Parshat B'Shalach
by Rabbi Avi Billet
They traveled from the Sea of Reeds, and they went out to the Shur Wilderness, and they walked for three days in the wilderness and they did not find water. And they came to Marah, and they were unable to drink water from Marah, for they were bitter… (15:22-23)
Today we are going to ask two questions, leaving one unanswered, while learning a lesson from the second.
First: Where was the Yam Suf - Sea of Reeds – and the splitting of the sea (note how it’s not a ‘crossing of the sea’)?
Second: Is this the three day journey of which Moshe spoke?
The first question is wrought with controversy. Targum Yonatan notes the view that the sea split into twelve “lanes” to allow for each tribe to go through at the same time. With 3 million people going through the sea, this would maximize the efficiency while minimizing the amount of time it would take to get to the other side of the sea-walls.
Ramban describes the Egyptian army’s drive to pursue as a “shigaon” – madness – because a people who had recently experienced 10 plagues should have surely noted the trap that running between walls of water would be.
Ibn Ezra notes the 12-lane opinion as he explains that they entered the sea and exited at the same location – the lanes were horseshoe-shaped, allowing the Israelites to end up where they began. This notion is supported by the viewpoint of Chizkuni who says the only reason for going through the sea was for Pharaoh’s army to drown, and not for the Israelites to “get to the other side.”
Before 1869, there was no need to cross any waterway to get from Egypt to Sinai or Canaan. Was the split of the "sea" possibly in some lake – such as Timsah, or the Great Bitter Lake? Or was it in the Red Sea? And if the Red Sea, was it to enter the Western side of Sinai, or to go from Eastern Sinai, to enter Midian, where it is most likely that the mountain on which Moshe encountered the Burning Bush was located? (Google “red sea crossing at nuweiba” for an interesting theory, though their getting there in 3-6 days is problematic on account of logistics, unless we accept Rabenu Chananel's explanation of how longer distances could be covered in shorter times... see below)
We don’t know where the crossing was, so the possibilities abound.
What is the purpose of the three-day journey here? Is it the three-day journey Moshe had said his people would undertake? Is this even a possibility, considering that once they left Egypt, and certainly after Pharaoh’s army was decimated, there never seemed to be any plan or reason to return to Egypt?
According to the Torah’s narrative – they went from Ramses to Sukkos (12:37), from Sukkos to Eisam (13:20), and then they turned back and encamped at Pi HaChiros (14:2) where they waited for Pharaoh’s army to arrive. Chizkuni explains “3-days” to refer to 3 stops (he skips Sukkos as a stop, and counts Marah as the third), which is most easily understood when we take Rabbenu Chananel’s interpretation that “3-days” refers to a the distance of a 3-day journey, which was really covered in 1 day.
However, even Chizkuni is hard to understand, as the first stops take place before the splitting of the sea, while Marah is clearly afterwards.
No matter how we understand the travels and distance of time, Rabbenu Chananel argues that they were really only without water for 1 day. People can’t survive 3 days without water, particularly children and pregnant and nursing women. (Though read “The Indifferent Stars Above” for a different perspective on women surviving better than men because their bodies contain more water)
Many commentaries suggest that their walking 3 days and not finding water is a reference to their not finding Torah, based on the verse in Yeshayahu 55:1 which became the source for the halakha (law) to not go three days without hearing the Torah read in the synagogue.
However, the fact that they could not find Torah after going through the sea is the first indication of a problem in their behavior. But perhaps it was more a problem in the expectations of them, which may have been more than they could handle. They knew, as Moshe had always said, that their journey out of Egypt was meant to take 3-days, or be a 3-days distance away, to a place where they’d be worshiping God. And yet, as the Midrash Agadah and others note, Moshe had to prod them away from the sea because they were too busy plundering the riches of Egypt’s sunken army, as well as treasures from sunken ships that washed ashore. It seems that the wealth they took with them out of Egypt was not enough.
They had water in their vessels! They just couldn’t “find” water, because they were looking at the wrong priorities.
The Kli Yakar says their inability to find water was “measure for measure” for their sin of plundering the riches of the sea. Water is compared to Torah, and they were looking for wealth, and not the Torah they were supposed to be desiring. The same thing happened in Refidim (רפידים) – a name which comes from “Rafu Yedeihem” (רפו ידיהם) (their hands were lax about pursuing Torah) – and so there too they did not have water.
There is a certain element of faith which was necessary for the Israelites to achieve their goals. They were tested, and they failed. Eventually they came around, they received the Torah, they had the holiest of experiences at the bottom of Sinai.
But the people had not been conditioned properly. It is hard to take people who know one way and to turn them into righteous tzadikkim overnight. A process is in order, a weaning, a teaching. Step by step. Little by little.
To improve ourselves as Jews, we have to learn the lesson that leaps of faith and total overhauls of our lives don’t work. Every change must be deliberate, thought out, and with a step-by-step approach to how to get to where I want to be. People who become baalei teshuva, and people who abandon religion altogether might both suffer from this all-or-nothing approach. They suffer, and if they have children, the children suffer too.
It is hard to know what is the right way? But the failure of the three days journey, and the inability of the people to see the water all around them because they were blinded by the wealth of the sea, indicates that extremes are not the way to go. It is much more important to be able to grow into something than to expect an overnight change. Even those who heard directly from God’s most incredible prophet couldn’t give up on who they were so quickly, couldn’t separate from their own human-weakness to accept God’s plan wholeheartedly.
Everyone needs to make a step-by-step plan, and allow for weeks, months, even years to slowly and gradually help you get to where you want to be, hopefully as a dedicated servant of God, on the trajectory to reaching His Glorious Throne.
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