Bemidbar 20:16 – A window into Moshe’s perception of his life

במדבר כ:טז - ונעצק אל ה' וישמע קולנו וישלח מלאך ויצאנו ממצרים והנה אנחנו בקדש עיר קצה גבולך. 

20:14-17 records Moshe’s request to the king of Edom to let the people pass through his country, and within this request Moshe recalled some of the history of the people. Moshe mentioned that when the people were in Egypt, they had cried out to G-d, G-d heard the cries of the people, G-d sent a malakh, and G-d took the people out of Egypt. Moshe’s reference to a malakh in this message to the king of Edom is perplexing. It is not clear who is being referred to, what incident is being referred to, its importance to the Exodus from Egypt, and why this information should be relevant to the king of Edom.

Rashi (on 20:16) writes that the malakh is referring to Moshe, the messenger of G-d. Yet, would Moshe, the humblest person, Bemidbar 12:3, refer to himself as a malakh? Why would Moshe need to tell the king of Edom that he was a messenger from G-d? Was this information supposed to scare the king of Edom? Moshe could have just mentioned that the people cried out to G-d and G-d saved them, without any reference to himself.

Ibn Ezra (on 20:16) notes that many people believe that Moshe was referring to himself, but he thinks that Moshe was referring to a real malakh. Yet, did a malakh have an important role in the Exodus from Egypt? Shemot 14:19 refers to a malakh who stood between the Jewish people and the Egyptians prior to the miracle of the splitting of the Yam Suf. However, this was a minor part in the miracle of the splitting of the Red Sea, and occurred after the people left Egypt.

Some translators (see for example, in JPS, Milgrom, 1990, p. 168 and Kaplan, 1981, p. 439) write that in 20:16 Moshe was saying that a malakh had taken the people out of Egypt. The only possible reference to a malakh by the Exodus is that Shemot 12:13,23 refer to a mashchit, destroyer, by the tenth plague, who according to some commentators (Hizkuni on Shemot 12:23) was a malakh. Yet, Shemot 12:29 records that G-d killed all the firstborn Egyptians and not a malakh.   Also, 20:16 refers to G-d, and then records three verbs relating to actions of G-d, that G-d heard the cries of the people, that G-d sent a malakh and that G-d took the people out of Egypt. These three separate verbs imply that G-d’s sending of the malakh was distinct in some way from G-d taking the people out of Egypt, and then in 20:16, Moshe was not saying that the malakh took the people out of Egypt. 

My guess is that in 20:16, Moshe was referring to the malakh he saw by the burning bush, Shemot 3:2. This incident happened after the people cried to G-d, and G-d heard their cries, Shemot 2:23,24, which follows the order of events Moshe recalled in 20:16. Yet, this incident was only crucial to Moshe, and was only indirectly related to the Exodus of the people from Egypt since this vision of the malakh was to induce Moshe to be the leader of the people. Moshe did not have to mention this sending of the malakh by G-d to the king of Edom, but it could be that he mentioned it as a personal matter. Many times, a speaker or writer, will include a point in a speech or in a book, which has meaning only to the speaker and the writer, and not to the public who will be hearing the speech or reading the book. The person mentions the point since it is important to the person even if the intended audience will not grasp the significance of the point. In this case, when G-d sent the malakh by the burning bush, this was the turning point in Moshe’s life, and hence for him this was a crucial point of the story. Thus, in his recollection of the basic facts of the Exodus from Egypt, Moshe mentioned this point. This recollection is even more poignant coming at the end of the 40 years of the people’s stay in the wilderness, and right after Moshe was told that he would not take the people to the land of Israel, 20:12.

My daughter Talia has pointed out to me that also Moshe’s first recollection in 20:16, that we cried, is an anomaly since Moshe did not cry out to G-d due to the suffering from slavery as the people did as recorded in Shemot 2:23. Shemot 5:22 does record Moshe crying out to G-d, but this crying out was due to G-d’s actions. Talia suggests that by using the pronoun we, in 20:16, Moshe was tying himself to the people, and their crying out to G-d. Furthermore, Talia notes that combining this point with the idea above that in 20:16 Moshe was referring to his personal vision of the malakh, then in Moshe’s message to the king of Edom, there is a synthesis of Moshe and the people that what happened to the people is a part of who he was, and what happened to him is a part of the history of the Jewish people.

Bibliography:

Kaplan, Aryeh, 1981, The Living Torah, New York: Moznaim Publishing Corporation.

Milgrom, Jacob, 1990, The JPS Torah Commentary: Numbers, Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society.