Q&A: A Promise in the Torah That Did Not Come True
A Promise in the Torah That Did Not Come True
Question
Honorable Rabbi,
On the seventh day of Passover we read that before the splitting of the Red Sea, our teacher Moses said, “For as you have seen Egypt today, you shall not continue to see them again forever.” But according to the accepted dating, the Exodus from Egypt took place in 1253 BCE, and less than fifty years later Egypt attacked Israel in its land, and Pharaoh Merneptah wrote about this on the stone called the “Israel Stele.” That means that Moses’ promise, which was said in prophecy, was not fulfilled. How does one deal with this?
Answer
I am not expert in chronology, but in any case I did not understand what the problem is. The intention is not that they would never see people from Egypt, but that they would not return to Egypt to live there in exile. By the way, even that happened a bit in the exile of the Second Temple period, when many were exiled to Alexandria and to Egypt. But that too can easily be rejected, since not the entire public returned to live in Egypt as a nation of slaves. In short, you won’t get anywhere from the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh).
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand the question. Moses’ intention was that the people he was speaking to would never again see the Egyptian pursuers, and he was trying to calm their fear that the Egyptians would catch them. This is not about the Jews as a nation or the Egyptians as a nation, but about the people who were standing there on the two opposing sides.
There is no need to go as far as archaeological inscriptions, or to the days of the Second Temple period. We know of encounters with Egypt from Shishak’s attack, from Pharaoh Necho’s campaign in the days of Josiah, and at the end of the book of Jeremiah.
As for the question about the verse, alongside the explanation of my teacher Rabbi Michael Abraham, the Mekhilta interprets it not as a promise but as a negative commandment, somewhat like the commandment that the king must not lead the people back down to Egypt in Deuteronomy 17. And so too Nachmanides of blessed memory wrote in his commentary.