Audio Summaries of the daily Chumash portions In loving memory of Ousher Zelig ben Myer HaLevi Z”L

To sponsor an episode please visit: https://itistaught.com/support-this-project/To get the daily chumash summaries in your email click here https://substack.com/profile/182692001-sarede-rachel-switzer?utm_source=profile-page.Subscribe on SpotifySubscribe on Apple PodcastsPlease consider leaving a review on the platform of your choice! For comments and inquiries, email [email protected]

Moshe Grows Up and Gets Married

Moshe grows up and is appointed the head over Pharaoh’s house. He witnesses the plight of the Israelites, his brethren, and feels for them.

There were Egyptian taskmasters then who were in charge of Israelite taskmasters and would wake them up with the “crowing of the rooster” to get them to work.

One day, Moshe sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating an Israelite man, the husband of Shlomite bas Dibri.

What had happened was that this Egyptian had set his eyes on Shlomite, and one night, he kicked the Israelite man out of his home and had relations with Shlomite (she thought he was her husband). When the husband returned home, he sensed what had happened. The Egyptian realized that the Israelite sensed this and beat and intimidated him all through the day.

Seeing this whole occurrence, Moshe looks around to make sure no one is watching and knows prophetically that this Egyptian will never beget any children who will convert to Judaism, so he kills the Egyptian by speaking the Ineffable name of G-d and buries him in the sand.

The next day Moshe goes out and sees two men, both Israelites this time, Dathan and Aviram, fighting (side note, these two later left over some manna in the desert, against G-d’s command). Moshe says to one of them, “Why do you hit your “brother” (i.e. a man who is wicked like you)”?

Moshe trembles in fear, worried that he will get caught for what he did. He also now understands that there are informers amongst the Israelites and he is afraid that this will deter them from having the merit to be redeemed out of Egypt. This clarified the question he had as to what made the Israelites deserving of being enslaved in Egypt under such harsh conditions.

Dathan and Aviram inform on Moshe to Pharaoh and Pharaoh orders that Moshe be killed. However the executioner’s knife has no power over Moshe and he survives and settles in Midian and hangs out near the well, emulating Yaakov who met his wife at a well.

Yisro, the minister of Midian had disassociated himself from the idolatrous practices of the Midianites and thus they banished him from dwelling amongst them.

So when Yisro’s seven daughters and arrive at the well to draw water from it for their father’s flock, the Midianite shepherds come over to banish them. Moshe rescues them and waters their sheep.

They go back to their father Yisro (also called Reu’el) and he asks them why they came back faster than usual that day. They tell him that an Egyptian man rescued them from the Midianite shepherds and watered their sheep.

Yisro replies, “So where is this man? Why didn’t you invite him to come over for a meal?” Yisro recognized that Moshe was from Yaakov’s family due to the water rising for him as it did for Yaakov. Inviting Moshe for a meal was his way of matching him up with one of his daughters for marriage.

Moshe agrees to the invite and Yisro gives him his daughter Tzipporah as a wife. Moshe promises that he will not leave Midian without Yisro’s permission.

Moshe has a son and names him Gershom, related to the word “ger” (i.e. stranger), alluding to how Moshe was a “stranger in a strange land”.

Meanwhile, Pharaoh is stricken with the skin disease Tzara’as. As an attempt to cure himself, he bathes in the blood of Israelite children. The suffering of the Israelites grows and they cry out to G-d and G-d hears their moans and remembers His covenant with Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov and focuses in on them.

Get full access to Sarede’s Substack at sarede.substack.com/subscribe