15
The midrash in Sh'mot Rabbah (2:5) offers some explanations:
Why fire? To inspire him with courage so that when he comes to Sinai later he is not afraid of the fire.1
Why a thornbush? R' Yehoshua b. Karchah said: to teach that no place is devoid of God's presence, not even a thornbush.
R' Eliezer said: just as the thornbush is the lowliest of all trees in ...
14
R. Menachem Mendel Kasher, in Torah Shelaima (vol. 19 pg. 363) quotes several answers:
Ein Yaakov (Peirush): this is to tell us that despite not being involved in any of the Bilaam story, Moshe was still told this story in all of its details exactly how it was written in the Chumash, and it has a similar status as Sefer Devarim, in that Moshe wasn't told ...
14
R. Avraham Ibn Ezra seems to say that she put him in the river not because that would save him but so that she shouldn't have to witness his death:
ויוכבד עשתה זאת כי אמרה אל אראה במות הילד
R. Yosef Ibn Kaspi argues that it is better to choose the possible death than the certain death, and keeping him at home would have led to certain death while placing ...
12
Maybe you are thinking of Deuteronomy 34:10: "And there hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses" (OJPS). However, he was certainly not the last prophet; in fact the previous verse refers to Joshua being a prophet. Similarly, there are tons of prophets after Moses later in the Tanach. The verse in Deuteronomy simply means that Moshe was the ...
12
While there are various other answers to this question, I will highlight a few of them:
One simple answer is that Moshe wanted to see the land, and this is what Rashi (Devarim 3:27) suggests:
וראה בעיניך – בקשתה ממני: ואראה את הארץ הטובה (דברים ג׳:כ״ה), אני מראה לך את כולה, שנאמר: ויראהו י״י את כלא הארץ (דברים ל״ד:א׳).
וראה בעיניך [LIFT UP THINE EYES …] AND ...
12
Most commentaries render this as some sort of thorny bush (see Rashi, Ibn Ezra).
In terms of identifying which exact species it may have been, a great resource is Rabbi Kaplan's Living Torah commentary to Exodus 3:2, which states:
S'neh in Hebrew. This is most probably the black raspberry (rubus sanctus), which has berries that turn red and then black (...
12
The first individual to know of the Messiah was Adam HaRishon. This is stated explicitly in Sanhedrin 38b in the name of Reish Lakish, by Yose ben Chalafta in Seder Olam Rabbah 30 and Rabbi Yehuda bar Simon in Bereshit Rabbah 24:2 which teach that Adam was shown all the righteous, each generation and its Sages and those who would teach and explain the Torah.
...
11
See the Medrash Raba on Shemos (Exodus) פרשה ג that states that (at least initially, at the burning bush) Hashem sounded just like Moshe's father Amrom when He spoke to him.
אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוֹשֻׁעַ הַכֹּהֵן בַּר נְחֶמְיָה בְּשָׁעָה שֶׁנִּגְלָה הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא עַל משֶׁה טִירוֹן הָיָה משֶׁה לַנְּבוּאָה, אָמַר הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא "אִם ...
11
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 ...
10
The Gur Arye explains that Y'hoshua's falling into the spies' plot would reflect poorly on Moshe, whose protege he was. This reasoning doesn't apply to Kalev.
The Avodas Yisrael explains (not in answer to this question) that Y'hoshua did not want the honor of leading the people, and wanted Moshe to retain that position. (See Rashi to B'haalos'cha 11:28.) ...
10
Yalkut Shimoni Shemos 168 does indeed record the story of Moshe being appointed the King of Kush (Kush = modern Ethiopia) and leading them in war, and that he married the Kushite princess. However, the Yalkut Shimoni says explicitly that Moshe did not cohabit with her because she was a descendant of Cham, and Moshe remembered the vow that Avraham had ...
10
The Midrash Raba 1:28 says it was justifiable:
One time, an Egyptian taskmaster went to a Israelite kapo and looked at his wife, who was beautiful without blemish. He got up at cockcrow and removed him from his house and (the Egyptian) returned and bedded his wife, who thought he was her husband…. Once the taskmaster knew that [the husband] knew ...
