Opinion & Comment
The Eventual Lesson: Good Intentions

The parsha tells us how Moshe's good intentions led him to find the means to redeem our people, although this came in stages. Apparently, he got off to a good start.

The Medrash tells us (Shemos 2:10) how Moshe was incredibly handsome and Pharaoh's daughter kept Moshe strictly inside the royal palace for fear of her adopted son being struck by an evil eye. But the day he reached forty, he came of mental age and on that day he made a number of achievements.

The first was to leave the palace. He wanted to go to the work fields where his brethren were producing bricks for warehouses for the royal produce reserves.

At this time the Jews were a slave nation, a miserable comedown for what was once a class of highly respected and prosperous businessmen and farmers. Moshe knew that the Jews had brought upon themselves this punishment. Pharaoh had exploited their weakness for seeking to ingratiate themselves with the Egyptians and the king, and had invited them to join him in the building project with good pay. The Jews gladly volunteered, but in a short time they found themselves being forced to continue the work by a regime of brutal controllers. Moshe also appreciated that the fate of becoming the most degraded nation on earth was a punishment by Hashem although he did not know why (2:14). But he was determined to help.

What He Saw

On arriving, he was appalled. Brick-making was a horrible job; men's tasks were given to women and women's tasks to men; a burden which should be carried by a man was given to a boy, and vice versa; and so on. He abandoned his entourage and rushed to help them carry their loads, tend their wounds, etc.

He was already risking his position of privilege and security but compromised himself even further by appealing on that day to Pharaoh. The Jews were being made to work seven days a week and perform unsuitable tasks, he told him. It would be more productive if they were allowed to rest and recharge on Shabbos and if tasks were appropriately assigned. Pharaoh wanted to break the Jews, but at the same time, he maintained a posture of a monarch who shared the burden of his workers. So Moshe's appeal succeeded.

The Egyptian and Doson

Also that day, he ran into the Egyptian beating the life out of a Jew (2:11). Here his bid to help assumed mystical proportions. With Ruach Hakodesh, Moshe saw that in the Egyptian system, the Jewish slaves were responsible to a Jewish supervisor and these supervisors were responsible to the Egyptian controllers. Before sunrise, the controllers would enter the homes of the Jewish supervisors and wake them to go and round up a team of Jewish workers for the day's work.

That morning the Egyptian had entered the home of Doson and noticed his wife, Shlomis (Shemos Rabboh 1:28). He turned out Doson, left, came back to Shlomis who in the dark, thought the Egyptian was her husband. Doson came back sooner than usual, caught the Egyptian on the way out and ascertained what had happened from Shlomis.

The poor Jew being beaten was Doson. The Egyptian had not only taken his wife through cunning but now was killing him on the pretext of him failing in his work duties.

Moshe could not tolerate this. The Medrash tells us Moshe's looking round in all directions was his asking the mal'ochim accompanying him if there was any doubt that the Egyptian was a rodeif who deserved the death penalty. "And there was no man" -- not one angel expressed any objection.

So Moshe killed him by invoking the powers of the Name of Hashem. The event was observed by Jewish slaves, but Moshe was sure they would not inform on him to the palace. On the contrary, he covered the Egyptian's body with some of the sand meant for brick construction to tell them, "One day you will be as numerous as the sand of the sea" (Bereishis 22:17, 32:13, Hoshea 2:1, etc.).

Next Day

The next day, however, his achievements seemed to rebound back against him.

He went to the Jews again. He was surely pushing his luck; but he didn't care (Rabboh 27). This time he saw two Jews in a bitter quarrel and one was about to strike the other. Moshe immediately perceived they were lowlifes and perhaps he should have followed the advice which Hashem gave Him after the sin of the golden calf (Shemos 33:14, Brochos 7:2 and Ovos 4:18): wait till a man calms down before you start reasoning him.

