Parashat Shemot – Redemption Axis

 Parashat Shemot – Redemption Axis

Rabbi Ari Kahn

 

The Book of Shemot presents itself as a new beginning, yet its narrative is inseparable from an older story that precedes it. The opening chapters do not describe an isolated episode but a continuation of promises and shadows that already hover over the family of Avraham. To read Shemot properly is therefore to read it intertextually, allowing earlier texts to illuminate later ones and later events to cast their light backward. Once these juxtapositions are perceived, they cannot be unseen.

In this study, the central figure is Moshe. Other characters – Miriam, the midwives, the righteous women of that generation – are indispensable, yet Moshe stands at the axis of the drama. He is chosen, appointed, anointed as the human instrument of redemption in this chapter of Jewish history. The task here is to read Moshe’s origin story in light of an earlier origin story, and then to trace the completion of that line beyond Moshe himself. The “redemption axis” thus runs in two directions: backward into the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs, and forward into later figures who carry this same pattern within their own existence.

 

שמות פרק ב פסוק א - ו (פרשת שמות)

(א) וַיֵּ֥לֶךְ אִ֖ישׁ מִבֵּ֣ית לֵוִ֑י וַיִּקַּ֖ח אֶת־בַּת־לֵוִֽי: (ב) וַתַּ֥הַר הָאִשָּׁ֖ה וַתֵּ֣לֶד בֵּ֑ן וַתֵּ֤רֶא אֹתוֹ֙ כִּי־ט֣וֹב ה֔וּא וַֽתִּצְפְּנֵ֖הוּ שְׁלֹשָׁ֥ה יְרָחִֽים: 

 

The Torah introduces Moshe with disarming simplicity: a man from the house of Levi takes a daughter of Levi as his wife, she conceives and bears a son, sees that he is “good,” and hides him for three months. Yet these understated verses are set against a world in which the birth of a male child has been decreed a crime against the state.

שמות פרק א פסוק טו - כב (פרשת שמות)

(טו) וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם לַֽמְיַלְּדֹ֖ת הָֽעִבְרִיֹּ֑ת אֲשֶׁ֨ר שֵׁ֤ם הָֽאַחַת֙ שִׁפְרָ֔ה וְשֵׁ֥ם הַשֵּׁנִ֖ית פּוּעָֽה: (טז) וַיֹּ֗אמֶר בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן֙ אֶת־הָֽעִבְרִיּ֔וֹת וּרְאִיתֶ֖ן עַל־הָאָבְנָ֑יִם אִם־בֵּ֥ן הוּא֙ וַהֲמִתֶּ֣ן אֹת֔וֹ וְאִם־בַּ֥ת הִ֖וא וָחָֽיָה: (יז) וַתִּירֶ֤אןָ הַֽמְיַלְּדֹת֙ אֶת־הָ֣אֱלֹהִ֔ים וְלֹ֣א עָשׂ֔וּ כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר דִּבֶּ֥ר אֲלֵיהֶ֖ן מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרָ֑יִם וַתְּחַיֶּ֖יןָ אֶת־הַיְלָדִֽים:… (כב) וַיְצַ֣ו פַּרְעֹ֔ה לְכָל־עַמּ֖וֹ לֵאמֹ֑ר כָּל־הַבֵּ֣ן הַיִּלּ֗וֹד הַיְאֹ֙רָה֙ תַּשְׁלִיכֻ֔הוּ וְכָל־הַבַּ֖ת תְּחַיּֽוּן:

Pharaoh’s first policy, delegated to the Hebrew midwives, is to kill male infants at the moment of birth. When that stratagem does not achieve its goal, he turns to his people and commands that every son that is born be cast into the Nile. The decree now moves from covert to overt, from a professional order whispered in delivery rooms to a public law enforced by all Egyptians. Moshe’s birth takes place within this suffocating atmosphere. To bring a boy into such a world can be read as an act of almost cruel futility; the future has been legislated out of existence. This is the world into which Moshe enters.

The narrative, however, is not content to present Moshe merely as a courageous child born under oppression. Through the reading of Rashi and Chazal, the Torah invites us to perceive a deeper structure: Moshe’s very existence is not only endangered by decree but rendered almost impossible by the inner life of his own family.

The setting of this covenantal story is a culture that venerates death. Egyptian civilization builds pyramids as monuments to the afterlife, perfects the art of embalming, and turns the Nile itself into a grave. When Pharaoh commands that every male child be cast into the river, he does not innovate but intensifies an existing fixation. The river that sustains Egyptian agriculture becomes the instrument of Israel’s annihilation.

Chazal deepen this theme when they speak of Israel in Egypt reaching the forty‑ninth gate of impurity, a state identified with tum’at met, the impurity of death.[1] Egypt is not merely a foreign land; it is a spiritual environment in which death is enthroned as an organizing principle. To live under such rule is to breathe the air of graves.

The verse “A man from the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi” appears, on its surface, to describe a first marriage. Yet we know from later passages that Moshe has older siblings: Aharon and Miriam. Rashi therefore reads the verb “vayikach – he took” not as initial marriage but as remarriage: Amram and Yocheved were already husband and wife; they had separated because of Pharaoh’s decree; now they reunite.

רש"י שמות פרק ב פסוק א (פרשת שמות)

ויקח את בת לוי – פָּרוּשׁ הָיָה מִמֶּנָּה מִפְּנֵי גְּזֵרַת פַּרְעֹה. (וְחָזַר וְלָקְחָהּ. וְזֶהוּ וַיֵּלֶךְ, שֶׁהָלַךְ בַּעֲצַת בִּתּוֹ שֶׁאָמְרָה לוֹ גְּזֵרָתְךָ קָשָׁה מִשֶּׁל פַּרְעֹה, אִם פַּרְעֹה גָּזַר עַל הַזְּכָרִים וְאַתָּה גַּם עַל הַנְּקֵבוֹת). וְהֶחֱזִירָהּ וְעָשָׂה בָהּ לְקוּחִין שֵׁנִיִים…

Amram does not merely happen to marry; he goes, deliberately, after the counsel of his daughter. Miriam, still a child, rebukes her father: Pharaoh has decreed only upon the males, but by separating from his wife, Amram has decreed upon the females as well. His despair is more destructive than Pharaoh’s cruelty. The leader of the generation, in a gesture of realism, has quietly closed the future.

At Miriam’s insistence, Amram returns to Yocheved and takes her again in marriage. Chazal describe this second union as a public celebration, precisely because others had followed Amram’s example into separation; now the reversal must be equally visible. The community is taught that Jewish history is not written by demographic calculations alone. Judaism recognizes the tragedy and the realism of the moment, but refuses to accept pessimism as a final category. Hope is not naïve optimism; it is fidelity to a divine involvement that transcends the statistics.

Rashi adds a quiet but extraordinary note: in this renewed union, Yocheved “was transformed into a young woman.” 

…וְהֶחֱזִירָהּ וְעָשָׂה בָהּ לְקוּחִין שֵׁנִיִים. וְאַף הִיא נֶהֶפְכָה לִהְיוֹת נַעֲרָה."

This is more than a description of emotional rejuvenation. The comment implies physical change: a woman advanced in years, on the threshold or far side of menopause, is restored to youth. The impossibility of Moshe’s birth is thus compounded. It is not only that his parents were no longer living together, and not only that any son born in this climate is marked for death. His very conception requires that time itself flow backward in his mother’s body.

At this point the narrative acquires a clear contour. The Torah, through its own language and through Rashi’s midrashic reading, constructs a story in which Moshe’s existence is an act of divine will. The human agents here are a courageous girl and her parents, but the arc of the story bends beyond them. Without Miriam’s protest there would quite literally “never have been a Moshe.” Without Yocheved’s miraculous rejuvenation, the axis of redemption would have been broken before it began.

Moshe’s life, conceived against all odds, immediately confronts another circle of impossibility. After hiding her son for three months, Yocheved can no longer protect him. The verse is stark: she cannot hide him any longer. Maternal love collides with political reality. At that point she undertakes an act that is at once desperate and theologically charged.

