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midrash session 3.3
(1) "The bush burned with fire and the bush was not eaten (consumed)" -- why did the Holy One blessed be He show [a] to Moshe [b] this sign? (2) Since Moshe was thinking in his heart thus: (3) lest the Egyptians will be consumers (lit. eaters) (et) Israel [c], accordingly the Holy One blessed be He showed [d] him fire burning [and a bush] not consumed. (4) He said to him: just as the bush burns with fire and is not consumed, thus the Egyptians cannot consume Israel.
[a] The verb form is a little odd; it actually looks like a noun, but trying to render it "the sight" and eeking out a helping verb wasn't working for me.
[b] This is that "to him to Moshe" construction I mentioned last time; I eliminated the redundancy.
[c] A better but less literal rendering would be: lest the Egyptians will consume Israel; "Israel" has the direct-object marker (et), but the verbs are future (will be) and present tense (eat).
[d] Same verb construct as in [a].
New paragraph: (5) "Moshe Moshe" -- a pause did not come [between
the two], why not? (6) A parable to a man [e] that is given upon him a great
load [f] and calls: Ploni [g] and Ploni come to me! (7) Divide from me
this load.
[e] That is, we're going to answer with a parable about a man who...
[f] A better not-quite-translation: a man who is bearing a great load.
[g] Ploni is rabbinic for "somebody" or "so-and-so".
The implication of the parable is that the man speaks hastily, not pausing after the first "Ploni" to see if anyone responds. It's sort of like "help help - I'm in trouble!". The rabbis are saying that God spoke that urgently to Moshe, even though the scale is somewhat different. (One hopes that Ploni will rush to help the overloaded man within seconds, but even if Moshe rushes to help an overloaded God -- and this raises the question of how God can be overloaded -- it's still going to be some weeks or more before anything happens.)
(8) Rav Yehoshua the Kohein son of Nechemiah said: at the time that the Holy One blessed be He revealed upon Moshe -- Moshe was a novice to prophecy. (9) The Holy One blessed be he said: if I reveal [myself] to him in a great voice -- I will terrify him, in a whisper -- he will not notice the prophecy. [h] (10) What did he do? He revealed to him in the voice of his father. (11) Moshe said: "here I am" -- what does father [i] wish? (12) The Holy One blessed be He said: I am not your father, rather the God of your father, in my need I came to you, so you would not fear.
[h] Loosely.
[i] Alef at the end -- Aramaic formation? Is it first-person possessive? That would make sense from context but I don't know Aramaic suffixes.
It's interesting that Moshe knows the voice of his father when at most he knew him for the first three months of his (Moshe's) life. One could read a deeper meaning into this, that God gave him the knowledge of the voice and its intended comforting effects along with the voice, but that could be stretching things.
New paragraph, and this next part is the one that engaged us the most
in discussion.
(13) "And Moshe hid his face" -- Rabbi Yehoshua ben Karchai says: Moshe did not do good in hiding his face: if he had not hidden his face the Holy One blessed be he would have revealed to Moshe what is above and what is below, what was and what will be the future: (14) In the end [when] he asked to see, as it is written: "show me please your glory", the Holy One blessed be He said to Moshe: I came to show to you my face [j] and you hid your face; now I say to you "man cannot see me and live". (15) As I wanted you did not want, now you want -- I do not want.
(16) And Rabbi Hosha'yah Rabbah said: Moshe did good in hiding his face. The Holy One blessed be he said to Moshe: I came to show to you my face and you respected my honor and hid your face -- as you live, that you (?) [k] will be on the mountain forty day(s) and forty night(s) [l], not to eat and not to drink, and you (?) [m] from rays [of] the Shechina, as it is written: "and Moshe did not know that rays of light [were] on his face".
[j] Grammatically plural but not really?
[k] 'atid lihyot etzli -- from context something like "you'll be seeing me", but I can't quite parse it out.
[l] Grammatically singular but not really?
