CHAPTER VI
THE EXODUS
Exodus 11.1 to 13.16
Interpretation. These chapters relate the climax toward which the narrative from the birth of Moses until this point has been leading, the exodus from Egypt. They also contain the laws associated with the commemoration of this event. The narrative begins by telling of God's promise that the next plague would be the last, and His command to the people to prepare for the exodus. Before they were permitted to leave, some expression of their faith in God's deliverance and their readiness to follow His guidance was required; therefore, we have the command to take a lamb on the tenth day of the month, which was to begin their new era, and sacrifice it on the 14th, and eat the flesh of it in family groups on that night, together with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, which thereafter were to serve as symbols of the bondage and of the liberation from it. The blood of this sacrifice, they were to sprinkle on the doorposts of their houses in order to testify by this ritual to their desire to be included in the "Army of the Lord" that was to depart on the morrow, and all who did not testify thus to their adherence to Israel's cause were to meet with the same fate as the Egyptians with whom they had chosen to identify themselves. The Israelites were to eat the lamb while standing with their loins girt and staves in their hands, in readiness for the signal to depart. The rabbis call attention to the fact that the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb in Egypt by the Israelites was a very bold expression of their faith, inasmuch as the sheep was among the sacred animals of Egypt. When Pharaoh suggests to Moses that the Israelites could sacrifice to their God in Egypt, he replies, "Lo, if we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us?" (Exodus 8. 22.) But by this time Pharaoh and Egypt had been so humiliated by the plagues which did not even spare their sacred river Nile, that the Egyptians feared to attack the Israelites, while the children of Israel had recovered their lost confidence in Moses, and in the God in whose name he spoke to them.
Among the laws and observances associated with the events of this chapter are: 1. The law ordaining the first of Nisan, as the "New Year for months", in commemoration of the inauguration of the new era in Israel's history; 2. the annual sacrifice of the Paschal lamb which was eaten in the family circle together with bitter herbs and unleavened bread to recall the similar observances of the Israelites before leaving Egypt;[9] 3. the celebration for seven days[10] of the festival of Passover by the previous removal of all leaven and abstention from it during the festival and by the eating of unleavened bread in commemoration of the haste of Israel's departure that did not allow them to make other provision; 4. the duty of narrating these events to one's children, which gave rise to the recital of the Haggadah on the night of Passover; 5. the sanctification of the first-born of cattle and of men in recognition of the providential character of the tenth plague, the latter custom surviving in the practice of "pidyon ha-ben", "the redemption of the first-born", and, 6. the injunction to make of this command "a sign upon thy hand and frontlets between thine eyes" which led to the inclusion of the passage containing these words, and the command to sanctify the first-born among those enclosed in the tephillin, thus making them a theme for daily reflection. In addition to these practices, it is noteworthy that the Sabbath and holidays, even those having other historic associations, are characterized in our liturgy as מִצְרַים לִיצִואַת זֵכֶר
"memorials of the Exodus from Egypt." The multitude of observances that are thus designed to keep us mindful of the Exodus testify to the importance of the leading idea associated with this event for the Jewish people at all times, namely, the identification of the cause of Israel with the cause of God, "And I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall know that I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." (Exodus 6. 7.)
Aim. The aim of this lesson should be to make the child conscious of his identity with Israel and of the debt of gratitude and loyalty that this imposes upon him in view of God's redemption of Israel.
Suggestions to the teacher. The association of the Exodus with the observance of Passover is the obvious method of establishing a contact between the subject to be taught in this lesson and the Jewish child of today. Nevertheless, it is better not to employ the observances of the Passover as the technical "point of contact" with which to introduce the original presentation of the lesson, as that would delay too long the actual narration, but to use them to introduce the discussion of the topic by the class after the teacher has told his story.
To introduce the narrative itself a reference to previous lessons is sufficient, as the last few lessons have all anticipated the events told in these chapters. This the teacher can best do by a few introductory questions, as, for instance; "Why did God send the plagues of which we learned in our last lesson against Egypt?" (Draw out the answer that it was not merely to punish the Egyptians but to compel Pharaoh to free the Israelites.) When, after the ninth plague, Moses refused Pharaoh's offer to let the Israelites go on condition that they left their cattle and possessions behind, what did Pharaoh say? How did Moses answer? The teacher then continues:
"When Pharaoh had driven Moses and Aaron from him and told them never to come before him again or he would have them put to death, it was plain that there was no use arguing with him any more. God had given him many chances to change his attitude and let the Israelites go in peace, to serve Him in the wilderness, but Pharaoh would not listen and now God decided to send one more plague upon Egypt, so terrible that Pharaoh would be forced to let the Israelites go."
