A.
At G-d’s behest, Moshe, Aharon, his sons Nadav and Avihu, and the first Sanhedrin, the seventy elders selected by Moshe, approach the summit of the mountain, and behold a vision: ויראו את אלקי ישראל ותחת רגליו כמעשה לבנת הספיר וכעצם השמים לטהר (“And they saw the G-d of Israel, and under His feet was like a piece of sapphire brickwork, and like the very heavens in purity;” XXIV, 10).
Rashi explains the intended significance of the brickwork: היא היתה לפניו בשעת השעבוד לזכור צרתן של ישראל שהיו משועבדים במעשה לבנים (“[The brick] was before Him during [the Egyptian] enslavement, to recall the sufferings of Israel, who had been enslaved through brickwork”). G-d wanted to demonstrate to the leadership of Israel that throughout the entire trial of their suffering in Egypt, He had been נושא בעול, sharing in what they had gone through. They had never been alone the whole time.
Elsewhere, in the Talmud (ירושלמי סוכה פ"ד ה"ג), we find a number of drashoth involving this verse, and amongst them this one: אמר ר' מיישה, בבבל כתיב "כמראה אבן ספיר" ובמצרים כתיב "כמעשה לבנת הספיר" ללמדך כשם שהאבן קשה מן הלבינה כך שעבודה של בבל היתה קשה משעבודה של מצרים (“Said Rabbi Miyyasha, 'Concerning Babylon it is written "like the appearance of sapphire stone" [Ezekiel I, 26] and concerning Egypt it is written "like a piece of sapphire brickwork," to teach you that just as a stone is harder than a brick, so was the Babylonian enslavement harder than the Egyptian enslavement'”).
The Babylonian exile lasted only 70 years as ooposed to the 210 years of Egyptian exile. Even if we deal only with the worst period in Egypt, the actual time under the lash, that lasted some 80 years. How, then, was the Babylonian enslavement harder?
The Pnei Moshe’s comment on the above passage, וכפי תוקף הגלות היתה המראה (“and according to the effectivity of the exile was the vision”) does not, at first blush, seem to help us much. What was the difference in the “effectivity” of each respective exile?
B.
The whole point of the drasha hangs on the comparison between brick and stone. What other passages can enlighten us about such a difference?
In the first mishna in Bava Bathra, we find the following: השותפין שרצו לעשות מחיצה בחצר, בונין את הכותל באמצע וכו' בונין... גויל, זה נותן ג' טפחים וזה נותן ג' טפחים וכו' בלבינים, זה נותן טפח ומחצה וזה נותן טפח ומחצה וגו' (“The partners [in a piece of property] who desire to build a partition in the courtyard, build the wall in the middle.... [If] they build... [with] undressed stone, each one gives up three tfachim on his side... [If they build] with bricks, each one gives up a tefach and half;” a tefach is a linear unit equivalent to 9.6cm or 3.8 inches [בשיעור החזון אי"ש]).
Rashi explains the implication, שעובי כותל גויל ו' טפחים... ושל לבינים ג' (“that the thickness of a wall of [a single course of] undressed stone is six tfachim... and of bricks, three”). In other words, a standard-sized undressed stone in the Talmud is 2 tfachim longer than a standard-sized brick along any of the three axes. This being so, 2 x 2 x 2 tells us that a standard-sized undressed stone was eight times larger than a standard brick.
So?
C.
In Genesis XLVI, 27, we read, in part: כל הנפש לבית יעקב הבאה מצרימה שבעים (“All the souls of the house of Ya’aqov who were coming to Egypt [were] seventy”). The same number is repeated in Exodus I, 5. But this is not the end of the story.
The midrash (מדרש תנחומא פרשת שמות ג') picks up on the phrase איש וביתו באו (“[each] man came with his household”) in Exodus I, 1 to tell us: מלמד שלא ירד למצרים עד שמנה לפרץ ולחצרון, זה בן שנה וזה בן שתי שנים, וזיווג להם נשים )”It teaches that [Ya’aqov] did not descend to Egypt until he had taken account of [his grandchildren] Peretz and Chatzron, the first one year old and the second two, and matched them with wives;” אבל עיי' עץ יוסף כאן). Based on the well-known Talmudic principle that ביתו זו אשתו (“one’s household is one’s wife;” cf., e.g., גיטין נ"ב.), then, each male member of Ya’aqov’s household had a female counterpart; 70 x 2 = 140.
But this is also not definitive in terms of the number of exiles. There were female members of this household: Dina bath Ya’aqov, Serach bath Asher, and Yocheved; there was also Ya’aqov himself and his three surviving wives, Le’a, Bilha and Zilpa (already taken into account). Thus, a total of 63 wives can be added to the 70 original members, and so we arrive at a total of 133 people who entered the Egyptian exile.
But R’ Miyyasha is comparing the שעבוד, the enslavement, of one exile to the other. How many of the original exiles actually lived long enough to feel the Egyptian enslavement?
We know that Ya’aqov died before it began (Genesis XLIX, 33). Presumably (in the absence of any statement to the contrary) his wives also predeceased their children in the normal order of events. Then (Exodus I, 6): וימת יוסף וכל אחיו וכל הדור ההוא (“And Yosef and all his brothers, and all that generation, died”). So we have the twelve brothers, their wives, their sister Dina, and Ya’aqov and his wives, 29 in all, whom we must subtract from the total number who had entered exile, to get the number of original exiles who actually saw the enslavement: 104.
If we now turn to Jeremiah LII, 23, we read that: בשנת שמונה עשרה לנבוכדראצר מירושלם נפש שמונה מאות שלשים ושנים (“In the eighteenth year of Nevuchadretzar [there were exiled] from Jerusalem 832 souls”). This, as Rashi and the M’tzudath David tell us, constituted the last surviors of the siege of Jerusalem, driven straight into slavery with their king, Tzidqiyahu. Do the math; the final group of Babylonian exiles was exactly eight times as large as the group of original Egyptian exiles who had been enslaved by the Egyptians. According to its תוקף, its effectivity, the Babylonian exile was harder; it took effect immediately as they were exiled, and eight times as many people went from freedom into slavery.
D.
From this we can see that even in their metaphors, Chazal were careful to utilise exact language. They did not simply wax poetic; even their metaphors and similes have a precise quality to them, waiting for us to discover.
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