Wednesday, January 20, 2010
(12,13) 1. The blood is a sign so that Hashem passes over the Bnei Yisrael. And that's where Pesach comes from, passed over. But why did they need to do this in the first place? Weren't all the Jews in Goshen? Hashem could have just not gone to Goshen, and the Jews would have survived! If you say that not all the Jews were in Goshen (much earlier they multiplied so much that Goshen couldn't fit them, so a bunch of them had to live in the rest of Egypt), it says in (8,18) and (9,26) during the Plagues of Arov and Hail, that the plagues didn't effect the Land of Goshen. If more of the Jews were in Egypt, they would have been killed during those Plagues! (As an aside, Mechilta says in (13,18) that during the Plague of Darkness four fifths of the Jews died out, so then perhaps there was room in Goshen for those Jews who didn't live there.) So why did Hashem have to "pass over" the Jews? (And what happened to those Jews during Arov and Hail?)
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As it turns out, a more accurate translation of "pasach" is 'hovered over.' For example, the story of Eliyahu at Har Carmel: "עד מתי אתם פוסחים על שני הסעיפים" (we'll see how this comes out in the comment box.) Idea being, how long will you hover over both se'ifim without actually landing on one, avodas Hashem or avodah zarah? In any case, it seems the idea with this makkah is that Hashem sent out the "death" (I forgot the specific word) throughout Egypt, but then hovered over the houses that had the blood on the mezuzah, protecting them from the "death." Now, in order to answer why not just skip Goshen altogether, I think it's possible that the Jews lived in Goshen *among Egyptians.* So up until that point, whichever Egyptians lived in Goshen got lucky, but by the last makkah, Hashem didn't leave anything up to anyone's imagination, and protected only the Jews.
ReplyDeleteOh great, it didn't mess up the Hebrew.
ReplyDelete