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Rav Chaim Yaakov Goldvicht ZT"L (Rosh Yeshiva of Kerem B'Yavneh) had an interesting explanation. For 20 years he was bothered by the question - for years, Yosef served as viceroy of Egypt, and sent no message to his father to tell him he was alive, and made no attempt to contact him. Why not? He gave the following explanation:
Yosef thought that his ...
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You had a number of very good suggestions.
Ibn Ezra to Exodus 2:10 suggests 2 possibilities, namely, that Pharaoh's daughter had learned the Hebrew language, or that she asked someone how to say this phrase (and the name was translated from a similar Egyptian name):
אולי למדה בת פרעה לשונינו או שאלה.
Shadal there (same link) quotes Abarbanel saying that ...
9
B'reishis Rabba (90:6) indicates that Yosef's decree was designed to provide the Egyptians not only with life in this world, via physical sustenance, but with life in the World to Come which they could merit via circumcision.
The Y'fei To'ar commentary (ad loc. and on 91:5) explains this by saying that the Egyptians were steeped in sexual immorality, of ...
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"The tribe of Ephraim miscalculated the time of the deliverance of the children of Israel from Egypt, and left the country thirty years before the appointed time. They were met by a hostile host of Philistines, who offered them battle, in which the Ephraimites lost 300,000 men (according to Pesi?., 180,000; according to Pir?e R. El., 200,000). Their bones ...
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Rabbi Dovid Tzvi Hillman in the name of German Encyclopedia says it was a Slavic group known as Wenden that lived in Germany.
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A few answers:
1) Shemos Rabbah 15:27 - It underscored the value of firstborns
The Torah writes (Shemos 4:22):
וְאָמַרְתָּ֖ אֶל־פַּרְעֹ֑ה כֹּ֚ה אָמַ֣ר ה' בְּנִ֥י בְכֹרִ֖י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD: Israel is My first-born son.
Hashem was showing Pharoah how much He values the concept of firstborns.
Like it writes in ...
7
One explanation, given by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, paraphrased here, is that he thought his position as viceroy made them in a subservient position and obligated in circumcision just like all Jewish slaves.
Another explanation that I saw once (don't remember where) is that he wanted to lessen the animosity towards his family (he was preparing the situation ...
7
The Gemara in Moed Katan 18a says the Pharoh that was in the times of Moshe was 1 Amah.
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Perush Yonason asks this question and does not give an answer. I once heard an answer (do not remember from who) which is difficult to accept. Levi lived 137 years in Egypt. The problems with this answer is numerous, and I think this is a question that has no good answer.
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In Shemos 5:3, Moshe introduces his request:
נלכה נא דרך שלשת ימים במידבר ונזבחה ליהוה
Now let us go on a three day journey in the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God
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There is argument among the commentaries about exactly what happened. Some say (like Rashi on verse 14) that Moshe killed the Egyptian by saying the sacred name of God. Others (like the Ibn Ezra on verse 12) say that this is patently wrong and Moshe hit the Egyptian with a stone. The Ramban on verse 14 walks a middle route saying that Moshe might have ...
6
Ibn Ezra in his long commentary to Shemot 1:11 and 12:37 claims they are different places and that the Jews lived in Ra'meses and not in Ra'amses which they built. (According to this it would be a correctable mistake when reading the Torah since it totally changes the meaning.)
Chizkuni to Shemot 12:37 assumes they are the same place when he says they ...
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Some thoughts from Rabbi Kaplan's Living Torah on that passuk.
He writes that moshe means son in Egyptian. He quotes Ibn Ezra & Hadar Zekenim who say this and uses this idea to translate the passuk as "he became to her as a son".
Rabbi Kaplan continues and writes:
Significantly the suffix moshe is found (and exclusively so) in the names of many ...
6
R. Judah Loewe explains in his commentary to this passage that the Talmud is referring to all the people who died in Egypt over the entire course of time the Israelites were there:
והם כל הדורות שמתו במצרים כי כל הדורות שהיו במצרים היו סבורים לצאת היו שנים מששים רבוא
Thus, the Talmud never meant that there were 300,000 x 600,000 people at one time, but ...
6
The prohibition of living in Egypt has never changed. The question is to who did it apply to in the first place?
There are various opinions among the Rishonim Among them are that it only applies to
(1) When the Egyptians residing in Egypt themselves were the descendants of the Egyptians who lived there in biblical times . That stopped being the situation ...
5
Rabbi Avigdor Miller was once asked a similar question, I heard the tape.
He said: 'Why do we thank Hashem for the food he gives us, when He was the one that created us with the propensity to be hungry? And the answer is because if not for being hungry you would never realize what a gracious gift you received with your wellbeing. If you never became hungry, ...
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R. Yosef Kara there writes (there) that this was a particular punishment since it included those unable to walk:
אינה דומה שבייה שהשבויים מוליכים ברגל למוליכים אותה באניות, שהשבייה שמוליכים ברגל מניחין הזקן והחולה והטף והרה ויולדת יחדיו, שאינן יכולין ללכת ברגל, ומוליכין השבייה שיש בהן כח ללכת. אבל השבייה שמכניסין אותן בספינה טף ונשים בחור ובתולה הרה ויולדת ...