שמות פרק ב פסוק (פרשת שמות)

 (ג) וְלֹא־יָכְלָ֣ה עוֹד֘ הַצְּפִינוֹ֒ וַתִּֽקַּֽח־לוֹ֙ תֵּ֣בַת גֹּ֔מֶא וַתַּחְמְרָ֥ה בַחֵמָ֖ר וּבַזָּ֑פֶת וַתָּ֤שֶׂם בָּהּ֙ אֶת־הַיֶּ֔לֶד וַתָּ֥שֶׂם בַּסּ֖וּף עַל־שְׂפַ֥ת הַיְאֹֽר: 

She fashions a small vessel of reeds, smears it with pitch and tar, places the child inside, and sets the tevah among the reeds of the Nile. The image evokes Noach’s ark on a miniature scale: a fragile craft launched upon waters associated with destruction. Ancient seafaring was perilous even in proper ships; here the pilot is an infant. The Nile itself is not a neutral river but the locus of Pharaoh’s decree, a waterway filled with the bodies of murdered children and inhabited, in the plain sense, by predators. From any rational standpoint, Moshe’s chances of survival are negligible.

At this moment Yocheved performs a gesture that echoes a much earlier scene. She carries her son to the edge of death and entrusts him to God. The tevah becomes an altar of sorts, the Nile a strange mountain. Yitzchak was carried by his father up Mount Moriah, bound upon the wood and placed beneath the knife; Moshe is carried by his mother to the Nile, placed upon wood and tar, and set amidst the reeds. In both narratives the child already embodies a miracle—Yitzchak as the son of barren parents, Moshe as the son of a rejuvenated mother—and in both the miracle is placed under erasure. If they now die, the covenantal story itself seems to die with them.

This parallel invites us to name the scene “Akedat Moshe.” It is not an Akedah in the sense of God demanding the impossible; it is an Akedah only in the sense that God creates an impossible situation, in which Israel’s future is bound and surrendered and the axis of redemption seems ready to snap. The Torah insists that redemption is not a straight, well‑paved road; it is a path that repeatedly passes through the shadow of the knife and the depths of the river.

It is at this juncture that an unlikely figure enters: the daughter of Pharaoh, the child of the very monarch who has decreed that every male infant be cast into the river. She descends to the Nile, a river that has become a killing field. Whether she comes as a spiritual seeker, as some midrashim imagine, or as a princess strolling along waters saturated with death, the setting underscores the horror of Egyptian culture.

(ו) וַתִּפְתַּח֙ וַתִּרְאֵ֣הוּ אֶת־הַיֶּ֔לֶד וְהִנֵּה־נַ֖עַר בֹּכֶ֑ה וַתַּחְמֹ֣ל עָלָ֔יו וַתֹּ֕אמֶר מִיַּלְדֵ֥י הָֽעִבְרִ֖ים זֶֽה:

She sees the tevah among the reeds, sends her maidservant, opens the vessel, and encounters the child. The Torah describes this encounter in a curious way: she sees “the child,” yet “behold, a na’ar is crying.” The text juxtaposes two different terms, yeled and na’ar. One belongs to infancy; the other suggests a youth already on the threshold of responsibility. She sees with her eyes a small, vulnerable baby, but what she hears—the cry of a na’ar—belongs to a future that has not yet unfolded.

This dissonance between sight and sound is not accidental. The Torah is teaching that in the presence of Moshe, even an Egyptian princess can be drawn into a prophetic register. The child radiates a destiny that penetrates her ears before it is visible to her eyes. She senses, however dimly, the weight of the future resting in this fragile vessel. If she closes the lid and pushes the tevah back into the current, that future sinks with it.

At that moment she stands before a choice. One path leaves her within the comfort and cruelty of Egyptian society, complicit in a culture that has normalized infanticide. The other path aligns her with the child’s future, a future that will ultimately stand in opposition to Egypt. The Torah records her decision with a simple phrase: “She had compassion on him.” Compassion here is not sentimentality; it is a form of spiritual rebellion. She refuses to play her assigned role in a civilization of death.

Later scripture identifies her as a convert, as a woman who leaves Egypt not only geographically but spiritually, joining the people whose child she saved.[2] The princess who once walked along a river of corpses will stand, according to this reading, at Sinai among a nation that “sees the voices” of revelation. Her initial experience by the Nile, in which seeing and hearing collapse into each other, anticipates that later synesthetic moment. The axis of redemption runs even through the heart of Pharaoh’s household.

From this point forward, Moshe’s biography continues to unfold as a series of narrow escapes. The pattern established at the Nile recurs in different guises.

As a young man, he leaves the security of the palace to defend his enslaved brethren, intervenes between a Hebrew and an Egyptian, and finds himself wanted for murder. Pharaoh seeks to kill him, and Moshe flees to Midian. Later, on his return journey to Egypt as God’s emissary, a mysterious encounter occurs on the road in which “the Lord sought to kill him,” resolved only through Tzipporah’s swift action. At every crucial threshold, Moshe’s life hangs in the balance.

These episodes are not isolated accidents; together they form a spiritual pattern. Moshe is not simply a heroic character who manages to survive. His survival is tethered at every point to divine purpose. The obstacles that threaten his existence serve to reveal the depth of that purpose. Each renewed threat sharpens the sense that Moshe’s life, like his birth, is willed into being against the natural grain of history.

In this sense, Moshe is not only the human leader of the Exodus but also a living symbol of it. His personal story anticipates the national experience: a people whose existence is continuously placed under erasure and yet returns, again and again, from the brink. The redemption axis is already inscribed in his flesh.

The pattern embedded in Moshe’s story is not new. It has already been etched into the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs, and most clearly into the figure of Yitzchak. To understand Moshe’s place on the redemption axis, one must first attend to Yitzchak’s.

The Torah introduces Sarah with a brief but devastating description: she is barren; she has no child. 

בראשית פרק יא פסוק ל (פרשת נח)

וַתְּהִ֥י שָׂרַ֖י עֲקָרָ֑ה אֵ֥ין לָ֖הּ וָלָֽד:

 

This is not a temporary medical difficulty but a definition of her being. Whatever its physiological expression, the text presents childlessness as her given reality. From this starting point, Avraham and Sarah’s hope for descendants appears biologically unwarranted.

Later, when celestial visitors announce that Sarah will bear a son, the promise arrives after years of disappointment. Rashi notes that on that day Sarah experiences the sudden return of “the way of women,” a physical sign of rejuvenation. 

רש"י בראשית פרק יח (פרשת וירא)

(ח) ויקח חמאה וגו' - ולחם לא הביא לפי שפירסה שרה נדה, שחזר לה אורח כנשים אותו היום, ונטמאת העיסה:

The body that had quietly consented to barrenness is re‑awakened. Yet even with this sign, Sarah laughs inwardly at the prospect of nursing a child in old age. The Torah allows her laughter to register the human difficulty of believing that time can be reversed.

The announcement itself, however, contains a crucial calendrical hint. The visitors speak of “this time next year,” and tradition hears in this phrase the cadence of the festivals. 

רש"י בראשית פרק יח (פרשת וירא)

(י) "כָּעֵת חַיָּה – כָּעֵת הַזֹּאת לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה, וּפֶסַח הָיָה, וּלְפֶסַח הַבָּא נוֹלַד יִצְחָק."

 

 

The birth of Yitzchak is set for Pesach. Yitzchak is thus conceived in promise on Pesach and born on Pesach. His life is framed from its inception by the season of redemption.

The miraculous birth of Yitzchak is already anticipated in an earlier covenantal vision. Before any child is born, Avraham is enveloped in what the Torah calls “a dread, great darkness falling upon him.” Out of that darkness, God speaks of Avraham’s descendants: they will be strangers in a land not their own, enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years, and afterward they will leave with great wealth to inherit the promised land.

