Exodus Through Deception: Asking for a Three-Day Festival

As Shadal (Samuel David Luzzato, 1800-1865) notes:

 אין ספק כי הבקשה הזאת היתה בְעָקְבָה, כי לא היתה דעתם לחזור; ומאחר שהוא היה מעכבם ומשתעבד בהם בלא שום דין אין לתמוה אם צוה ה’ להתפתל עם העקש.

There is no doubt that this request was made deceptively, for they had no intention of returning, but since [Pharaoh] had been holding them and enslaving them for no just cause, it is not surprising that God would command fooling him with trickery.

For more on how central deception is to the story, see Dean Andrew Nicholas, The Trickster Revisited: Deception as a Motif in the Pentateuch, Studies in Biblical Literature 117 (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 63–71.

The MT does not record both God’s command and then Moses’ fulfillment, but only with one or the other. Thus, in each instance, the text would only have God commanding Moses to say something, or Moses saying it, but not both. The SP, however, double records each instance. See discussion in, Zev Farber, “The Missing Speeches in the Plague Narrative and the Samaritan Pentateuch,“ TheTorah.com (2016).

I skip here, as I have throughout, the Priestly text which says that it is YHWH hardening Pharaoh’s heart. Moreover, as David Frankel has shown, this is not just P but the latest, Priestly layer, which attempted to smooth out the theological problems of this concept. See David Frankel, “Taking Control of the Story: God Hardens Pharaoh’s Heart,“ TheTorah.com(2016).

See Leonard Greenspoon, “Despoiling the Egyptians: A Concerning Jewish Legacy,“ TheTorah.com (2017).

Again, Shadal makes the same point referenced above (Exod 3:22):

אין ספק שהיה זה מעשה תחבולה, כי הם לא אמרו להם שלא לשוב עוד, אלא ללכת דרך שלשת ימים ולשוב

There is no doubt that this was an act of deception, since they (the Israelites) didn’t say that they would never return, but that they were going on a three-day trip and then coming back.

Ibn Ezra, in his commentary on Exodus (11:4):

ודע כי דבר גדול היה, וצדיקים גמורים היו ישראל, שלא גלו הסוד, והוא שפרעה חשב על דברי משה: דרך שלשת ימים (שמות ה׳:ג׳), שילכו וישובו אל מצרים.

Know that this was a great thing [Israel did], and that the Israelites were wholly righteous, for they did not reveal the secret, and this is how Pharaoh understood Moses’ words about “a three-day journey” that they would go and then come back to Egypt.

Author’s translation.

I refer here to the non-Priestly version of this story. For a division of the sources, see TABS Editors, “What Really Happened at the Sea?”TheTorah.com (2015). For a different understanding of how this text was put together, see Tzemah Yoreh, “Israel’s Departure from Egypt: A Departure or an Escape?” TheTorah.com (2016).

For more on this story and Jacob’s method, see, Zev Farber, “Maternal Impressions: From Sheep to Humans,” TheTorah.com (2013).

Ramban actually offers an inverse interpretation of the connection, according to which the slavery is a punishment for Abraham’s problematic behavior in this story.

For more on this principle in Jewish and Christian interpretation, see David Freidenreich, “What Does Sarah’s Expulsion of Hagar Signify for Abraham’s Descendants?” TheTorah.com (2018).

I am discussing here only the non-Priestly story, what scholars call JE or non-P.

In theory, the answer could be “to humiliate him,” which is what happens in the current form of our story, but such a complex and uncharacteristic usage of the trickery motif is better understand as the result of a creative author/editor who felt it necessary to weave this motif together with a plague narrative, as I suggest in the next section.

David Frankel points to yet another possible early tradition in Exod 4:22-23, in which Moses is supposed to threaten Pharaoh with the death of his first born immediately. Frankel argues that these verses, combined with a handful of others, preserve a tradition without plagues, and which had the death of the firstborn occur to Pharaoh only. See, David Frankel, “The Death of Pharaoh’s Firstborn: A One Plague Exodus,” TheTorah.com(2017).

A very clear reconstruction of this story was put forward by Tzemah Yoreh. See Tzemah Yoreh, “The Three Redactional and Theological Layers of the Plagues,” TheTorah.com (2016); Yoreh, “Israel’s Departure from Egypt,” TheTorah.com (2016). For another reconstruction of E, see Brevard Childs, The Book of Exodus, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), 137–138.

The model I am working with is quite different than the standard view of J and E. In my view, J has at least two distinct layers: J before E and J after E. In other words, J was once a source on its own, but when the scribes from the Jahwistic school encounter E, they not only incorporate it into their text, but significantly expand their own text as a result.

See Samuel E. Loewenstamm, The Evolution of the Exodus Tradition, trans. Baruch J. Schwartz, Perry Foundation for Biblical Research (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992), 114; trans. of, מסורת יציאת מצרים בהשתלשלותה (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1965). See also discussion in, Moshe Greenberg, Understanding Exodus: A Holistic Commentary on Exodus 1–11, 2^nd ed., ed. with forward, Jeffrey H. Tigay, Heritage of Israel 2 (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2013; repr. of, New York: Behrman House, 1969), 69.

This model, in which RJE is essentially an author from the J school expanding his text to incorporate E, solves one of the major conundrums about the plague story: many source critics have noted that that the narrative voice of the non-P plague story is pretty consistent; we seem to have either a J text or an E text but not both. See the note in, Richard Elliott Friedman, The Bible With Sources Revealed (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2003), 126. See also, William H.C. Propp, Exodus 1–18: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible 2 (1998; New Haven: Yale, 2010), 310, 314; Propp, Exodus 19–40: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 2A (New York: Doubleday, 2006), 724–730. My argument is that the reason it looks this way is because the bulk of the narrative was written by a late scribe from the J school who created RJE.

The growth of JE did not end there, but developed both before and after it came into contact with P. See David Frankel, “When Pharaoh’s Stubbornness Caught God by Surprise,” TheTorah.com (2015).