This week’s portion is Beshalach (Exodus 13:17–17:16), which translates to “when he sent.” The name comes from the opening verse: “When Pharaoh let the people go…” (13:17). After ten rounds of increasingly destructive plagues, Pharaoh finally agreed to release the Israelites.
Exodus 14 first provides a list of place names describing the winding journey of the escape. This was not a direct march from Egypt to Canaan; it was a zigzagging, circuitous route. For modern scholars and archaeologists, this path is almost impossible to retrace with certainty, since many place names have faded from historical memory. Therefore, the exact route of the Exodus journey remains a mystery.
The Strategy of the Three-Day Request
Pharaoh initially believed the Israelites were leaving for a temporary religious observance. Throughout the plague narrative, Moses consistently framed the request as a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices. He told Pharaoh, “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; let us now go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God” (3:18).
When Pharaoh finally relented, he told Moses and Aaron to “go, serve the Lord, as you have said” (12:31). By using that specific phrasing, Pharaoh was holding onto the hope that the departure was a temporary concession.
It was a direct command from God that Moses and Aaron present their petition to Pharaoh as a short pilgrimage and not a full-blown escape. By asking for a minor concession rather than total emancipation, Moses forced Pharaoh to reveal the depth of his cruelty. He refused to even grant his laborers a short religious break.
Strategically, the request for three days also served to give the Israelites a head start on their escape. Since Pharaoh expected the Israelites to return after three days, their continued movement on the fourth day aroused his suspicion. His informants, who must have tracking the Israelites, reported back that they were “wandering aimlessly in the land” and that “the wilderness has closed in on them” (14:3). This perception, fueled by the deadline passing without a turnaround, prompted him to mobilize his army and go after the Israelites.
The White Lies
There are two “white lies” in the Exodus narrative. Earlier, the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, defied Pharaoh’s genocidal decree. When questioned as to why they had not killed the Hebrew boys, they claimed the women were too vigorous and gave birth before a midwife could even arrive. This was a clear instance of righteous deception; they lied to an oppressor to shield the lives of innocent children.
The three-day request follows this same ethical logic. In a state of war or extreme oppression, the “white lie” becomes a tool of holy resistance. Pharaoh held the Israelites in cruel bondage. Therefore, heforfeited his moral right to the truth. Just as the midwives’ deception was blessed by God because it prioritized the preservation of life, Moses’ strategic framing of the Exodus served a higher justice.
The purpose of a righteous “white lie” is a central theme in Corrie Ten Boom’s book, The Hiding Place. When Corrie’s family hid Jewish refugees during the Nazi occupation, she and her sister at first agonized over the amount of deception they needed to live out to save the Jewish people hiding in their home. Corrie and her family knew the Bible. They drew on biblical precedents—like the midwives—to justify their actions to the Gestapo.
The Pursuit and the Miracle at the Sea
Once Pharaoh realized the Israelites were not returning, his regret was instant. He viewed the loss of his workforce as an economic catastrophe and mobilized his army, taking “six hundred picked chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt” (14:7). As the superpower of the day, Egypt possessed military technology and size that few other ancient nations could match. Certainly, a motley crew of freed slaves on foot had no chance against horse-drawn chariots.
The Israelites reached the edge of the sea only to see the dust clouds of those chariots at their heels. Their fear was visceral. With the Egyptian king behind them and the water in front, the people turned on Moses. They sarcastically asked: “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (14:11).
Moses told the people to stand still, but God challenged his passivity. He said, “Why do you cry out to me? Tell the Israelites to go forward” (14:15). As the people prepared to move into the sea, the pillar of cloud, which had been leading them, shifted its position. It moved from the front of the camp to the rear, stationing itself as a physical barrier between the army of Egypt and the people of Israel. According to Jewish tradition, throughout the night, the cloud brought darkness to the Egyptians while providing light to the Israelites, ensuring the two groups did not come into contact.