בראשית פרק טו פסוק יב - יח (פרשת לך לך)

(יב) וַיְהִ֤י הַשֶּׁ֙מֶשׁ֙ לָב֔וֹא וְתַרְדֵּמָ֖ה נָפְלָ֣ה עַל־אַבְרָ֑ם וְהִנֵּ֥ה אֵימָ֛ה חֲשֵׁכָ֥ה גְדֹלָ֖ה נֹפֶ֥לֶת עָלָֽיו: (יג) וַיֹּא֣מֶר לְאַבְרָ֗ם יָדֹ֨עַ תֵּדַ֜ע כִּי־גֵ֣ר׀ יִהְיֶ֣ה זַרְעֲךָ֗ בְּאֶ֙רֶץ֙ לֹ֣א לָהֶ֔ם וַעֲבָד֖וּם וְעִנּ֣וּ אֹתָ֑ם אַרְבַּ֥ע מֵא֖וֹת שָׁנָֽה: (יד) וְגַ֧ם אֶת־הַגּ֛וֹי אֲשֶׁ֥ר יַעֲבֹ֖דוּ דָּ֣ן אָנֹ֑כִי וְאַחֲרֵי־כֵ֥ן יֵצְא֖וּ בִּרְכֻ֥שׁ גָּדֽוֹל: (טו) וְאַתָּ֛ה תָּב֥וֹא אֶל־אֲבֹתֶ֖יךָ בְּשָׁל֑וֹם תִּקָּבֵ֖ר בְּשֵׂיבָ֥ה טוֹבָֽה: (טז) וְד֥וֹר רְבִיעִ֖י יָשׁ֣וּבוּ הֵ֑נָּה כִּ֧י לֹא־שָׁלֵ֛ם עֲוֹ֥ן הָאֱמֹרִ֖י עַד־הֵֽנָּה: (יז) וַיְהִ֤י הַשֶּׁ֙מֶשׁ֙ בָּ֔אָה וַעֲלָטָ֖ה הָיָ֑ה וְהִנֵּ֨ה תַנּ֤וּר עָשָׁן֙ וְלַפִּ֣יד אֵ֔שׁ אֲשֶׁ֣ר עָבַ֔ר בֵּ֖ין הַגְּזָרִ֥ים הָאֵֽלֶּה: (יח) בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֗וּא כָּרַ֧ת ה֛' אֶת־אַבְרָ֖ם בְּרִ֣ית לֵאמֹ֑ר לְזַרְעֲךָ֗ נָתַ֙תִּי֙ אֶת־הָאָ֣רֶץ הַזֹּ֔את מִנְּהַ֣ר מִצְרַ֔יִם עַד־הַנָּהָ֥ר הַגָּדֹ֖ל נְהַר־ פְּרָֽת:

 

The phrase “zar‘acha – your seed” is precise. God does not promise a school of disciples or a community of admirers; God promises biological descendants to a man whose wife is defined as barren. The first impossibility in the covenantal script is not Egyptian power but the existence of the Jewish people at all. The exile and the Exodus are written into history before Yitzchak has even been conceived, and they are written as the destiny of children who do not yet exist.

In this nocturnal scene the axis of redemption is drawn for the first time. It is a line that begins with an impossible child, moves through exile and servitude, and ends with triumphant return. Egypt and the Exodus are therefore not improvisations in response to political contingency; they are the dramatic unfolding of a story disclosed to Avraham in the dark.

Rashi makes explicit what the narrative has already implied: the four hundred years of exile and servitude begin not with Yaakov’s descent to Egypt but with Yitzchak’s birth. From “ki ger yihyeh zar‘acha” until the Exodus, the covenantal clock measures a single arc.

רש"י בראשית פרק טו פסוק יג (פרשת לך לך)

כי גר יהיה זרעך - מִשֶּׁנּוֹלַד יִצְחָק עַד שֶׁיָּצְאוּ יִשְׂרָאֵל מִמִּצְרַיִם אַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה… ושמונים של משה שהיה כשיצאו ישראל ממצרים, אין אתה מוצא אלא שלש מאות וחמשים, ואתה צריך להוציא מהן כל השנים שחי קהת אחר לידת עמרם, ושחי עמרם אחר לידת משה:

בארץ לא להם - לא נאמר בארץ מצרים אלא בארץ לא להם, ומשנולד יצחק (להלן כא לד) ויגר אברהם וגו', וביצחק (שם כו ג) גור בארץ הזאת, (תהלים קה כג) ויעקב גר בארץ חם, (בראשית מז ד) לגור בארץ באנו:

The prophecy of the night thus stretches like a taut line from the cradle of Yitzchak to the staff in Moshe’s hand. Yitzchak’s impossible birth marks the starting point; Moshe’s improbable survival and mission mark the end of the decreed span. The entire Egyptian chapter is framed as a single unit in which God’s word, not Pharaoh’s, sets the measure of history. The redemption axis is therefore not a homiletic construct but the plain sense of the covenant: “your seed” begins with Yitzchak, and the agent of their emergence is Moshe.

When Yitzchak is finally born, he embodies the first fulfillment of these promises. He is the living contradiction of Sarah’s barrenness, the first breath of a people that will one day stand at Sinai. It is precisely this child whom God later commands Avraham to offer as a burnt offering. The Akedah is not merely a test of paternal love; it is the suspension of the entire covenant over an altar.

Avraham is told to take “your son, your only one, whom you love, Yitzchak,” and to ascend one of the mountains of Moriah. He rises early, saddles his donkey, and journeys for three days until he sees the place from afar. At the foot of the mountain he tells his attendants, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go until there; we will bow and we will return to you.” The words are not casual. Avraham, who has been told “for in Yitzchak shall seed be called for you,” walks toward the altar knowing that Yitzchak must in some way continue. The narrative places covenantal promise and divine command in almost unbearable tension.

On the mountain, Yitzchak is bound upon the wood. The knife is raised; the axis of history trembles. Then the angel calls from heaven and forbids the slaughter. A ram is offered in Yitzchak’s stead. The covenant is reaffirmed; Avraham’s seed will indeed multiply and inherit the land. Yet something irrevocable has occurred. Yitzchak has passed through the experience of being designated for death and restored to life. From that day forward, the Jewish people carry within their memory not only the birth of an impossible child but the almost death of that child and his return from the brink.

This is the first Akedah: the binding of the future itself. When Yocheved later places Moshe into the Nile, we are meant to hear the echo. The same God who asked Avraham to lift the knife now watches a mother set her son upon the water. In both cases, the covenant is suspended over the void and then rescued. Redemption, it seems, must be born twice: once in laughter at a miracle birth, and once in the silence that follows the withdrawal of the knife.

If Yitzchak’s life is yoked to Pesach in its calendrical beginnings, tradition deepens this association. Rashi, citing Chazal, notes that the angelic announcement “ka‘et chayah” refers to the coming Pesach; Yitzchak will be born on Pesach, and Avraham is already serving matzot when the guests arrive. Yitzchak is thus a child of Pesach in both promise and fulfillment.

Midrashic literature goes further. Pirkei de‑Rabbi Eliezer portrays Yitzchak’s later blindness as the lingering consequence of the Akedah: when he was bound upon the altar, he lifted his eyes and saw the Shekhinah, and “no human can see Me and live.” In place of death, his eyes dim in his old age. The Akedah leaves a mark that accompanies him throughout his life.

פרקי דרבי אליעזר פרק לב

רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר, בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁנֶּעֱקַד יִצְחָק נָשָׂא אֶת עֵינָיו לְמַעְלָה וְרָאָה אֶת הַשְּׁכִינָה, וּכְתִיב [שמות לג, כ] כִּי לֹא יִרְאַנִי הָאָדָם וָחָי. אֶלָּא תַּחַת הַמִּיתָה כָּהוּ עֵינָיו לְעֵת זִקְנָתוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר [בראשית כז, א] וַיְהִי כִּי זָקֵן יִצְחָק וַתִּכְהֶיןָ עֵינָיו מֵרְאֹת. מִכָּאן אַתָּה לָמֵד שֶׁהַסּוּמָא חָשׁוּב כַּמֵּת. הִגִּיעַ לֵיל יוֹם הַפֶּסַח, וְקָרָא יִצְחָק לְעֵשָׂו בְּנוֹ הַגָּדוֹל וְאָמַר לוֹ, בְּנִי, זֶה הַלַּיְלָה כָּל הָעוֹלָם כֻּלּוֹ אוֹמְרִים בּוֹ הַלֵּל, וְאוֹצְרוֹת טְלָלִים נִפְתָּחִים בְּזֶה הַלַּיְלָה, עֲשֵׂה לִי מַטְעַמִּים, עַד שֶׁאֲנִי בְעוֹדִי אֲבָרֶכְךָ. וְרוּחַ הַקֹּדֶשׁ מְשִׁיבָה וְאוֹמֶרֶת [משלי כג, ו] אַל תִּלְחַם אֶת לֶחֶם רַע עָיִן. הָלַךְ לְהָבִיא וְנִתְעַכֵּב שָׁם. אָמְרָה רִבְקָה לְיַעֲקֹב, בְּנִי, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה אוֹצְרוֹת טְלָלִים נִפְתָּחִים בּוֹ, הָעֶלְיוֹנִים אוֹמְרִים שִׁירָה, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה עֲתִידִים בָּנֶיךָ לְהִגָּאֵל מִיַּד שִׁעְבּוּד, הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה עֲתִידִין לוֹמַר שִׁירָה, עֲשֵׂה מַטְעַמִּים לְאָבִיךָ, עַד שֶׁהוּא בְעוֹדוֹ יְבָרֶכְךָ. יַעֲקֹב  הָיָה בָּקִי בַתּוֹרָה, פָּחַד לִבּוֹ עַל קִלְלַת אָבִיו. אָמְרָה לוֹ אִמּוֹ, בְּנִי, בְּרָכוֹת עָלֶיךָ וְעַל זַרְעֶךָ. וְאִם קְלָלוֹת, עָלַי וְעַל נַפְשִׁי, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר [בראשית כז, יג] עָלַי קִלְלָתְךָ בְּנִי. הָלַךְ וְהֵבִיא שְׁנֵי גְדָיֵי עִזִּים. וְכִי שְׁנֵי גְדָיֵי עִזִּים הָיָה מַאֲכָלוֹ שֶׁל יִצְחָק וַהֲלֹא דַּי לוֹ בְּאֶחָד, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר [משלי יג, כה] צַדִּיק אֹכֵל לְשׂבַע נַפְשׁוֹ. אֶלָּא  אֶחָד כְּנֶגֶד הַפֶּסַח  וְאֶחָד לַעֲשׂוֹת לוֹ מַטְעַמִּים לֶאֱכֹל, דְּתָנֵינָן [פסחים ע.] הַפֶּסַח אֵינוֹ בָא אֶלָּא עַל הַשׂבַע. נִכְנַס וְאָמַר לוֹ קוּם נָא שְׁבָה וְאָכְלָה מִצֵּידִי [בראשית כז, יט]. אָמַר יִצְחָק,  הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב [שם כב] בְּיִחוּד הַשֵּׁם. הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב בְּהֶגְיוֹן תּוֹרָה. וְהַיָּדַיִם יְדֵי עֵשָׂו [שם] בְּכָל שְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים וּבְכָל מָוֶת רָע. וְלֹא עוֹד אֶלָּא  כְּשֶׁמַּכְרִיזִין בַּשָּׁמַיִם הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב, הַשָּׁמַיִם רוֹעֲשִׁים, וּכְשֶׁמַּכְרִיזִין בָּאָרֶץ הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב, כָּל מִי שֶׁהוּא שׁוֹמֵעַ וְעוֹשֶׂה חֶלְקוֹ עִם הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב, וְכָל מִי שֶׁאֵינוֹ שׁוֹמֵעַ וְאֵינוֹ עוֹשֶׂה חֶלְקוֹ עִם הַיָּדַיִם יְדֵי עֵשָׂו:

