Our parasha tells us how, over time, the attitude of the Egyptian authorities toward the bnei Yisra’él changed and became hostile, until Pharaoh proposed to his people: כל הבן הילוד היארה תשליכהו (“Every boy who is born, into the Nile shall you cast him”; I, 22).
As a result, Yocheved put her three-month-old son into a waterproof basket and cast him adrift in the reeds at the bank of the Nile, in hopes of saving him from the slaughter. The infant’s older sister, Miriam, kept an eye on him from the shore, until Pharaoh’s daughter, bathing with her attendants in the river, found the basket, and took pity on its helpless occupant. Miriam ran up to her to propose her mother as a wet-nurse, and baby Moshe was safe.
When Pharaoh’s daughter found the basket, the Torah tells us, ותפתח ותראהו את הילד והנה נער בכה ותחמל עליו וגו' (“And she opened [it] and she saw him/it with the boy, and behold a youth was crying, and she felt pity on him….; II,6).
The sharp-eyed reader with a חוש חי לשפה העברית, a “lively sense of the Hebrew language (as one of my rebbe’im was wont to say) will already have noted the oddities which I have tried to capture in the rather clumsy translation:
1) The second verb in the sentence incorporates a pronominal object, “and she saw him” (or, arguably, “it”, since Hebrew has no neuter pronoun), which is then followed immediately by a prepositional phrase which normally indicates the direct object, in this case, “the boy”. As Rashi points out, the preposition eth can also be translated “with”, and it appears that this is how it must be translated in our context, but it begs the question: Who or what did she see in the basket with Moshe?
2) Having established that the basket contained a yeled, a little boy, the verse immediately goes on to inform us that he was a na‘ar, a rather older child. In discussing Proverbs XXII, 6, חנוך לנער על פי דרכו (“Train the na‘ar according to his way”), the Talmud concludes that the mitzvah to train one’s children in mitzvoth begins in earnest at the age when they begin to fast for periods on Yom Kippur, which is established to be at the age of nine years (יומא פ"ב. וע"ע רמב"ם הל' שביתת עשור פ"ב ה"י). Yeled is derived from the same root as the word meaning “to give birth,” and so is a reasonable term for a little boy; what does the Torah mean in calling him immediately afterward a na‘ar?
The verse cries out: Dorshéni! (“Interpret me!”).
B.
To begin with our second question, we note Rashi’s comment that קולו כנער, “[Moshe’s] voice was like [that of a] na‘ar.” Rashi’s source for this is the Talmud, where we find: א"ר יוסי תנא הוא ילד וקולו כנער, דברי רבי יהודה, אמר לו רבי נחמי' א"כ עשיתו למשה רבינו בעל מום! וגו' (“Said Rabbi Yossi, 'It was taught: He was a yeled and his voice was like [that of a] na‘ar, [in] the words of Rabbi Yehuda.' Said Rabbi Nechemya to him, 'If so, you have made Moshe our teacher disfigured [ba‘al mum]!'”; סוטה י"ב:).
It is very striking that Rashi quotes Rabbi Yehuda’s opinion rather than Rabbi Nechemya’s, contrary to the usual practice of deciding that the last opinion quoted is authoritative. As the Maharsha notes, the simple meaning of the claim that Moshe would be thereby a ba‘al mum seems to be that the deeper voice of a na‘ar would be unsuitable to a yeled, just as a man with a thin voice which is more suitable for a woman, or vice versa, is a ba‘al mum.
Ramban takes exception to Rabbi Yehuda’s interpretation as quoted by Rashi, citing both Rabbi Nechemya’s objection and a logical argument, that there seems to be no discernible reason for the Torah to make a point of the deepness of Moshe’s voice in this verse. He then turns to the Even ‘Ezra, who argues that the term na‘ar suggests that Moshe was unusually large and well-developed for a three-moth-old baby, and suggests that this is what Pharaoh’s daughter found arresting. Ramban finds this, too, unsatisfactory, given that the verse does specifically say that she had found a na‘ar bocheh, a “crying na‘ar,” which does suggest that she had heard something striking.
Ramban then asserts that neither na‘ar nor yeled should be understood too strictly in terms of its halachic definition or root meaning. He cites other Biblical examples in which na‘ar appears to refer to an as-yet unborn baby (Judges XIII, 8), or to a newborn (II Samuel XII, 16. Conversely, he shows that yeled is used to refer to Yishma‘el at a time when he was at least 14 years old (Genesis XXI, 15-16). Finally, he notes that Shmu’el is called a na‘ar when he must have been about 24 months old (I Samuel I, 23-24).