In telling of the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb and the sprinkling of the blood on the doorposts, guard against leaving the child with the notion that God really required a sign in order to distinguish the Hebrew from the Egyptian house. This can be done by explaining that God wanted to test the faith of the Israelites in the expected exodus by their readiness to make these preparations. The sprinkling of the blood on the doorposts was to be a sign that the inmates of the house wanted it to be considered a Hebrew house, but if they were willing to remain in Egypt and would not trust God to lead them out, they would naturally not make these preparations, and would deserve to be treated like all the other Egyptians.
Call attention to the change in the attitude of the people to Moses and Aaron since God had shown His power in the plagues, for at first they would not listen to them "for impatience of spirit and for cruel bondage", and now they obeyed the minutest prescriptions of Moses in anticipation of the exodus.
After completing the narrative try to bring home its moral in connection with the celebration of Passover, so that this celebration in its annual recurrence may, by association of ideas, reinforce the lesson you are teaching. Speak to the class somewhat as follows: "Can you imagine how happy our forefathers felt when they received the signal to leave Egypt? Think of what a change it meant to them. No longer would they have to rise up early in the morning, work, work, work all day for Pharaoh, and receive nothing for their labor. No longer would they have a taskmaster standing over them with a whip ready to beat them cruelly if they did not finish the required number of bricks, although they may have been too old or too sick to do so. No longer would they have to do whatever the Egyptians commanded them and have to fear even to sacrifice to their God, lest the Egyptian idol-worshipper might stone them. To be sure, in the wilderness into which they were going, and even in the Promised Land to which God was leading them, they would have to work hard as shepherds and farmers, but they would be tending their own flocks and herds and working on their own farms. Nobody now could order them about, for his selfish purpose, and they could obey and serve their God without interference, could rest on His holy days and could sacrifice when and where they would. Do you not think that if you had lived in Egypt in those days, you would have felt happy and thankful to God and ready always to do His wishes for having brought you forth from slavery to freedom? Would you not feel every year, when the fifteenth of Nisan came, that you would want to celebrate it as a great joyous holiday on which you would thank God for the happy change He brought into your life, and do you not think that if you had children, you would never tire of telling them the story, particularly on the anniversary of the great event so that they, too, should thank God for the freedom that they are permitted to enjoy? Well, that is what our forefathers did. Every year they celebrated the going out of Egypt and they told the story of the departure from Egypt to their children and taught them to celebrate it, and so the observance of this day has been kept up to our own time, and I hope you will one day teach your children to observe it. Can any of you tell me the name of this festival? When our fathers told the story of God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt they tried to have everything at hand that would remind them of all that had occurred on that great day. In order to remind them of the lamb that they had slaughtered, they used in olden times to sacrifice a lamb, and they ate it in their family groups just as they had done in Egypt; and later, when sacrifices were no longer offered, they had, as we have today, as a reminder of the same, a roasted bone of a lamb on their table the first two nights of Passover. To remind them of the haste in which they left Egypt without being able to leaven their bread (the teacher must explain the meaning of the word leaven), they made it a law to eat maẓẓot during that festival. Can you tell me of some of the other things on the Seder table on Pesah? (As they are mentioned, let the teacher explain their significance.) When you saw all these things at the Seder table, didn't you always feel like asking what they all meant? How many of you have ever said the נִשְׁתַּנָּה מַה on Seder night? Well, that contains a number of such questions. When you were through reading them your father began to read from the Haggadah, did he not? He read the answer, which explains why we celebrate Pesah, and this is the way it begins: 'Slaves were we in the land of Egypt, and the Lord, our God, brought us forth from thence with a mighty hand, and an outstretched arm, and if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not brought forth our ancestors from Egypt, we and our children and our children's children might still have continued in bondage to the Pharaohs in Egypt. Therefore, even if we were all great scholars, all men of understanding, all learned in the Torah, it would, nevertheless, be our duty to tell about the departure from Egypt, and the more one tells about the departure from Egypt, the more one is to be praised.'"
The children should be encouraged to discuss very freely the celebration of the Passover, as observed in their own homes, as this is an excellent opportunity of correlating their school instruction with their home life.