 

The same chapter describes another scene. It is the night of Pesach. Yitzchak, now blind, calls Esav and explains that on this night the treasuries of dew are opened and “the entire world is saying Hallel”; even without physical sight he hears a global song of praise already filling creation. Rivka, hearing this, turns to Yaakov and adds her own layer: she speaks of the higher worlds singing shirah, of their children destined to be redeemed from bondage and to sing on this very night. He hears the earthly Hallel; she hears the heavenly song. Both speak of Pesach, both sense the opening of the treasuries of dew, and together they reveal that the essence of Pesach is resurrection at its core—life drawn quietly from the dew—and that this mystery is meant to be celebrated in song.

Dew—tal—is not incidental here. In the next section, the Yerushalmi will teach that the dead live only by means of dew. 

תלמוד ירושלמי מסכת ברכות פרק ה הלכה ב

אמר לו הקדוש ברוך הוא לאליהו לך והתר נדרו של טל שאין המתים חיים אלא בטללים:

“Thus said the Holy One, blessed be He, to Eliyahu: ‘Go and release the vow concerning dew, for the dead live only by means of dew.’” Yerushalmi Berakhot 5:2

 

Yitzchak, who himself has passed through a form of death on the altar, hears on Pesach night the opening of these treasuries of dew. For him, the world is already tinged with the light of future resurrection. What others perceive as an ordinary evening meal, Yitzchak experiences as a cosmic seder. The whole world, he says, is saying Hallel. Perhaps he hears the voices of angels more than the voices of men, but in his inner world, creation is already singing the song of redemption.

Yitzchak’s Pesach is thus the inner template of all later Pesachim: a night on which history hangs between exile and deliverance, death and life, and the proper response is song.

Within this Pesach imagery, the symbol of dew takes on particular force. Dew descends silently, without thunder or fanfare. It does not break the soil open as rain does; it gently restores moisture to what seems brittle and lifeless. Chazal thus teach that dew is the medium through which the dead will rise.

Pesach is fixed in the Jewish calendar at the threshold of spring, precisely when the prayer for rain is replaced, in Eretz Yisrael, by the request for dew. After the apparent death of winter, fields begin to stir with green. The festival of redemption is thus framed by a natural parable: what seemed dead was only waiting for a different kind of water.

Midrashim concerning Matan Torah extend the motif. Some sources describe Israel at Sinai as dying from the overwhelming intensity of divine speech and being revived with dew. Revelation itself is portrayed as a form of resurrection. The same tal that will one day awaken the sleeping dead already operates at the foundational moments of our history, reviving the patriarchal line, the nation at the sea, and the people at Sinai. Each time, what looked like an ending becomes a beginning, not through human ingenuity but through a quiet, pervasive gift from above.

The personal pattern inscribed in Yitzchak and Moshe expands into the life of the nation when Israel stands at the edge of the sea. Having fled Egypt, the people find themselves trapped between water and a rapidly approaching army. The Torah records their response in anguished words: “Were there no graves in Egypt, that you have taken us to die in the wilderness?” Egypt has trained them to think in the grammar of death; their imagination cannot yet conceive of another outcome.

שמות פרק יד (פרשת בשלח)

(ט) וַיִּרְדְּפ֨וּ מִצְרַ֜יִם אַחֲרֵיהֶ֗ם וַיַּשִּׂ֤יגוּ אוֹתָם֙ חֹנִ֣ים עַל־הַיָּ֔ם כָּל־סוּס֙ רֶ֣כֶב פַּרְעֹ֔ה וּפָרָשָׁ֖יו וְחֵיל֑וֹ עַל־פִּי֙ הַֽחִירֹ֔ת לִפְנֵ֖י בַּ֥עַל צְפֹֽן: (י) וּפַרְעֹ֖ה הִקְרִ֑יב וַיִּשְׂאוּ֩ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֨ל אֶת־עֵינֵיהֶ֜ם וְהִנֵּ֥ה מִצְרַ֣יִם׀ נֹסֵ֣עַ אַחֲרֵיהֶ֗ם וַיִּֽירְאוּ֙ מְאֹ֔ד וַיִּצְעֲק֥וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל אֶל־ הֽ': (יא) וַיֹּאמְרוּ֘ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה֒ הַֽמִבְּלִ֤י אֵין־קְבָרִים֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם לְקַחְתָּ֖נוּ לָמ֣וּת בַּמִּדְבָּ֑ר מַה־זֹּאת֙ עָשִׂ֣יתָ לָּ֔נוּ לְהוֹצִיאָ֖נוּ מִמִּצְרָֽיִם: (יב) הֲלֹא־זֶ֣ה הַדָּבָ֗ר אֲשֶׁר֩ דִּבַּ֨רְנוּ אֵלֶ֤יךָ בְמִצְרַ֙יִם֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר חֲדַ֥ל מִמֶּ֖נּוּ וְנַֽעַבְדָ֣ה אֶת־מִצְרָ֑יִם כִּ֣י ט֥וֹב לָ֙נוּ֙ עֲבֹ֣ד אֶת־מִצְרַ֔יִם מִמֻּתֵ֖נוּ בַּמִּדְבָּֽר: 

 

This moment is structurally identical to the scenes we have already considered. Yitzchak bound upon the altar, Moshe placed upon the water, and now an entire people hemmed in by sea and sword. The narrative again suspends the future over the void. From a human perspective there is no way forward; there are only graves behind and drowning ahead. Egypt’s culture of death seems poised to reclaim its escaped slaves.

(יג) וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶל־הָעָם֘ אַל־תִּירָאוּ֒ הִֽתְיַצְּב֗וּ וּרְאוּ֙ אֶת־יְשׁוּעַ֣ת ה֔' אֲשֶׁר־יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה לָכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם כִּ֗י אֲשֶׁ֨ר רְאִיתֶ֤ם אֶת־ מִצְרַ֙יִם֙ הַיּ֔וֹם לֹ֥א תֹסִ֛פוּ לִרְאֹתָ֥ם ע֖וֹד עַד־עוֹלָֽם: (יד) ה֖' יִלָּחֵ֣ם לָכֶ֑ם וְאַתֶּ֖ם תַּחֲרִשֽׁוּן: פ

 

Moshe’s answer redirects their gaze: “Do not fear; stand still and see the salvation of the Lord, which He will perform for you today… The Lord will fight for you, and you shall remain silent.” The people are asked to exchange frantic activity for a poised, almost liturgical stillness. They are summoned to see salvation, just as Avraham once lifted his eyes to see the place of the Akedah and as Bat Paro saw and heard the future in a child’s cry. The axis of redemption again runs through the capacity of the human heart to perceive what lies beyond the visible horizon.

