Why did it take the Israelites forty years to get from Egypt to Canaan? (No, it's not because Moses refused to ask directions...) In forty years they could have circumnavigated the globe. In reality, the Torah tells us that it only took them three years to walk to their encampment on the east bank of the Jordan River. They then waited another thirty seven years to enter the Land of Israel. Why?
One reason is that it was a punishment for the Golden Calf. God decreed (after deciding not to wipe out all of Israel) that the generation that built and worshiped the Golden Calf would not enter the Land. They were forced to wait for that whole generation to die out until they were able to finish the journey that started in Egypt.
The Torah, in this week's portion, offers a different reason. The time spent in the desert was a time of learning and a time that the Israelites could later look back upon to inform their conduct after they had settled in the Land of Israel.
Deuteronomy 8
2 Remember the long way that the LORD your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, that He might test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep His commandments or not.
3 He subjected you to the hardship of hunger and then gave you manna to eat, which neither you nor your fathers had ever known, in order to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but that man may live on anything that the LORD decrees.
4 The clothes upon you did not wear out, nor did your feet swell these forty years.
5 Bear in mind that the LORD your God disciplines you just as a man disciplines his son.
6 Therefore keep the commandments of the LORD your God: walk in His ways and revere Him.
[...]
11 Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments and His ordinances and His statutes which I am commanding you today;
12 otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied, and have built good houses and lived in them,
13 and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and gold multiply, and all that you have multiplies,
14 then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
[...]
17 and you say to yourselves, "My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me."
These verses from Deuteronomy spell out what might be called the spiritual challenge of wealth. The challenge that is articulated in these verses is being able to remember God in times of comfort. In times of adversity it is perhaps easier to remember God. In times of ease and riches, the encroaching danger is that one will forget the God of Egypt and claim wealth as a right: "My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me." If it is all my power and the strength of my hand then I owe nothing to anybody else. There is no other person who is beyond the power of my ability to acquire, to accumulate. I define the world by my ability to assimilate it into me. Since there was no reason to break out of the bounds of my self in order to acquire all this wealth-it was I who made this for me-there is no reason to think that there is any reason at all to pay attention to the desires of others. The verses in Deuteronomy suggest that remembering the God of the Exodus would act as a defense against this type of hubris. I want to explore why this might be so.
Who is the God "who brought you out from the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery?" Why is this aspect of God important in this context?
One of the defining moments of the redemption from slavery in Egypt occurs early on in the book of Exodus. At the end of chapter two, after Moses has escaped to Midian for fear of the Pharaoh, when Israel is deeply mired in slavery, we read the following.
23 ...The Israelites were groaning under the bondage and cried out; and their cry for help from the bondage rose up to God. 24 God heard their moaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. 25 God looked upon the Israelites and God took notice of them.
Immediately following this, God commissions Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. This little scene is the precipitating act of redemption and therefore it is important to pay attention to the mechanism which leads to that redemption. The key is verse 24. God hears the moaning of the Israelites and then God recalls the covenant with the Patriarchs. Hearing the cry of the oppressed leads to God taking notice. Taking notice leads to action.
This causal relation between hearing the cries of the oppressed and taking action for justice is brought into stark relief by its opposite. When Moses first confronts Pharaoh and voices God's demand to let the Israelites go free, Pharaoh famously refuses and increases the burden upon the slaves. The slaves are no longer provided with straw to make bricks, yet they must still make the same number of bricks. The workload of the slaves, which until then was "merely" a daily quota of bricks, is increased to gathering straw and then making the daily quota of bricks.
The Israelite "foremen" come to Pharaoh to advocate on behalf of the slaves. (Exodus 5)
15 The foremen of the Israelites came to Pharaoh and cried: "Why do you deal thus with your servants? 16 No straw is issued to your servants, yet they demand of us: Make bricks! Thus your servants [the Israelites] are being beaten, when the fault is with your own people."
Pharaoh's response to the cries of the foremen is exactly the opposite of God's.
17 He [Pharaoh] replied, "You are shirkers, shirkers! That is why you say ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.' 18 Be off now to your work! No straw shall be issued to you, but you must produce your quota of bricks!"
Pharaoh does not hear. Pharaoh commands. There is no one outside Pharaoh of any significance. "Who is God that I should heed him?" is Pharaoh's response to Moses' demands of freedom. God hears, Pharaoh ignores.
God's hearing is so fundamental that it is memorialized as law. (Exodus 22)
20 You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. 21 You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan. 22 If you do mistreat them, I will heed their outcry as soon as they cry out to Me, 23 and My anger shall blaze forth and I will put you to the sword, and your own wives shall become widows and your children orphans.
The experience of the Israelites in Egypt is consecrated in law as the experience of God hearing the cries of oppression. The law obligates us to choose to be like God - hearing the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the marginal and unprotected members of society - and at the same time to choose not to be like Pharaoh -ignoring the stranger, the widow, the orphan, the marginal and unprotected members of society. God premises the obligation to heed the cry of the oppressed on the knowledge that the Israelites have that, ultimately, whatever people decide to do, God will hear. If you don't hear the cry, and respond to it with acts of justice, and the widow and the orphan are forced to cry out to God, God will respond. God's response will, however, include both justice for the oppressed and swift vengeance for the "deaf."
This then is the "God who brought you out from the land of Egypt" - the God who hears the cry of the Other. Hearing the Other forces one out of the self-referential circle of the I. Once one is forced out of this closed circle, one cannot say "My own power and the might of my own hands have won this wealth for me." One is forced to recognize that there are people who are beyond our power to control, to own, to exploit.
This legal and moral obligation to hear the cry of the Other person informs what Maimonides (1135-1204), the great Jewish philosopher and jurist, called "ordering the actions of the state and helping its citizens paths succeed." (Mishneh Torah, Laws of Sale 14:11) The persons who have perfected themselves spiritually, religiously and philosophically, according to Maimonides, recognize that "those actions [of God's] that ought to be known and imitated are loving-kindness, justice, and righteousness." (Guide to the Perplexed III:54).Imitating God or walking in the ways of God (Deut. 28:9) leads to justice and righteousness and away from the haughty arrogance of "My own power and the might of my own hands."
This was the lesson that we were intended to learn from forty years sojourn in the desert. This is a lesson we still need to hear today.
Shabbat shalom.