Rabbi Eliyahu Mizrachi, haham başı (“chief rabbi”) of the Ottoman Empire for much of the seventeenth century, comes to Rashi’s defense by first pointing out that, if we are to understand that Pharaoh’s daughter’s mercies were awakened both by something she saw and by Moshe’s cries, one would expect the verse to read והנה נער ובוכה (“and behold there was a na‘ar and he was crying”). Since it does not read that way, it follows that her attention was attracted by what she heard, and the verb va-tir’éhu (“and she saw him”) should be understood to mean that she pervceived something, rather than in reference to the physical faculty of sight.
Mizrachi goes on to cite two other cases in which the halacha was decided in favor of the first opinion expressed, despite the order in which they occur, as evidence that Rashi’s view is not quite so unprecedented as Ramban appears to suggest (עיי' ראש השנה כ"ו. ופרק ב' דפסחים).
On these bases, he dismisses Ramban’s logical quibble about Rashi and Rabbi Yehuda as well, and decides: והזכיר הכתוב שזאת היתה סיבת החמלה עם היותו מילדי העברים המאוסים אצל כל מצרים וכל שכן בבת המלך (“And Scripture has mentioned that this was the cause of [Pharaoh’s daughter’s] pity, despite his being of the Hebrew boys, despised by all Egyptians and certainly by the king’s daughter”).
In other words, something about Moshe’s voice caught her attention and caused her to perceive something else which motivated her to defy her father’s will. What was it?
C.
It seems to me from the examples cited by Ramban that the Torah’s application of the words yeled and na‘ar to a small boy has less to do with the child’s physical age than it does with his emotional maturity and behavior. Shmu’el, who was destined to become one of Israel’s greatest prophets, was an unusually mature two-year-old; on the other hand, Yishma‘el at 14 was still a little boy.
With this in mind, let us turn back to the moment of Moshe’s birth, and read: ותרא אתו כי טוב הוא (“and [Yocheved] saw him, that/for he was good”; II, 2). Rashi, again following the Talmud, explains: כשנולד נתמלא הבית אורה (“when he was born the house was filled with light”; סוטה י"ב.). The same gmara, a bit later, goes on to interpret “and she saw him with the boy” as meaning that Pharaoh’s daughter perceived the Shchina, the Divine Presence, with Moshe, and cites the prophet Yisha‘yahu, אני ד' הוא שמי (“I am Ha-Shem, Hu is My name”; Isaiah XLII, 8; וע"ע שמות רבה פ"א סי' כ"א וזוה"ק ח"ב י"ב.).
Rabbénu Bechayé goes a bit further in his comment on our verse by noting that one could divide va-tir’éhu and read it va-tére’ Hu, “and she saw Hu,” eliminating the alef which occurs in the word as it appears in Isaiah and leaving only the two letters from the Tetragrammaton, as we find in the introductory Hosha‘na mandated by Chazal on Sukkoth: אני והו הושיעה נא (“I and Hé-Vav, save, please”; סוכה נ.).
Note that when Moshe was born, the word otho, “him,” is written chasér, lacking the first vav, so that it could be read itto, “with him,” and that the second clause, ki tov Hu’, could be understood to mean “for H-u is good” (spelt as in the verse from Isaiah). Yocheved looked at Moshe and perceived the Shchina; Pharaoh’s daughter heard his voice, and perceived the same thing.
D.
So we see that the seeds of greatness in human character and their cultivation are a matter of both nature and nurture. Shmu’el’s mother Channa was rewarded with a son of such tremendous potentialities because of the exemplary purity of her desires and intents. That very purity is demonstrated by her willingness to hand over the child at the tender age of two to ‘Eli ha-kohén ha-gadol for the education requisite to his realizing that potential. On the other hand, Yishma‘el was similarly the product of his mother, the weak and vain servant Hagar, as evidenced by the fact that despite being raised in the outstanding environment of Avraham’s household, he was susceptible to the influence of the surrounding Canaanites. Sara drove him from the encampment when she found him imitating them, complete with his own little idol.
Yocheved, too, was rewarded for her rock-solid faith (as evidenced in her willingness to entrust her son to the Nile and G-d’s protection) with Moshe, and G-d arranged that, even in Pharaoh’s household, she would continue to nurture him.
אשה כי תזריע וילדה זכר, the Torah tells us; “For a woman will conceive and bear a male….” (Leviticus XII, 2). The great Rabbi Chayyim Yosef David Azoulai, known by his initials as Chida, notes that the initial letters of the last four words can be arranged to spell זכות, “merit,” and observes that whatever merit we have is due primarily to our mothers.
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