The sea then splits. Israel passes through on dry land, the waters standing as walls on either side. When the Egyptians pursue, the waters return and cover them. The people who had spoken of graves now witness the bodies of their oppressors washed up on the shore. The narrative allows them to look upon death and realize that, at least for this chapter, it is not their own.

It is only after this confrontation with death that Israel breaks into song. The Torah introduces the Shira with a verb in the future tense: “Then Moshe will sing, and the children of Israel.” The Sages hear in this form a hint to the resurrection of the dead. If Moshe “will sing,” there must be a future in which he stands again to sing this song. On the surface, this is a grammatical observation; at a deeper level, it recognizes that the experience at the sea is itself a kind of resurrection.

תלמוד בבלי מסכת סנהדרין דף צא עמוד ב

תניא, אמר רבי מאיר: מניין לתחיית המתים מן התורה שנאמר אז ישיר משה ובני ישראל את השירה הזאת לה', שר לא נאמר, אלא ישיר - מכאן לתחיית המתים מן התורה.

Until now, song has belonged to Yitzchak’s inner Pesach and to the visions of those who stand alone before God. At the sea, song becomes a national act. The people look back at the water that almost consumed them, see the bodies of their enemies, and realize that they have passed through death and emerged alive. Their first impulse is not analysis or legislation but music. Shirais the language of a heart that has survived what it did not expect to survive.

Yet their song is still reactive. They sing because they have seen; they praise because the danger has already receded. Their faith, at this stage, is faith after the grave. It awaits visible proof. Yitzchak, blind yet hearing Hallel in the night long before redemption, represents an earlier, more inward capacity. The axis will eventually need to move from reactive song to anticipatory song—from thanking God after the crossing to singing on the shore while the sea is still unbroken.

The Shira does not end with Moshe. The Torah immediately records a second musical scene: Miriam the prophetess, sister of Aharon, takes a drum in her hand, and all the women follow her with drums and dances. She leads them in a refrain of the same song: “Sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed greatly; horse and rider He has cast into the sea.”

שמות פרק טו פסוק כ - כא (פרשת בשלח)

(כ) וַתִּקַּח֩ מִרְיָ֨ם הַנְּבִיאָ֜ה אֲח֧וֹת אַהֲרֹ֛ן אֶת־הַתֹּ֖ף בְּיָדָ֑הּ וַתֵּצֶ֤אןָ כָֽל־הַנָּשִׁים֙ אַחֲרֶ֔יהָ בְּתֻפִּ֖ים וּבִמְחֹלֹֽת: (כא) וַתַּ֥עַן לָהֶ֖ם מִרְיָ֑ם שִׁ֤ירוּ לַֽה֙' כִּֽי־גָאֹ֣ה גָּאָ֔ה ס֥וּס וְרֹכְב֖וֹ רָמָ֥ה בַיָּֽם: ס

 

On the surface, this appears as a parallel celebration, an echo of the main event. Yet Chazal teach that this brief vignette conceals the future of Jewish royalty. When the Torah earlier praises the midwives and states that God “made them houses,” the Talmud explains that these “houses” are dynasties of priesthood, Levites, and kingship. From Yocheved will come Aharon and Moshe; from Miriam will one day come David. The drum in her hand thus contains, in embryonic form, the music of Tehillim and the melodies of the Temple.

רש"י שמות פרק א פסוק כ (פרשת שמות)

וייטב אלהים למילדת - מהו הטובה ויעש להם בתים - בתי כהונה ולויה ומלכות שקרויין בתים. ויבן את בית ה' ואת בית המלך (מלכים א' ט א). כהונה ולויה מיוכבד, ומלכות ממרים, כדאיתא במסכת סוטה (סוטה יא ב):

תלמוד בבלי מסכת סוטה דף יא עמוד ב

ויהי כי יראו המילדות את האלהים ויעש להם בתים - רב ושמואל, חד אמר: בתי כהונה ולויה, וחד אמר: בתי מלכות. מ"ד בתי כהונה ולויה, אהרן ומשה; ומ"ד בתי מלכות, דוד נמי ממרים קאתי, דכתיב: ותמת עזובה (אשת כלב) ויקח לו כלב את אפרת ותלד לו את חור, וכתיב: ודוד בן איש אפרתי וגו'.

 

Miriam’s life is framed by acts of defiant life‑affirmation. As a young girl she confronts her father’s despair and insists that children still be born; as an adult she stands at the sea and insists that the miracle be answered with song. In both cases she opens a channel for the future. Without her courage, “there would never have been a Moshe”; without her drum, the Shira might have remained a male, momentary hymn rather than the seed of a liturgical tradition. The lineage of Davidic kingship and Temple song passes through her hands as she strikes the skin of the drum on the shore.

Her theology is consistent. She resists what appears as pious realism when it threatens the future of Israel. Her insistence on life, fertility, and song in the shadow of death is not a private temperament but a prophetic stance. It is therefore fitting that through her, David—whose entire existence is borrowed life and whose vocation is song—enters the world.

Thus far, song has appeared as a spontaneous response to survival—a cry of joy after the knife is stayed or the sea is crossed. Yet over time, Shira and Hallel become structured institutions within halachah and liturgy. The momentary music of Yitzchak, Moshe, Miriam, and David is given fixed form in the calendar of Israel.

The Levi’im, Moshe’s tribe, are entrusted with perpetual song in the Temple. Their voices accompany the daily offerings and the festival sacrifices, embedding Shira within the rhythm of communal worship. David, descendant of Miriam’s house of kingship, composes psalms that become the enduring repertoire of Jewish praise. In his hands, private thanksgiving becomes liturgical text.

At that point Moshe finally steps into the role that was inscribed in him from birth. As a Levi, his tribe’s task will one day be to stand in the Temple and give voice to Israel’s inner life in song; Az yashir Moshe u‑vnei Yisrael is the first great eruption of that calling. The child who should never have lived now leads a people who should never have survived, and he does so not with weapons or argument but with song, turning bare existence after near‑death into articulated praise.

The axis also runs through the land itself. The Brit bein HaBetarim did not only foretell exile and redemption; it also promised a return to the Land of Israel, a promise that Moshe himself, standing on the far side of the Jordan, would never personally see fulfilled.Yitzchak is the one patriarch who never leaves Eretz Yisrael, bearing the promise while history still waits for its national fulfillment. Moshe, by contrast, leads Israel out from the house of bondage yet never sets foot in the land he has spent his life approaching. Only with David does the arc close: he fights his way into a secure Jerusalem, acquires the threshing floor that will become the site of the Temple, and gives the Levites—including Moshe’s own tribe—the permanent ground on which their song of resurrection can finally be sung.

The axis that begins with Yitzchak and passes through Moshe and Miriam reaches a new articulation in the figure of David. If Yitzchak is the first impossible child and Moshe the impossible redeemer, David is the child who should never have lived at all. His very years are, in the language of the Zohar, a loan.

זהר מנוקד/תרגום/ חלק א דף נה/א

[זֶה סֵפֶר תּוֹלְדת אָדָם - לִדְמֻיּוֹתָיו. אָמַר רַבִּי יִצְחָק, הֶרְאָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לָאָדָם דְּמֻיּוֹת שֶׁל כָּל אוֹתָם דּוֹרוֹת שֶׁיָּבאוּ לָעוֹלָם, וְכָל חַכְמֵי הָעוֹלָם וּמַלְכֵי הָעוֹלָם שֶׁעֲתִידִים לַעֲמֹד עַל יִשְׂרָאֵל. הִגִּיעַ לִרְאוֹת אֶת דָּוִד מֶלֶךְ יִשְׂרָאֵל שֶׁנּוֹלַד וּמֵת. אָמַר לוֹ, (אמר) מֵהַשָּׁנִים שֶׁלִּי (אוסיף) אַלְוֶה לוֹ שִׁבְעִים שָׁנִים. וְגָרְעוּ מֵאָדָם שִׁבְעִים שָׁנִים וְהֶעֱלָה אוֹתָם הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לְדָוִד.]‏

ספר מגלה עמוקות על התורה - פרשת ברכה

ודוד היה ראוי להיות נפל (סנהדרין לו) כי אדם נתן לו ע' שנה לכן נקרא משיח בר נפלי בלשון רבים. או

 

Midrashic and kabbalistic traditions describe Adam ha‑Rishon as originally allotted a thousand years of life. Adam, seeing in prophetic vision the soul of David appearing and disappearing, chooses to gift him seventy of his own years. He himself lives only nine hundred and thirty years; the missing years become David’s lifespan. David thus enters the world as ben nafli—a being who, left to the original order of things, would have remained a stillborn potential. Only a prior act of divine and primordial generosity makes his life possible.

