Parshas Shmos - Yisro, Iyov, Bil’am
מיכאל ריטש
Sotah 11a: “These three [Yisro, Iyov, and Bil’am] were advisors to Par’oh: Yisro fled, Iyov was silent, Bil’am agreed and gave supporting advice.”
From my youth, I have been asking on Seder Night: What was Par’oh’s goal, Egypt’s goal, in what they did to the Jews? The story never made sense to me.
If they wanted Israel’s work and valued it, why would they throw the boys into the Nile? Killing valuable slaves! You’ll answer me: that was for a different reason; Egypt knew that from the boys would come the Redeemer of Israel! But no, Par’oh wanted to kill them even before that, via the midwives. And Chazal say that the Jews were forced to build ערי מסכנות, “endangered cities”, built on sand. The buildings collapsed into the ground even as they were finishing them. It was nothing but make-work.
In the other direction: maybe they hated Israel, their growth and their success, and basically just wanted to get rid of them, to kill them or cast them out. Well, why didn’t they do it? [See the Ramban on 1(10).]
שמות א(י) הבה נתחכמה לו, פן כו‘ כי־תקראנה מלחמה כו' ועלה מן־הארץ. פירש“י ז“ל ועלה מן הארץ, על כרחנו. ורבותינו דרשו,כאדם שמקלל עצמו, ותולה קללתו באחרים, והרי הוא כאלו כתב, ועלינו מן הארץ והם יירשוה עכ“ל.
Shmos 1(10) “Come, let us deal wisely with them...lest there be a war... and they will go up from the land.” Rashi: “Go up from the land - against our will. But our Sages learned, it’s like a man who curses himself and says it about someone else: we will have to go up from the land and they will dispossess us.”
Rashi actually seems to be jumping between the two possibilities I mentioned above! Which is it: were they terrified that Israel would leave, or were they afraid of them and desperate to get rid of them?
I have suggested before that when the Torah is explained by our Sages in two different ways, the ways must be connected, not independent. This is how I would explain it here. Israel might leave Mitzrayim - and they would take with them all the blessing.
The fount of blessing in the world is Israel, and any goodness that Hashem puts into the world he puts there only because of Israel. If Israel leaves Mitzrayim, all goodness and all bracha must leave with them.
And that is exactly what happened: וינצלו את מצרים - they emptied Mitzrayim.
The truth always was that the blessing - the years of plenty, the incredible wealth - wasn’t intrinsic to Mitzrayim at all; it was only there because of Israel. It arrived with Yosef, and and it left when Israel left.
With that in hand, back to our Midrash about Yisro, Iyov, and Bil’am. It seems to me that the advisors represent three different points of view on the relationship of the non-Jewish world to Israel.
If Chazal say that Par’oh had three advisors, surely it can’t be that only one of them had a real impact on him. He was a student of all three of them; so was Mitzrayim.
Of course, I don’t know when they joined Par’oh’s service, or if Par’oh was a brand new ruler. But I’d suggest that the original relationship of Par’oh to Yosef followed the point of view represented by Yisro. Par’oh elevatedYosef, called him אברך (father to the king), found him a wife, etc. Everyone at the time - Potiphar and the jailer and Par’oh himself - recognized instantly that G-d was with Yosef, and wanted very much to be part of his incredible blessing for success. All of Egypt blossomed under him.
Yosef forced all of Egypt to be circumcized, and many ask why. But it seems to me that this is part of their being close to Yosef and connected to him and his G-d; only in that way could Yosef help them share in the blessing that G-d gives to Israel. And perhaps that is also part of the reason he made all the Egyptians slaves to Par’oh (end of Parshas Vayigash).
Par’oh had wanted the family of Yaakov to dwell within Mitzrayim proper. But Yosef didn’t go along with it; he kept them separate in the land of Goshen. Only Yosef himself remained nearby Par’oh. After Yaakov Avinu died and Yosef as well, I don’t know how close Israel was to Mitzrayim; the simple implication is that they dwelt independently. [See the Seforno at the beginning of Shmos that in the end Israel slipped into assimilation.]
It seems to me that this was Iyov’s time. The Egyptians were trying their hand at success on their own, neither serving Israel nor enslaving them.
Afterward, Par’oh and his nation saw that it wasn’t working. Israel was growing by leaps and bounds; Egypt was no longer growing. They began to hate them, and Par’oh began to listen to Bil’am.
The days of the Avos Hakedoshim follow this pattern as well.
Though there were exceptions, generally the nations were humbled to Avraham Avinu. They considered him נשיא אלהים, a prince of G-d. They wanted to learn from him, and to join with him in covenants (בעלי ברית אברהם). And Hashem said to Avraham [Bris bein hab’sarim] ואתה תבא אל אבותיך בשלום: “You shall go peacefully to your fathers.” Rashi: you will not personally see any of this suffering. This was “Yisro’s” period.
Yitzchak Avinu had a very different experience. The nations (Avimelech) distanced themselves from him. Note that they still did him no harm. But unlike his father, the nations were not willing or able to follow Yitzchak or learn from him.
What about Yaakov Avinu? Pretty much everyone who met him tried to use him and control him: Esav, Lavan, Sar shel Esav, and Shechem [even though they agreed to get bris milah, their discussion made clear that they were angling to gain control of the incredible wealth that Yaakov represented.] In this period, Bil’am’s program was ascendent.
These periods follow a logical progression: First a student wants to draw close to his teacher, to serve him and become as much like him as he can. Later, when he no longer wants to serve, he imagines that he is now a master himself and no longer needs his rebbi. Finally, when that doesn’t work, and he sees that he will have no success without the teacher, his love may turn to hatred and he may try to take from the teacher by force.
This is the pattern that the nations have followed with Israel in our exiles, in every nation we lived under - initially welcome and mutual wealth, eventually envy and hatred. [The United States seems like an exception; we didn’t arrive here in the first place with the name of G-d on our lips, צ"ע. וע"ע הגמרא שבת לג: שלשה תנאים שדברו על מלכות רומי, ר‘ יהודה ר‘ יוסי ור‘ שמעון - אחד נתן שבח, אחד גינה, ואחד שתק. וע“ע מחלוקת אברם נחור והרן, וצ“ע.]