Under this divine protection, Moses stretched out his hand, and God drove the sea back with a strong east wind. The waters were divided, and the Israelites walked through on dry land. The scene was striking. Exodus writes, “At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up; the floods stood up in a heap; the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea” (15:8). They walked with a wall of water on their left and a wall on their right, shielded from the sea by a miracle and from their enemies by the cloud.
The previous plagues had demonstrated God’s dominance over the gods of Egypt, but this final miracle targeted their military might. The Egyptian army followed close behind the Israelites, but their sophisticated chariots became their undoing. The Lord “clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty” (14:25). The heavy wheels got stuck in the mud and mire, throwing the army into total confusion. While the soldiers were distracted, the wind died down, and the water flowed back, drowning them.
The Song
Witnessing this great miracle, the people were overcome with awe. Exodus explains, “So Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses” (14:31). In their elation, they burst into divinely inspired song, praising God for their deliverance and recognizing his supremacy.
While Moses led the men in song, Miriam led the women with music and dancing. She took a tambourine and sang: “Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider he has thrown into the sea” (15:21). This communal celebration showed that the deliverance belonged to the entire nation.
The significance of this moment in Israel’s story remains central to this day, as observant Jews recite the Song of the Sea every morning. It is a 3,500-year-old creed that has served as a daily reminder of God’s power to save. A cornerstone of this liturgy is the verse: “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in splendor, doing wonders?” (15:11).
Divine Self-Limitation and Free Will
And yet, there is one verse in this week’s Torah portion that is even more important as a revelation of God’s character than parting the Red Sea. To understand this, we must look at the full text of Exodus 13:17-18:
“When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was nearer, for God thought, ‘If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness bordering the Red Sea. The Israelites went up out of the land of Egypt prepared for battle.”
In these verses, God purposefully avoided the direct northern route despite it being the shortest path. He led them instead through the wilderness. The reason for this detour is remarkable. Within days, God was about to display his power over everything—sky, sea, and earth—and yet he had no desire to manipulate the Israelites’ free will.
God understood that even with great miracles before their eyes, the people were still psychologically fragile. He knew a military skirmish would cause them to retreat. Rather than performing a miracle to their fear or bypass their free will, he simply changed the path. He refused to coerce their courage. This highlights a central characteristic of the one True God. He does nothing to alter our will or nature. We are free to choose him or free to reject him, and that is the only way the choice is meaningful. He did not create puppets or robots.
As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks explains in his commentary Covenant and Conversations: “Worship is not worship if coerced. Virtue is not virtue if we are compelled by inner or outer forces over which we have no control. In crafting humanity, God, as it were, placed himself under a statute of self-limitation.”
Joseph and Rani
Before I close, I want to name one modern miracle that occurred this week. I always say that Bible Fiber’s goal is to tell the story of Israel, both ancient and modern. Well, on January 26, Israeli soldiers found the body of the last remaining hostage in Gaza.
Rani Gvili fell on October 7, 2023, while heroically defending Kibbutz Alumim. Although he was on medical leave at the time, he did not hesitate to join the fight. He rushed to the front lines to protect his community. For 843 days, his remains were missing, hidden in a cemetery in northern Gaza. It took high-level intelligence and grueling forensic work to finally identify him and bring him home.
By a striking coincidence that only God could orchestrate, the very day Rani’s body was recovered, the Torah reading recounts the moment that Moses fulfilled a similar promise: “And Moses took with him the bones of Joseph, who had required a solemn oath of the Israelites, saying, ‘God will surely come to you, and then you must carry my bones with you from here.’” (13:19)
Just as Moses refused to leave Joseph behind in the soil of Egypt, Israel refused to leave Rani behind in Gaza. The nation kept its promise to Ran’s family, just as it strived to keep its promise to the family of every hostage, whether living or dead. No one gets left behind. Now, may the nation, and the whole region, finally find a path to heal.
Shabbat Shalom and Am Israel Chai
