Ex. 6:2 - 9:35
PrĂ©cis: God reiterates His intention to free the Israelites from bondage and to create a covenant with them. Moses goes back to Pharaoh to seek release the Israelites. Pharaoh refuses and we see the first of the fabled plagues: blood, frogs, fleas, beetles, cattle disease, boils, and hail. Pharaoh relents after each plague begins, deciding to let the people go, but then God “hardens Pharaoh’s heart” and he refuses to allow them to leave.
Exodus 8:27-28 “Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, ‘Go, sacrifice to your God here in the land.’ But Moses said, ‘That would not be right. The sacrifices we offer the Lord our God would be detestable to the Egyptians. And if we offer sacrifices that are detestable in their eyes, will they not stone us? We must take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, as He commands us.’”
Why did Moses not tell the whole truth to Pharoah? Not just here, but throughout the Exodus narrative, Moses never states that the Israelites would be leaving forever. As Rabbi Sacks has noted (Rabbi Sacks Legacy, 1/23/25), Moses makes it seem as if all he is asking for is permission for the people to undertake a three-day journey, to offer sacrifices to God and then (by implication) to return to Egypt. It is only after the Israelites have left does Pharaoh understand the full truth, when he asks (Ex. 14:5) “What have we done? How could we have released Israel from doing our work?
Commentators throughout the ages have offered a variety of suggestions: it was impossible for Moses to tell the truth to a tyrant like Pharaoh; technically, Moses did not tell a lie; God told Moses deliberately to make a small request, to demonstrate Pharaoh’s cruelty and indifference to his slaves; this was war between Pharaoh and the Jewish people, and in war it is permitted to deceive.
Sacks notes that the interactions between Moses and Pharoah are part of a pattern of half-truths and deceit in Genesis: both Abraham and Isaac present their wives as sisters; Jacob claims to be his brother to receive a blessing; he also leaves his father-in-law secretly, and gives a false excuse to travel behind Esau following their reunion; and Jacob’s sons are deceitful about Joseph’s death, and deceitful again by stating that they are merely seeking circumcision from the inhabitants of Shechem to avenge their sister’s rape.
These episodes are not accidental or coincidental. As Sacks notes, the implication seems to be that outside the Promised Land, Jews in the biblical age are in danger if they tell the truth and are at constant risk of being killed or enslaved. Why? Because they are powerless in an age of power.
Nevertheless, in Judaism, truth is the essential precondition of trust between human beings. The Torah in the interchange between Moses and Pharaoh is not justifying deceit. Rather, it is condemning a system in which telling the truth may put one’s life at risk. Judaism is a religion of dissent, questioning, wrestling with God, and making “arguments for the sake of heaven.” Every Amidah ends with the prayer, “My God, guard my tongue from evil and my lips from deceitful speech.”
The Torah in this vignette is telling us about the connection between freedom and truth. Where there is freedom there can be truth. Without freedom, there can be no truth.