This image is more than mystical poetry. It means that David’s very existence exemplifies the logic of redemption: life given where death should have reigned, time leased where time had run out. Adam, whose sin opens history to exile and mortality, becomes the source of David’s borrowed years; within the first human failure there is already a hidden gift toward future repair. The axis of redemption thus runs from the Garden to Bethlehem.

The Tanakh’s own narrative confirms this underlying motif. When Shmuel is sent to anoint a son of Yishai, David is not initially summoned. He is the youngest, tending the flock in the fields, forgotten even by his own father. Only after all the older brothers have passed before the prophet and been rejected does Shmuel ask whether any are left. David is brought in from the pasture—reddish, with beautiful eyes and good appearance—and God commands, “Arise, anoint him, for this is he.” The king of Israel emerges from the margins, from a life assumed to be peripheral to the main story.

David’s subsequent years are marked by continual brushes with death. He faces a lion and a bear to rescue a lamb from their jaws; he confronts Golyat with only a sling and a declaration of divine trust; he eludes Saul’s spears and ambushes, flees into wilderness and foreign courts, and survives battles that should have claimed him. At each juncture, the narrative emphasizes that the Lord is with him. David lives not because he is invulnerable but because his life is held in a hand beyond his own.

This biographical pattern is the historical counterpart of the mystical teaching. David lives in a world where, by all ordinary measures, he should have fallen long ago. The fact that he continues to stand is itself a sign of the covenant’s persistence. If Yitzchak is the child who should not have been born and Moshe the leader who should not have survived infancy, David is the king who should not have reached adulthood. His very survival is a commentary on the promise made to Avraham in the night.

If Yitzchak’s inner life is suffused with Pesach night and the sound of Hallel in the dark, David gives that inner experience a fixed liturgical form. In the Hallel of Tehillim, sung on festivals and at moments of communal deliverance, one verse stands out as a personal credo: “Lo amut ki echyeh, va‑asapper ma‘aseh Yah”—“I shall not die, but live, and I shall recount the deeds of God.”

תהלים פרק קיח פסוק יז - כט

(יז) לֹֽא אָמ֥וּת כִּי־אֶֽחְיֶ֑ה וַ֝אֲסַפֵּ֗ר מַֽעֲשֵׂ֥י יָֽהּ: (יח) יַסֹּ֣ר יִסְּרַ֣נִּי יָּ֑הּ וְ֝לַמָּ֗וֶת לֹ֣א נְתָנָֽנִי: (יט) פִּתְחוּ־לִ֥י שַׁעֲרֵי־צֶ֑דֶק אָֽבֹא־בָ֝ם אוֹדֶ֥ה יָֽהּ: (כ) זֶֽה־הַשַּׁ֥עַר לַה֑' צַ֝דִּיקִ֗ים יָבֹ֥אוּ בֽוֹ: (כא) א֭וֹדְךָ כִּ֣י עֲנִיתָ֑נִי וַתְּהִי־לִ֝֗י לִֽישׁוּעָֽה: (כב) אֶ֭בֶן מָאֲס֣וּ הַבּוֹנִ֑ים הָ֝יְתָ֗ה לְרֹ֣אשׁ פִּנָּֽה: (כג) מֵאֵ֣ת ה֭' הָ֣יְתָה זֹּ֑את הִ֖יא נִפְלָ֣את בְּעֵינֵֽינוּ: (כד) זֶה־הַ֭יּוֹם עָשָׂ֣ה ה֑' נָגִ֖ילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָ֣ה בֽוֹ: (כה) אָנָּ֣א ה֭' הוֹשִׁ֮יעָ֥ה נָּ֑א אָֽנָּ֥א ה֗' הַצְלִ֮יחָ֥ה נָּֽא: (כו) בָּר֣וּךְ הַ֭בָּא בְּשֵׁ֣ם ה֑' בֵּ֝רַֽכְנוּכֶ֗ם מִבֵּ֥ית הֽ': (כז) אֵ֤ל׀ ה֘' וַיָּ֪אֶר לָ֥נוּ אִסְרוּ־חַ֥ג בַּעֲבֹתִ֑ים עַד־קַ֝רְנ֗וֹת הַמִּזְבֵּֽחַ: (כח) אֵלִ֣י אַתָּ֣ה וְאוֹדֶ֑ךָּ אֱ֝לֹהַ֗י אֲרוֹמְמֶֽךָּ: (כט) הוֹד֣וּ לַה֣' כִּי־ט֑וֹב כִּ֖י לְעוֹלָ֣ם חַסְדּֽוֹ:

 

This line does not deny the reality of suffering. The psalm continues: “Yasser yissarani Yah, ve‑la‑mavet lo netanani”—“The Lord has surely chastened me, but to death He has not given me.” David recognizes that his life is marked by affliction, by the rod of divine discipline. Yet he insists that his destiny is not death but narration. He is preserved in order to tell the story, to transform survival into praise.

In the same psalm we encounter the verse, “Even ma’asu ha‑bonim, hayetah le‑rosh pinah”—“The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.” This, too, reads as David’s autobiography. The overlooked shepherd, the youngest son, the refugee pursued by Saul, is precisely the one chosen to found the enduring house of Israel. From the perspective of human builders, he is dispensable; from the vantage of the divine architect, he is essential.

When this psalm is placed at the heart of Hallel and sung by generations of Jews at the Seder and on days of rejoicing, David’s personal confession becomes the collective voice of Israel. A nation that repeatedly brushes against annihilation learns to say, with him, “I shall not die, but live.” Its survival is not a given but a gift, not a statistic but a story. And the proper response to that gift is not complacency but song. 

The Talmud speaks of Mashiach as “Bar Nafli”—the son of the fallen or of the stillborn—linking him to the verse “On that day I will raise up the fallen sukkah of David.” The messianic figure is thus described in the language of collapse and restoration. He emerges not from an unbroken royal line but from a house that has fallen, a dynasty that has known exile and humiliation.

תלמוד בבלי מסכת סנהדרין דף צו עמוד ב

אמר ליה רב נחמן לרבי יצחק: מי שמיע לך אימת אתי בר נפלי? - אמר ליה: מאן בר נפלי? - אמר ליה: משיח. - משיח בר נפלי קרית ליה? - אמר ליה: אין, דכתיב ביום ההוא אקים  ^{דף צז עמוד א}  את סכת דויד הנפלת.

 

This image resonates with the teachings about David’s borrowed years. If David’s own life is a gift carved from Adam’s truncated millennium, then Mashiach, his descendant, arrives as the culmination of a long process of falling and rising, dying and being reborn. The axis that began with Yitzchak’s near‑death and continued through Moshe’s tevah and Israel’s crossing of the sea now extends into the eschatological horizon. Redemption is not the avoidance of the abyss but its transformation.

At this point, the prophetic vision of Yeshayahu becomes crucial. The eleventh chapter speaks of a shoot sprouting from the stump of Yishai, a tender branch growing from roots that seemed dead. Upon this figure rests a spirit of wisdom and fear of God. He judges not by the sight of his eyes nor by the hearing of his ears alone, but with righteousness and faithfulness. Under his rule, the imagery shifts from human conflict to animal peace: the wolf dwells with the lamb, the leopard lies down with the kid, the calf and the lion graze together, and a small child leads them.

