midrash session 3.4

[cellio]

More midrash at the burning bush:

(Whoops, please ignore the duplicated line in the scans...)

(1) "And Moshe said to God, who am I that I will go to Paro?" -- (2) Rabbi N'horai said: Moshe said before the Holy One blessed be He: (3) You say to me "go and bring out Israel", what can I [do] to stand with all the people (praised??)? [a] (4) How can I shelter them in summer from the heat and in winter from the cold? (5) How do I provide [b] food and drink? [c] (6) How many midwives are there in (among) them, how many pregnant ones are there among them, how many infants are there among them, how many cakes (grains?) have you prepared for the midwives for them, how many delicacies [d] have you prepared for the pregnant ones, how many grains [d] and nuts have you prepared for the infants? (7) The Holy One blessed be He said to him: from the parched bread [d] that Israel raised in their hands from Egypt and [it] sustains them thirty days[,] you will know what will be for them in the future [e].

[a] "ha-okhlusin halalu" -- I wrote "people" next to the first but I'm not now sure why. The "halalu" here is a complete mystery to me.

[b] Approximately; "li l'safeik" doesn't really parse coherently.

[c] These actually seem to be present-tense verbs with a preposition tacked on the beginning, but I'm not sure what to make of that. "For eating and drinking"? Except it's a b-, not a l-.

[d] Taking a translation's word for these.

[e] Loosely; "'atid" as "future" is something of an idiom (that we've seen before).

New paragraph:

(8) "I will be what I will be" -- the Holy One blessed be He said to Moshe: (9) go say to Israel: I was with them in this slavery and I will be with them in slavery [to] kings. [f] (10) He (Moshe) said before him: Master of the universe, it is enough the bitterness [g] now! [h] (11) The Holy One blessed be He said to him: go say to them -- "'I will be' sent me to you". [Meaning, we're only going to refer to this slavery and not the future one.]

[f] The implication is "other kings after this one" (too).

[g] Tzarah, literally narrowness and colloquially "bad stuff". You probably know the Yiddish cognate, tzuris.

[h] The literal phrasing is awkward; more loosely: these current troubles are enough!

Comments

[cellio]

Thanks! (Duh, shouldn't have made the mistake on [f]...)

How does "halalu" relate to "ha-eileh"?

[chaos-wrangler.livejournal.com]

I don't know if they are related. The ha- at the front looks like "the"/definite marker for both, but I don't know of lalu ever appearing by itself while eileh definitely can (it means "those" by itself, so ha-eileh should mean "the those" which is weird, but somehow it works in Hebrew).