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Let's say the average couple has six children in total, when the parents are about 20. Then, after 210 years, the population of 70 will increase to (6/2)^(210/20) * 70 = 7.16 million people.
If the children were born when the parents were teenagers, then even five children per couple would lead to millions after 210 years.
Thus, there's nothing so ...
5
I'll give it a try. There are some inaccuracies in your question that should be clarified before considering the question of Ankhmahor as Yosef.
This is not "the earliest archeological evidence we have for Bris Milah." It was once thought to be, but that award now goes to a recently discovered relief fragment of two children being circumcised, found in the ...
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Jastrow does, with a question mark:
כַּתְּפִי m. (sub לשון) Coptic language (?). Snh. 4ᵇ; Zeb. 37ᵇ; Men. 34ᵇ (Ar. s. v. טט, some ed. גדפי, cmp. גִּיפְטִי).
No word resembling either טט or פת meaning "two" seems to exist in any dialect of Coptic (which is possible to search using this online dictionary).1 I think that the language that we refer to ...
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Rabbi Mordechai Hochman, in "הבנים שאינם נראים"( also in "גרשום – 'הגבר' שבחבורה"), brings the question of how could Levi have lived to see Mosheh and Aharon, but also mentions that the same problem exists for Kehat having lived to see Pinchas (i.e. Eliyahu; see Targum [Pseudo-]Yonatan on v. 18).
To answer this, he brings Liqutei Moharan I:173, which says ...
4
שרת"י במדינות on תרגום יונתן cites אגרא דכלה:
ואפשר ס"ל, דלא מנה הכתוב רק אותן שנים אחר שנולדו לו הבנים, ולא מנו
אותן השנים קודם שבא למצרים. ולפי זה היה משה קרוב לשבע שנים כשמת לוי
"Perhaps, he understands that the verse only counted those years after he gave birth to children, and didn't count the years before he arrived in Egypt. According to this, ...
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According to Rav Sadya Gaon (a native of Egypt) in his Tafsir to Numbers (34:5) this refers to Wadi al-Arish.
According to Rashi, (a native of France), in his commentary to Joshua (13:3), nahal Mitsrayim is the Nile.
הוא נילוס הוא נחל מצרים
Rashi is followed by Radak (a Spanish native of Provence) in his commentary to Joshua there.
This is also the ...
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Babylon defeated Egypt shortly after laying waste to Jerusalem. That is, the Babylonians first routed the Egyptian army at the Battle of Carchemish, and within 35 years, defeated Egypt proper.
Writing in the 1st Century, Josephus had quoted the historian Berossus, who lived some 250 years after the fall of Babylon (and about 250 years before Josephus). In ...
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Rav Ovadiah Seforno (on Shemos 9:35) suggests that Hashem "made his heart heavy" (heavy objects are hard to move) and "made his heart strong" (more literal translations of "הכבדתי" and "חזקתי" then "hardened) in order to preserve Par'oh's free will!
Had Hashem allowed Par’oh
to be influenced by the miracles then
Par’oh’s decisions would have been
altered ...
4
Rav Hirsch explains that the new king carefully and gradually stirred up anti-Semitism in order to drive down the Israelites because they were a single group or caste within the society. All the other elements within the society were divided so that only the Jews could have stood up and resisted the government.
Shmos 1:8
A new king arose over Egypt, who ...
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Rabbi Yochanan Zweig asks this very question. He gives a beautiful and simple answer: the worst thing you can do for a person is to label them as a problem. Once they have a negative label placed on them, you can pretty much do whatever you want to them, and the public will view it as “they had it coming.” In this passuk, the Mitzriim do just that to the ...
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According to Perush Kadmon (printed in Mossaf HaRav Kook's Torat Hayyim Haggada), וירעו means calculated evil. Therefore the citation about deliberation and planning is appropriate. This is quoted by the Shibbolei HaLeket as well in his commentary to the Haggada (found in Shibbolei HaLeket 218).
Alternatively, as noted by @Eliyahu, the KolBo (here) that it ...
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Rav Yaakov Kaminetzky in “Emes LeYaakov” on Shemos 8 (9) quotes the medrash and suggests that Tehillim 92 (מִזְמ֥וֹר שִׁ֜֗יר לְי֣וֹם הַשַּׁבָּֽת) was one of the megillos. He quotes from Bovo Basro 14b that Tehillim 90 and the next 12 psalms were authored by Moshe.
In Egypt there was no doubt that
verse 8 -
“When the wicked flourish like grass, and ...
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This seems to come from Rashi's midrashic explanation of Exodus 32:7 (quoted from Sefaria):
וַיְדַבֵּ֥ר יְהוָ֖ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה לֶךְ־רֵ֕ד כִּ֚י שִׁחֵ֣ת עַמְּךָ֔ אֲשֶׁ֥ר הֶעֱלֵ֖יתָ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃
The LORD spoke to Moses, “Hurry down, for your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, have acted basely.
According to Rashi, God was telling Moses to ...
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