“דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיָשֻׁבוּ ויחנו לפני פי החירות/Speak to the children of Israel and they will return and encamp before the mouth of Chiros (lit. Freedom)” (Shmos 14:2) The children of Israel had left Egypt three days earlier. God commands Moshe Rabbeinu to instruct the nation to turn around and head back towards the Egyptians. Pharaoh will think that the
nation has lost its way in the desert and will be goaded into pursuing
them. When he confronts the nation of Israel ,
God will destroy him and the Egyptians.
The obvious question as we read these p’sukim is, “Why?” What was to be gained by returning? If God wanted to destroy the Egyptian army,
He certainly had ample opportunity to do so before.
The Sfas Emes answers
that God wanted us in a situation that would require His direct intervention to
save us so that we would then sing praise to God. The Exodus was not enough for this. The Exodus was the fulfillment of God's promise
to our forefathers. While we, of course,
would be thankful, we would not feel the need to burst out in spontaneous song
upon our leaving in Egypt
and in fact, we did not do so. The
splitting of the sea and the destruction of the Egypt army before our very eyes in
what can only be described as a clear miracle was something else. This was totally unexpected.
However, this begs
the question. Why did God want us in a
situation in which we would sing His praise?
To answer this question we need to understand what was accomplished
through the Exodus. The primary purpose
of the Exodus, the Sfas Emes teaches, was to rectify a flaw in the Creation. The physical world hides God. At least once in the history of mankind, God
needed to reveal Himself so that mankind would know that He created the world. This He did at the Exodus through a direct
and unambiguous intervention in history and events.
This is the reason first
commandment of the Ten Commandments describes God as the One who took us out of
Egypt and not as the One who created the world.
His direct intervention in the events leading up to our leaving Egypt , events that our entire nation as well as
the entire nation of Egypt
experienced, is the proof that He created the world.[1]
What then was the
purpose of the splitting of the sea? The
splitting of the sea teaches us that we can have a higher level interaction
with God. God split the sea in response
to our prayers to teach us that as a result of our good deeds, God will relate
to us in a way that is totally not bound by nature. Conventionally, we view miracles as a suspension
of the natural order that happen in an unpredictable manner. However, the Maharal[2]
establishes that just as there is an order and laws in nature, there is an
order and laws in miracles. The
splitting of the sea teaches us that we have the ability live in a way that is not
be bound by the order of nature.
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