ישעיהו פרק יא פסוק א - י

(א) וְיָצָ֥א חֹ֖טֶר מִגֵּ֣זַע יִשָׁ֑י וְנֵ֖צֶר מִשָּׁרָשָׁ֥יו יִפְרֶֽה: (ב) וְנָחָ֥ה עָלָ֖יו ר֣וּחַ ה֑' ר֧וּחַ חָכְמָ֣ה וּבִינָ֗ה ר֤וּחַ עֵצָה֙ וּגְבוּרָ֔ה ר֥וּחַ דַּ֖עַת וְיִרְאַ֥ת הֽ': (ג) וַהֲרִיח֖וֹ בְּיִרְאַ֣ת ה֑' וְלֹֽא־לְמַרְאֵ֤ה עֵינָיו֙ יִשְׁפּ֔וֹט וְלֹֽא־לְמִשְׁמַ֥ע אָזְנָ֖יו יוֹכִֽיחַ: (ד) וְשָׁפַ֤ט בְּצֶ֙דֶק֙ דַּלִּ֔ים וְהוֹכִ֥יחַ בְּמִישׁ֖וֹר לְעַנְוֵי־אָ֑רֶץ וְהִֽכָּה־אֶ֙רֶץ֙ בְּשֵׁ֣בֶט פִּ֔יו וּבְר֥וּחַ שְׂפָתָ֖יו יָמִ֥ית רָשָֽׁע: (ה) וְהָ֥יָה צֶ֖דֶק אֵז֣וֹר מָתְנָ֑יו וְהָאֱמוּנָ֖ה אֵז֥וֹר חֲלָצָֽיו: (ו) וְגָ֤ר זְאֵב֙ עִם־כֶּ֔בֶשׂ וְנָמֵ֖ר עִם־גְּדִ֣י יִרְבָּ֑ץ וְעֵ֨גֶל וּכְפִ֤יר וּמְרִיא֙ יַחְדָּ֔ו וְנַ֥עַר קָטֹ֖ן נֹהֵ֥ג בָּֽם: (ז) וּפָרָ֤ה וָדֹב֙ תִּרְעֶ֔ינָה יַחְדָּ֖ו יִרְבְּצ֣וּ יַלְדֵיהֶ֑ן וְאַרְיֵ֖ה כַּבָּקָ֥ר יֹֽאכַל־תֶּֽבֶן: (ח) וְשִֽׁעֲשַׁ֥ע יוֹנֵ֖ק עַל־חֻ֣ר פָּ֑תֶן וְעַל֙ מְאוּרַ֣ת צִפְעוֹנִ֔י גָּמ֖וּל יָד֥וֹ הָדָֽה: (ט) לֹֽא־יָרֵ֥עוּ וְלֹֽא־יַשְׁחִ֖יתוּ בְּכָל־הַ֣ר קָדְשִׁ֑י כִּֽי־מָלְאָ֣ה הָאָ֗רֶץ דֵּעָה֙ אֶת־ה֔' כַּמַּ֖יִם לַיָּ֥ם מְכַסִּֽים: פ (י) וְהָיָה֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֔וּא שֹׁ֣רֶשׁ יִשַׁ֗י אֲשֶׁ֤ר עֹמֵד֙ לְנֵ֣ס עַמִּ֔ים אֵלָ֖יו גּוֹיִ֣ם יִדְרֹ֑שׁוּ וְהָיְתָ֥ה מְנֻחָת֖וֹ כָּבֽוֹד: פ

 

Maimonides insists that these descriptions are metaphorical. The nature of the animal kingdom will not change; rather, the nations of the world, once predatory, will abandon their violence and dwell in peace with Israel. The wolf and the lamb represent empires and minorities, conquerors and exiles, learning to coexist. The axis of redemption has moved from miraculous survival to moral transformation: the heart of the world itself evolves.

רמב"ם הלכות מלכים פרק יב הלכה א

אל יעלה על הלב שבימות המשיח יבטל דבר ממנהגו של עולם, או יהיה שם חידוש במעשה בראשית, אלא עולם כמנהגו נוהג, וזה שנאמר בישעיה וגר זאב עם כבש ונמר עם גדי ירבץ משל וחידה, ענין הדבר שיהיו ישראל יושבין לבטח עם רשעי עכו"ם המשולים כזאב ונמר, שנאמר זאב ערבות ישדדם ונמר שוקד על עריהם, ויחזרו כולם לדת האמת, ולא יגזלו ולא ישחיתו, אלא יאכלו דבר המותר בנחת עם ישראל, שנאמר ואריה כבקר יאכל תבן, וכן כל כיוצא באלו הדברים בענין המשיח הם משלים, ובימות המלך המשיח יודע לכל לאי זה דבר היה משל, ומה ענין רמזו בהן. +/השגת הראב"ד/ אל יעלה על הלב שבימות המשיח כו' עד משלים. א"א והלא בתורה והשבתי חיה רעה מן הארץ.+

 

In this light, the miracles at the Exodus are not dismissed but reinterpreted. The plagues and the splitting of the sea are early, dramatic intrusions of divine power into history. In the messianic future, that same power will operate inwardly, reshaping consciousness. The ultimate wonder is not that water stands like a wall but that hearts of stone become hearts of flesh.

Miracles in the Book of Shemot are often read as disruptions of physical nature: rods become serpents, water becomes blood, seas split and close. Yet the Torah also describes a subtler miracle: the reshaping of human feeling. At the burning bush God promises Moshe that He will place chen—grace, favor—upon the people in the eyes of the Egyptians, so that they will not send Israel away empty‑handed.

שמות פרק ג פסוק כא - כב (פרשת שמות)

(כא) וְנָתַתִּ֛י אֶת־חֵ֥ן הָֽעָם־הַזֶּ֖ה בְּעֵינֵ֣י מִצְרָ֑יִם וְהָיָה֙ כִּ֣י תֵֽלֵכ֔וּן לֹ֥א תֵלְכ֖וּ רֵיקָֽם: (כב) וְשָׁאֲלָ֨ה אִשָּׁ֤ה מִשְּׁכֶנְתָּהּ֙ וּמִגָּרַ֣ת בֵּיתָ֔הּ כְּלֵי־כֶ֛סֶף וּכְלֵ֥י זָהָ֖ב וּשְׂמָלֹ֑ת וְשַׂמְתֶּ֗ם עַל־בְּנֵיכֶם֙ וְעַל־בְּנֹ֣תֵיכֶ֔ם וְנִצַּלְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־ מִצְרָֽיִם:

כתר יונתן שמות פרק ג פסוק כא (פרשת שמות)

(כא) ואתן את העם הזה לאהבה בעיני מִצרים ויהי כי תלכו משם פדוים לא תלכון ריקים:

 

Targum Yonatan sharpens the verse, rendering chen as love; the Egyptians will suddenly feel affection for those whom they have enslaved. The same God who hardens Pharaoh’s heart to pursue Israel into the sea softens the hearts of ordinary Egyptians to adorn their former slaves with gifts.

שמות פרק ד פסוק א (פרשת שמות)  

(א) וַיַּ֤עַן מֹשֶׁה֙ וַיֹּ֔אמֶר וְהֵן֙ לֹֽא־יַאֲמִ֣ינוּ לִ֔י וְלֹ֥א יִשְׁמְע֖וּ בְּקֹלִ֑י כִּ֣י יֹֽאמְר֔וּ לֹֽא־נִרְאָ֥ה אֵלֶ֖יךָ הֽ':

 

Moshe’s subsequent fear that “they will not believe me and will not listen to my voice” must be read against this promise. If God can bend Egyptian hearts toward generosity, He can bend Israelite hearts toward trust. Indeed, God immediately speaks of Aharon ha‑Levi coming to meet Moshe with joy in his heart, and the Levi’im are precisely the tribe of song. Divine orchestration reaches into the most intimate chambers of human emotion, turning fear into joy and hostility into love.

Maimonides’ reading of the wolf and lamb in Yeshayahu 11 belongs to this same category. In the messianic age, the natural order will remain intact; animals will not change their diet. What will change is the moral and spiritual disposition of human beings, particularly the nations that have preyed upon Israel. The imagery of predator and prey at peace is a parable for a world in which hearts once schooled in conquest have been re‑educated in compassion. The manipulation of Egyptian hearts at the Exodus is thus a foretaste of the eschatological transformation of nations.

The redemption axis is not confined to biblical time. Jewish history, read attentively, reveals the same pattern on a larger scale. Periods of crushing darkness—destructions of Temple and commonwealth, exiles, forced conversions, massacres, and the unspeakable devastation of the Shoah—present themselves as final chapters. From within those moments, it is almost impossible to imagine a future in which the people stands again, let alone sings.

Yet again and again the narrative refuses closure. Survivors step onto the shores of Eretz Yisrael; communities rebuild out of ashes; new generations grow where there should have been none. The dry bones of Yechezkel’s vision—scattered, bleached, inert—are clothed in sinew and skin. Dew falls where no rain seemed possible.

To live with the consciousness of the redemption axis is to internalize a discipline: one must not judge the story in the middle. Statistical projections, political analyses, and even justified fear cannot dictate the final verdict on Israel’s existence. The covenantal script has already told us that our story begins with children who should not have been born and continues with nations that should not have survived. The appropriate response is not complacency but a renewed sense of responsibility and song.