[m] 'atid lehanot
So we have a disagreement between R. Yehoshua, who says that Moshe
was punished for not standing his ground, so to speak, and R. Hosha'yah,
who says he was rewarded for showing deference. I tend to assume we
should always show deference to God (siding with R. Hosha'yah), but
then I remembered that when we pray the t'filah we bow at the beginning,
not for the whole duration, and maybe there's a reason for that. We
show deference and then we stand back up and continue with our business
before the Holy One. So maybe R. Yehoshua is right too, if we understand
him to be saying that Moshe should have initially deferred but then
been willing to be more direct? An interesting question.
(Of course, with midrash many contradictory answers are supported; I'm not suggesting that there is one right way to read this.)
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[i] Alot of Aramaic words end in alef. Just look at anything written in Aramaic (For ease of example I'll choose something almost everyone has easy access to a copy of: Chad Gadya). Many Aramaic words are simply Hebrew words with alephs on the end. Gadya-> G'di (If it was written in Hebrew letters that would be more obvious). Then there are letters which switch, such as shin in Hebrew can switch to taf in Aramaic. So back to our Had Gadya, a few verses later: Tora-> Minus aleph, replace taf with shin-> Shor. This will not always get you a Hebrew word, so then you need to know the word: Shunra -> Chatul isn't going to happen. Nura -> Ner is a "if you knew that's what it meant, you'd see the connection". So on for other things in Chad Gadya & elsewhere.
Moses did know his mother past his adoption by Pharoah's daughter, so it is possible that he also knew his father. However, at 80 and very far from home, I am surprised that if Moses was addressed in the voice of Amram he responded as he did. Amram may well have been deceased by this point, and certainly wasn't expected to be nearby.
[j] Face is plural. So in Hebrew, we are all two-faced (or more).
[L] Often a fairly large number of days is written yom rather than yamim. Look in sefirat HaOmer to see where this switches (I believe it is 20). The same is done for day of the month in writing documents, like ketubot (which I just learned this week.
The above two went together & the following two go together.
[k] in the future you will be with me (lit. future to be with me) Atid followed by a verb is used to mean "in the future you will merit to_____" Etzel is a preopition which takes the appropriate prepositional ending meaning "with" or "at (my/your/etc.) place"
[m] ...In the future you will benefit from...
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Moses did know his mother past his adoption by Pharoah's daughter, so it is possible that he also knew his father. However, at 80 and very far from home, I am surprised that if Moses was addressed in the voice of Amram he responded as he did.
Likewise. I would expect the voice of his mother to have this effect, but not the voice of his father.
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[i] alef suffix in Aramaic is a definite marker (like prefix hey in Hebrew) so it shows up frequently
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Alef prefix is just definite, or can it be more specific? It looks like the text wants a possessive here -- either that or a proper noun. (What does my father want, or what does Father want.)
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I think there was a deal/compact/contract that Moses was specially sent (or, perhaps, provided) to carry out. It was time for his end of the deal to kick in, and he'd been hiding from it for a while. Silly to think you can hide from a deal with G-d just by avoiding civilized localities for a while, eh what? But Moses could hide from a sense that there was something scary he was supposed to do that involved heading back into civilized parts, by making sure his job involved being out tending flocks and getting older all the time.
So, now in the bigger picture the time is as right as it's going to get for Moses to carry out his end of the deal and start making trouble for Pharoah. And he's still out in the middle of nowhere. I would say that could create urgency. G-d may be timeless and all-knowing, but Moses and the situation are unfolding in a dimensional framework that includes time, and must be dealt with in time. And Moses has free will, which IMO is implemented via ignorance (not being all-knowing allows, and in fact imposes, free will) so that's a limitation that G-d has to work with: Moses doesn't remember the deal/compact/mission.
Get his attention: burning bush, parental voice, sounds like a plan....
What does Moses get out of the deal? Potentially, freedom for his people and the Egyptian abuse of power held to account. If he can pull if off. If he's willing to ask for help without trying to hide behind other people all the time. Should he have deferred? I agree with you. Defer when "introduced" and then stand up and face G-d because you are being told you are the other party in a deal! So you must have some standing and maybe some leverage even.
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Moshe surely knew that those were his people out slaving in the fields even as he reclined in the palace. I wouldn't be at all surprised by a midrash that he knew then that it was his job to do something about it, but he didn't and God had to work more directly. So yeah, a sense of urgency does seem to be called for in that case.