פרשת שמות תשכ"ח - בני ישראל במצרים

NOW THESE are the names of the sons of Israel, who came into Egypt with Jacob; every man came with his household:

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;

Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;

Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.

And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph.

אשר לא ידע WHO KNEW NOT [JOSEPH] — he comported himself as though he did not know him (Sotah 11a).

And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.

וישרצו AND THEY INCREASED ABUNDANTLY (more lit., they swarmed, a word used of the prolificness of reptiles) — they bore six children at one birth (the six words from פרו to מאד suggest or imply the number six) (Midrash Tanchuma, Shemot 5).

And he said unto his people: ‘Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us;

And Pharaoh said unto his servants: ‘Can we find such a one as this, a man in whom the spirit of God is?’

And the report thereof was heard in Pharaoh’s house, saying: ‘Joseph’s brethren are come’; and it pleased Pharaoh well, and his servants.

And Pharaoh’s servants said unto him: ‘How long shall this man be a snare unto us? let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God, knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?’

And it was told the king of Egypt that the people were fled; and the heart of Pharaoh and of his servants was turned towards the people, and they said: ‘What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?

And he said unto his people: ‘Behold, the people of the children of Israel are too many and too mighty for us;

And Abimelech said unto Isaac: ‘Go from us; for thou art much mightier than we.’

But the men that went up with him said: ‘We are not able to go up against the people; for they are stronger than we.’

Whither are we going up? our brethren have made our heart to melt, saying: The people is greater and taller than we; the cities are great and fortified up to heaven; and moreover we have seen the sons of the Anakim there.’

And the servants of the king of Aram said unto him: ‘Their God is a God of the hills; therefore they were stronger than we; but let us fight against them in the plain, and surely we shall be stronger than they.

come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there befalleth us any war, they also join themselves unto our enemies, and fight against us, and get them up out of the land.’

ועלה מן הארץ AND HE WILL GO UP OUT OF THE LAND, against our will. Our Rabbis explained that they spoke like a person who is pronouncing a curse against himself but attaches the curse to others (because he does not wish to use an ominous expression of himself), so that it is as though Scripture wrote “and we shall have to go up out of the land” and they will take possession of it (Sotah 11a).