{"id":41090,"date":"2018-09-27T09:51:21","date_gmt":"2018-09-27T06:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=41090"},"modified":"2022-05-03T23:25:31","modified_gmt":"2022-05-03T20:25:31","slug":"prelude-to-a-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/prelude-to-a-poem\/","title":{"rendered":"Prelude to a Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":50634,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[601,597],"acf":{"old_id":"41090","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":34243,"related_cahpter":"64","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Some Passover connections in the text","content":"

Today\u2019s chapter often gets overshadowed by its poetic counterpart\u2014tomorrow\u2019s chapter. \u00a0Like the victory of Deborah and Barak over Sisera told in Judges 3-4 (not coincidentally, the Haftarah for the chapters in Exodus), the poetry tends to be more memorable than the prose.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here, then, are a couple of the prosaic details provided by today\u2019s chapter. First of all, let us recall that the Israelites had departed Egypt on the pretext that they were going for only a three-day holiday furlough (see 3:18). Only on day four did the Egyptians appreciate that they had been had (14:5) and it took them three additional days to catch up to the escapees. That places the crossing of the sea on the seventh day after the Exodus\u2014which is precisely why we take cognizance of it on the seventh day of Passover.<\/span><\/p>\n

A second noteworthy detail relates to verse 30: \u201c\u2026and Israel saw Egypt dying on the seashore.\u201d Israel was seeing, Egypt was dying, but which one of them was on the seashore? Three possibilities present themselves: Israel\u2014who would have been on the far shore of the sea they had just crossed, Egypt\u2014the drowning victims, washing up on the near shore of the sea they had entered, or, conceivably, both.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is actually the second time the Torah narrates an attempted escape that was almost thwarted. Earlier (Genesis 31), Jacob and his household fled Aram, only to be pursued and caught by Laban. That encounter, too, was resolved through a divine intervention (31:24), although not one as flamboyant as this. Perhaps this coincidence accounts for the otherwise incongruous reference in the Passover Haggadah to: \u201cPharaoh sought to kill only the males, while Laban sought to extirpate them all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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