In the present, whether facing rockets, wars, terror, or subtler forms of cultural erosion, Jews who continue to say Hallel, to celebrate life, to build families and communities, participate in the same pattern as Sarah, Yocheved, Miriam, Yitzchak, Moshe, and David. Each act of faith, each insistence on joy in the wake of catastrophe, is a quiet affirmation that the axis still holds.

We can now trace the line that quietly runs from Bereishit through Shemot and into the prophetic and messianic horizon—a line along which individual lives and national history mirror one another.

The axis begins with Yitzchak. Sarah’s barren body is reawakened; an impossible child is conceived and born on Pesach. That same child is then bound upon the altar, designated for death, and restored to life. From that day, Yitzchak’s inner world is shaped by Pesach night. Blind in his later years, he nevertheless hears the whole world saying Hallel, senses the opening of the treasuries of dew, and knows that his descendants will someday be redeemed and will sing. Dew becomes the quiet symbol of resurrection, the medium through which the dead will live again. Yitzchak embodies the first articulation of the pattern: miraculous birth, near‑death, and an inner life attuned to song before salvation fully appears.

Moshe stands at the next point on this axis. His birth is no less improbable: parents who had separated in despair are reunited at their daughter’s insistence; an aging mother is transformed into a young woman; a son is conceived under decree and brought into a world that has outlawed his existence. He is then carried to his own Akedah at the Nile, placed upon water among the reeds, where death should almost certainly claim him. Instead, an Egyptian princess glimpses his future in the dissonant cry of a na’ar from within the tevah, chooses compassion against the culture of infanticide, and thereby joins the story she cannot yet name.

Moshe’s life continues as a sequence of rescues. He escapes Pharaoh’s wrath, survives a mysterious divine confrontation on the road, and ultimately leads Israel through a national near‑death at the sea. There, at the moment when they have spoken only of graves, the waters part; Egypt dies on the shore, and Israel emerges alive. 

The Exodus is therefore not only political liberation but resurrection. Leaving Egypt is techiyat ha‑metim in national form. The people who stagger out of that land have not simply escaped a tyrant; they have walked out of a civilization that worships death. The axis that began with Yitzchak’s near‑sacrifice and Moshe’s tevah now expands: the child who should have died becomes the prototype for a people that should have disappeared into the pyramids and into the Nile, yet stands alive on the other side of the sea. Only then do they sing. Their Shira is the national form of Yitzchak’s inner Hallel: the song of those who have walked through death. Miriam’s drum, beating at the edge of the water, carries that music forward into the future house of David.

David, in turn, is the king whose life is itself borrowed. Mystically, his seventy years are carved from Adam’s lost millennium. Historically, he is the forgotten shepherd who should never have been summoned to Shmuel’s anointing, the youth who should have died before lion, bear, or Philistine. Again and again he is hunted, forced into exile, exposed to the hazards of war. Yet he stands, and from that fragile standing he sings: “I shall not die, but live, and I shall recount the deeds of God.” For David, survival is not an entitlement; it is an invitation to narration. Hallelbecomes the voice of a man—and a people—living on borrowed time.

From David the axis extends into the figure of Mashiach ben David, “Bar Nafli,” heir to a fallen sukkah. His arrival presupposes collapse and restoration, exile and return. Under his rule, the prophets tell us, the knowledge of God will fill the earth as water covers the sea. The wolf will dwell with the lamb not because animal nature has been magically rewritten but because human nature has undergone a slow, divinely guided evolution. Hearts that once delighted in conquest will learn to seek understanding and justice. The miracle of the future will not be seas that stand upright but hearts that no longer thirst for blood.

Along this axis, redemption is revealed as a repeated movement: life granted where there should be none, passage through death into unexpected survival, and the emergence of song as the appropriate human response. Yitzchak hears Hallel before the Exodus; Moshe and Israel sing after the crossing; David gives that song eternal form; the messianic age invites the entire world to join the choir. Dew falls quietly in every generation, reviving what appears withered, while the Jewish people—improbably still alive—continue to say Hallel on nights when history once again hovers between despair and deliverance. In David, the axis of song becomes fully embodied: he is not only the poet of Israel, but the musician whose lyre soothes a tormented king and the dancer who whirls before the Ark with what looks like reckless abandon, a dance of faith more than decorum. That capacity to play, to sing, and to dance as avodah may well be part of the spiritual DNA he inherits from his distant grandmother Miriam, who leads the women in timbrel and dance on the far shore of the sea, turning survival itself into music.

To live as a child of Avraham is to inhabit this axis. It is to know that the story cannot be judged at any single moment of darkness, that decrees and statistics do not have the final word. Our task is not to deny the knife or the Nile or the sea, nor to romanticize suffering, but to recognize in each narrow escape an invitation to sing. When we say, with Yitzchak, with Moshe, with Miriam, with David, “I shall not die, but live,” we align ourselves with a divine script in which the impossible child is born, the bound youth rises from the altar, the infant survives the river, the nation crosses the sea, and the world itself slowly learns to beat its weapons into instruments of music.

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[1] Zohr Chadash Yitro 52a

זוהר חדש כרך א (תורה) פרשת יתרו דף נב עמוד א

]אָמַר לוֹ, בֹּא וּרְאֵה, בְּנִי. הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לֹא הִתְנָה עִם אַבְרָהָם אֶלָּא שֶׁיּוֹצִיא אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל מִגָּלוּת מִצְרַיִם, וְלֹא מִתַּחַת שִׁעְבּוּד שֶׁל יִרְאָה אַחֶרֶת. שֶׁוַּדַּאי יִשְׂרָאֵל, כְּשֶׁהָיוּ בְּמִצְרַיִם, נִטְמְאוּ וְטִנְּפוּ עַצְמָם בְּכָל מִינֵי טֻמְאָה, עַד שֶׁהָיוּ שְׁרוּיִים תַּחַת אַרְבָּעִים וְתִשְׁעָה כֹחוֹת שֶׁל טֻמְאָה, וְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא הוֹצִיא אוֹתָם מִתַּחַת עֲבוֹדַת כָּל שְׁאָר הַכֹּחוֹת. שֶׁהִכְנִיס אוֹתָם לְאַרְבָּעִים וְתִשְׁעָה שַׁעֲרֵי הַשֵּכֶל כְּנֶגְדָּם, מַה שֶּׁלֹּא הִתְנָה עִם אַבְרָהָם, אֶלָּא לְהוֹצִיאָם מִמִּצְרַיִם, וְהוּא עָשָׂה טוּבוֹ וְחַסְדּוֹ עִמָּם. וּמִשּׁוּם כָּךְ תִּמְצָא בַּתּוֹרָה חֲמִשִּׁים פְּעָמִים יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם, לְהַרְאוֹת לְכָל בְּנֵי הָעוֹלָם הַחֶסֶד שֶׁעָשָׂה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עִם יִשְׂרָאֵל שֶׁהוֹצִיא אוֹתָם מֵאוֹתָם כֹּחוֹת הַטֻּמְאָה, וְהִכְנִיס אוֹתָם לְתוֹךְ כֹּחוֹת הַטָּהֳרָה, שֶׁהַיְנוּ חֲמִשִּׁים שַׁעֲרֵי בִינָה.

וְזְהִוּ שֶׁאָנוּ מוֹנִים לָהֶם מִיּוֹם טוֹב שֶׁל פֶּסַח, וְאָנוּ מוֹנִים יָמִים וְשָׁבוּעוֹת, וַהֲרֵי הִתְעוֹרְרוּ הַחֲכָמִים, מִצְוָה לִמְנוֹת יָמִים וּמִצְוָה לִמְנוֹת שָׁבוּעוֹת, כִּי בְּכָל יוֹם הוֹצִיאָנוּ מִכֹּחַ שֶׁל טֻמְאָה, וְהִכְנִיסָנוּ לְכֹחַ טָהֳרָה.]‏

[2] Divrie Hayamim 1 chapter 4 verse 18

דברי הימים א פרק ד פסוק יח

וְאִשְׁתּ֣וֹ הַיְהֻדִיָּ֗ה יָלְדָ֞ה אֶת־יֶ֨רֶד אֲבִ֤י גְדוֹר֙ וְאֶת־חֶ֙בֶר֙ אֲבִ֣י שׂוֹכ֔וֹ וְאֶת־יְקֽוּתִיאֵ֖ל אֲבִ֣י זָנ֑וֹחַ וְאֵ֗לֶּה בְּנֵי֙ בִּתְיָ֣ה בַת־ פַּרְעֹ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֥ר לָקַ֖ח מָֽרֶד: