Towards the end of Sefer Bereishit, the citizens of Egypt become slaves to Pharaoh through a slow process that is described by the Torah – beginning with a lengthy famine that forces the people to become dependent on the government for its most basic needs and concluding with the sale of all their possessions to the government in exchange for food. The Egyptian people are forced to give up their property, their livelihood and themselves, as they become human chattel.
The situation is totally different at the beginning of Sefer Shemot. By all appearances it seems that the Egyptian people are no longer slaves. They are now free men who have regained their independence and their civil rights. It seems logical to assume that there was a transition period – that is not described by the Torah – during which there was significant upheaval in the country. Somehow in the course of this upheaval, the fate of Bnei Yisrael changed, and it is now they who are serving as Pharaoh’s slaves, oppressed by the Egyptians. The divide between the native Egyptians and the Hebrew immigrants is a racial separation that discriminates against the Jews, depriving them of their most basic human rights. They are enslaved to the kingdom and forced to serve the needs of building and expanding the empire.
What was it like on the Egyptian side during this period? How were the Egyptian people faring? Perhaps the story in Parashat Va’era that describes the meeting between Moshe and Pharaoh on the Nile can help us gain an understanding of the situation.
God commands Moshe: “Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is coming out to the water, and station yourself before him at the edge of the Nile.” God’s command specifies when and where Moshe is to meet with Pharaoh – during his morning visit to the Nile. Why did Pharaoh go out to the Nile in the morning?
Rashbam suggests that this was Pharaoh’s morning constitutional. Pharaoh would go out every day to enjoy the fresh air, to listen to the croaking frogs and the songs of the birds. He writes: “Like the habit of the nobles to walk in the morning and ride here and there.”
Ibn Ezra writes that Pharaoh would go to the Nile to take pride in its depth as it rose from day to day at the end of springtime (much as Israelis track the upward movement of the Kinneret during rainy winter months). Watching the Nile rise to overflowing filled Pharaoh’s heart with a sense of wealth, control and hope, which represented a wonderful start to a new day. The “Toldot Yitzhak” writes: “To this day it is the common practice of the Egyptian king to go out in the summer months to see how high the Nile has risen.”
Abarbanel offers two pastoral descriptions of Pharaoh’s morning visit to the Nile. The first one describes Pharaoh’s morning walk:
“Go to him in the morning when he comes out to the water for a stroll, following the popular custom of morning exercise that warms the body before eating, and certainly the bank of the Nile will serve as a good place to examine and clarify all matters, given the backdrop of the water.”
The second description describes the pleasures of ballplaying:
“Ibn Caspi writes that it was the custom of the king of Egypt at that time – and still today – to go with his retinue twice a week, on Tuesday and Saturday, to a specific place on the Nile, to play ball and stroll from the morning until it was time to eat.”
From this general description, one can get a sense of the general atmosphere in Egypt. Everyday life continued as usual, and while the Egyptian people enjoy a wonderful and prosperous life of equality and calm, behind the scenes there was discrimination and slavery. When God sends Moses to meet Pharaoh on the Nile, His intention is for Moshe to hold up a mirror before Pharaoh eyes precisely at that place where freedom and happiness are most clearly experienced, since the Nile is a symbol of comfort and success. The Hebrew messenger meets Pharaoh at a place where the social and spiritual contrast is most striking. It is most appropriate for Moshe to meet Pharaoh in the place where the contrast between the comfortable Egyptians and the oppressed Hebrews is most clearly exhibited.
Another exegetical approach to the meeting between Moshe and Pharaoh appears in the Midrash:
“ ‘Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is coming out to the water.’ The only reason Pharaoh went out was for the water. For that wicked man claimed that he was a god, who had no need to urinate as simple humans do. He therefore went to the Nile every morning to excrete in secret.” (Shemot Rabbah, Va’era)
According to this midrash, Pharaoh did not go to the Nile for pleasure, to breathe the fresh morning air, rather this was a cover for his secret, that he was an ordinary man. It was at the Nile that Pharaoh is revealed as a simple human, when he is forced to strip himself of his pretenses and god-like status. This approach suggests that the Nile is where to meet, since it is there that the common denominator between all men is made clear. This meeting emphasizes how intolerable it is to have this level of inequality between the ruling class and the slaves, when the slaves are not perceived as human beings but as property, devoid of rights. In fact, the suggestion is that there were three classes in Egypt: the “godly” class of the ruler – whose daily trips to the Nile prove that his pretentiousness has no basis – the human class of the people, and the sub-human slaves who deserved no rights.
The meeting with Pharaoh at the Nile was a meeting with Pharaoh the man on its most basic level. Moshe met him at the place were all humans are equal – slave and master, citizen and rule – where nature and biology define the person, not politics or religion. The process that Pharaoh and the Egyptian people are about to undergo by means of the plagues begins here, in an encounter where it is clear that Pharaoh cannot justify the social inequality or the discriminatory racial claims that he espouses.
The easiest thing to do – despite the internal contradiction – is to live as a split personality. When we distinguish between people and discriminate against others, we have many ways to explain why some people, or classes of people, are given preference while others are discriminated against. The meeting between Moshes and Pharaoh on the Nile highlights this fact, which is the first step in preparing for the great liberation from Egyptian slavery, guaranteeing the basic human right to freedom and independence.