְּעַמּוּד אֵשׁ לְהָאִיר לָהֶם לָלֶכֶת יוֹמָם וָלָיְלָה
KJ: And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud, to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night:
BN: And YHVH went ahead them by day in a pillar of cloud, to show them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; that they might travel by day and by night:
YHVH: Verse 17 changed the name of the deity to Elohim, but has now reverted to YHVH.
HOLECH: why the use of the present tense?
AMUD ANAN: And now, for the first time since Mosheh left Midyan in chapter 3, and we witnessed the first hints of an impending volcanic eruption in the flickerings of what may have been a burning bush, we are about to resume that version, mixed up with Ach-Mousa, mixed up, as we shall see shortly, with what appears to be a pilgrimage around the water shrines of the Sinai Desert. "A pillar of cloud" could be read as a distant sandstorm, but sandstorms do not provide neon signposts in the skies at night. Clearly the AMUD EYSH is YHVH spouting from his Midyanite volcano; but Jewish commentary has always preferred to read this symbolically.
An AMUD is indeed a pillar, but how does something as amorphous as a cloud become as solid as a pillar? Perhaps the answer to that question lies with Lot's wife (Genesis 19:15-2), or in the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, or inside the museum at Pompei.
AMUD also means "stand" as in anything that stands perpendicular. We know that Mosheh, or Aharon, probably both, were carrying a sceptre which they could throw down and turn into a serpent; which is to say they held a Caduceus Pole as their emblem of priestly office. We also know that, later on, Mosheh would carry the serpent banner Nechushtan into battle. The text could therefore be read as a teraph being uplifted at the vanguard, its tip a torch that could be lit up at night, providing a forward flag for the people to follow.
YOMAM VA LAILAH: The suggestion is that they travelled without sleep, which is implausible for such a band of refugees, including old people and young babies. Anyone who has travelled in Sinai, and this is April or May after all, knows the temperature at night is in the high eighties, by day in the upper nineties at the very least, and capable of reaching a hundred and twenty, with sandstorms; no one travels in the desert by day and by night; they sleep under shelter in the heat of the day and travel only when it is (relatively-speaking) cool.
As stated in the first note to this verse, at this point yet another legend seems to find its way in, and it will become central for many chapters: the legend of a volcanic eruption in the... Sinai desert, according to this version, but Chorev was in Midyan earlier in this book, and will be again later. If it was known that the volcano was due to erupt (and early signs are not usually difficult to detect), can we read the journey to Chorev as religious propitiation, the need to pacify with sacrifices a furiously angry mountain god who has started spitting out his teeth and filling the sky with smoke from his ears; a god who, of course, has been quiet through the century and a half of Hyksos rule, and whose sudden eruption would have done several things: a) it would have inspired his worshippers to revivalism; b) it would have terrified the daylights out of the Hyksos rulers; and c) it would have caused unusual natural phenomena ("plagues") to occur: we can wonder, for example, if the redness in the rivers was not blood but molten lava leaking from the depths of the volcano; if the unusual movements of creatures were not a reaction to shakings of the tectonic plates; etc.
13:22 LO YAMISH AMUD HE ANAN YOMAM VE AMUD HA ESH LAILAH LIPHNEY HA AM.
HOLECH: why the use of the present tense?
AMUD ANAN: And now, for the first time since Mosheh left Midyan in chapter 3, and we witnessed the first hints of an impending volcanic eruption in the flickerings of what may have been a burning bush, we are about to resume that version, mixed up with Ach-Mousa, mixed up, as we shall see shortly, with what appears to be a pilgrimage around the water shrines of the Sinai Desert. "A pillar of cloud" could be read as a distant sandstorm, but sandstorms do not provide neon signposts in the skies at night. Clearly the AMUD EYSH is YHVH spouting from his Midyanite volcano; but Jewish commentary has always preferred to read this symbolically.
An AMUD is indeed a pillar, but how does something as amorphous as a cloud become as solid as a pillar? Perhaps the answer to that question lies with Lot's wife (Genesis 19:15-2), or in the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice, or inside the museum at Pompei.
AMUD also means "stand" as in anything that stands perpendicular. We know that Mosheh, or Aharon, probably both, were carrying a sceptre which they could throw down and turn into a serpent; which is to say they held a Caduceus Pole as their emblem of priestly office. We also know that, later on, Mosheh would carry the serpent banner Nechushtan into battle. The text could therefore be read as a teraph being uplifted at the vanguard, its tip a torch that could be lit up at night, providing a forward flag for the people to follow.
YOMAM VA LAILAH: The suggestion is that they travelled without sleep, which is implausible for such a band of refugees, including old people and young babies. Anyone who has travelled in Sinai, and this is April or May after all, knows the temperature at night is in the high eighties, by day in the upper nineties at the very least, and capable of reaching a hundred and twenty, with sandstorms; no one travels in the desert by day and by night; they sleep under shelter in the heat of the day and travel only when it is (relatively-speaking) cool.
As stated in the first note to this verse, at this point yet another legend seems to find its way in, and it will become central for many chapters: the legend of a volcanic eruption in the... Sinai desert, according to this version, but Chorev was in Midyan earlier in this book, and will be again later. If it was known that the volcano was due to erupt (and early signs are not usually difficult to detect), can we read the journey to Chorev as religious propitiation, the need to pacify with sacrifices a furiously angry mountain god who has started spitting out his teeth and filling the sky with smoke from his ears; a god who, of course, has been quiet through the century and a half of Hyksos rule, and whose sudden eruption would have done several things: a) it would have inspired his worshippers to revivalism; b) it would have terrified the daylights out of the Hyksos rulers; and c) it would have caused unusual natural phenomena ("plagues") to occur: we can wonder, for example, if the redness in the rivers was not blood but molten lava leaking from the depths of the volcano; if the unusual movements of creatures were not a reaction to shakings of the tectonic plates; etc.
13:22 LO YAMISH AMUD HE ANAN YOMAM VE AMUD HA ESH LAILAH LIPHNEY HA AM.
לֹא יָמִישׁ עַמּוּד הֶעָנָן יוֹמָם וְעַמּוּד הָאֵשׁ לָיְלָה לִפְנֵי הָעָם
KJ: He took not away the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night, from before the people.
BN: Nor did the daytime pillar of cloud, or the nighttime pillar of fire, ever become invisible to the people.
BN: Nor did the daytime pillar of cloud, or the nighttime pillar of fire, ever become invisible to the people.
Exodus: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13a 13b 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30a 30b 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38a 38b 39 40
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