On the other hand, Moshe arguably feared they might kill each other. So he appealed to the striker to lower his hand. The pair then rejoined in chorus: "Do you wish to kill us like you killed the Egyptian yesterday?"

Moshe realized he had earned two enemies who would expose the fact that he was not Pharaoh's grandson but a Jew striving for the freedom of Pharaoh's slaves and ran off.

Escape and Discovery

However, Moshe's good intentions did not bring him down. He escaped to Midian, married into the family of the national high priest whose compassion for the Jews had also led him to escape from Pharaoh (1:9) and took on the job of the shepherd of his flock.

Here we see the next phase of Moshe's discovery of the key to saving the Jews. Rabboh 1:27 tells us that because Moshe walked out of the palace to be with his brethren, Hashem abandoned His own palace to appear to Moshe in the burning bush. But it was his conduct as a shepherd that decided Hashem to appoint him the Jews' redeemer. "Hakodosh Boruch Hu does not make anyone a leader until he has tested him in the small things. He made David a leader because as a shepherd, he took his flock into the desert to prevent the flock from eating another's grass. And Moshe was the same," (adapted from Rabboh 2:3). Hashem was also impressed by the aid Moshe rendered a goat. The goat had run away from the flock to a pool in a distant oasis. When he caught up with it, Moshe decided the goat was tired and carried it back to the flock on his shoulder.

Doson and Avirom succeeded in getting Moshe out the scene, and, as he ran off, he must have wondered how the redemption would take place. However, it was shepherding his father-in- law's flock in the desert which gave him understanding and hope.

"[Moshe] shepherded his flock in the desert" (3:1). Rebbe Yehoshua said: 'Why did Moshe run [with his sheep] into the desert? Because he saw that Israel would rise from there. As the verse (Shir Hashirim 3:6) says, "Who is that rising from the desert?" The desert gave them manna, quails, the well, the Mishkon, the Shechinoh, Aharon as Kohen Godol, the leadership of Moshe, and the clouds of glory.' Another interpretation. Hakodosh Boruch Hu told Moshe: "In whose zchus will Israel leave Egypt? In the zchus of the one whom I spoke to [dibarti]," namely Avrohom. And desert [midbar] is speech [dibur]. Rabboh 2:4.

The Jews had scarce intrinsic zchus to justify redemption. The devoted women and "the four things" -- not using Egyptian names, not speaking the Egyptian language, not talking loshon hora, and moral behavior -- were a help but not the whole. The determining zchus was the pure grace which Hashem was to show them three months after their departure -- receiving Torah at Sinai (Rashi 3:12). This insight, so crucial to Moshe, was given him in the bush scene. This is also a consequence of Doson and Avirom.

Doson and Avirom

Doson and Avirom were to continue to undermine Moshe. They spread despair among the Jews before the splitting of the Reed Sea; they defied Moshe in leaving manna uneaten from one day to the next; they tried to persuade the Jews to turn back after the report of the spies; and they were chief conspirators in the rebellion of Korach. But that was their end. Moshe never killed them, no doubt because, as we saw, he only killed the Egyptian when he decided there was a clear law of rodeif and, in addition, was given confirmation by Heaven. Heaven killed them.

They knew Moshe was a tzaddik and yet told him, "Who made you so important, a minister and a judge over us?" Power belongs to the one we decide has it, not to you or Hashem, they were telling him. They protested in the name of justice: "Are you saying you want to kill me like you killed the Egyptian?" -- when Moshe only wanted to restrain them and it was they who wanted to kill Moshe by exposing him to Pharaoh. They were so evil that Moshe considered their existence the reason for Hashem refusing to free the Jews (Rashi 2:14).

Israel today is full of Dosons and Aviroms. Politicians who use false justification to achieve power and personal gain. It's full of Shlomits too. They are a powerful block on our redemption. Moshe ran off and discovered salvation in honesty, compassion and the spiritual potential of the desert. All this is our salvation too, our desert being the beis hamedrash which is compared to a desert.

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