10
Rashi in his commentary to Devarim 10:1 writes that there were indeed two; the one made by Moshe was the one that the Bnei Yisrael carried with them when they went into battle.
At that time: At the end of forty days [which was the first of Elul], God was reconciled with me and said to me, “Hew for yourself [two tablets],” and afterwards, “make for ...
9
Alshich explains that Yisro was worried: Perhaps Moshe would not be interested in a Midyanite woman and would rather marry a Jewess. He therefore emphasized that he brought "her two sons" with him (and not "his two sons"), since a man comes to like his wife because of the children she bears him, and this would persuade Moshe to remarry Tziporah. (See also ...
9
From here:
The Holy One tested Moshe by means of the flock, as our sages have explained: when Moshe was tending Yitro's flock out in the desert, a lamb ran off, and Moshe followed it, until it found shelter under a rock. There it found water and stopped to drink. When Moshe approached the lamb, he said: "I did not know that you ran away because you were ...
9
Because the Egyptians were looking for any excuse to say that the plagues were not of divine origin. If they were not of divine origin then the Egyptians wouldn't feel the need to let the Jews go.
If they saw any reason, no matter how slight, to say that they were not from G-d, they would jump on that opportunity.
Moshe did not want to give them that ...
9
"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 ...
9
Deuteronomy 34 6:
ולא ידע איש את קברתו עד היום הזה.
In סוטה י׳ד ע׳א we find רבי חמא בר חנינא giving the reason it was hidden so that the Jews would not be able to go pray at his grave when going into galus.
אמר רבי חמא בר חנינא מפני מה נסתר מקום קבורתו של משה מעיני בשר ודם, שגלוי וידוע לפני הקב׳ה שעתיד בית המקדש ליחרב וישראל יגלו מארצם, שמא יבאו לקברו של ...
9
The ibn Ezra is almost certainly referring to the Nabatean Agriculture, a work that was widely cited by many rishonim (medieval authorities), most notably the Rambam. (Ibn Ezra appears to have erroneously believed that the work was originally written in Egyptian.)
9
Masechet Menachos 29b states that Moshe Rabeinu was allowed to sit in the bais medrash of Rabbi Akivah, but could not follow the learning there.
They told that when Moses went above to receive the Torah, he found
the Holy One, blessed be He, sitting and attaching crowns to the
letters. (Of course, G‑d doesn’t sit, neither does He need to use cut
and paste ...
9
Your premise is that God forced Moshe to go up the mountain and look at the land in some torturous fashion, driving home the point that he would never enter it.
I believe this is an incorrect premise. We can see from several of the commentaries that going up to the mountain to see the land was something positive, and perhaps even something that Moshe asked ...
9
Firstly, there is a fascinating philosophical point that relates to this question. Maharal (Gur Aryeh to Shemot 1:15) points out that neither Yocheved, nor Amram's names were mentioned prior to Moshe's birth because Moshe was destined for this role from when G-d created the world. Had their names been mentioned, argues Maharal, it might cause people to think ...
8
Rav Ovadia Yosef said a great pshat.Moshe Rabbeinu says מחני נא מספרך
לב. וְעַתָּה אִם תִּשָּׂא חַטָּאתָם וְאִם אַיִן מְחֵנִי נָא מִסִּפְרְךָ אֲשֶׁר כָּתָבְתָּ:
He says one could read it מחני נא מספר כ.which means erase me from sefer kaf which equals 20 and the 20th parsha is tzaveh so Moshes plea was granted.
8
The sefer "HaSeder HaAruch" (vol. 2 chapter 129) brings several answers to this question:
Moshe did not accomplish the desired goal of the Exodus from Egypt. The actual redemption was only brought about through the plague of Death of the Firstborn, which was executed by Hashem Himself, and not through Moshe, as we say in the Haggadah "I, and not the ...
8
The name of אשת יתרו is "unknown". See here.
8
Yes. Off the tip of my tongue, I don't know where it says that black and white (although I believe it does), but see Likkutei Torah (from the same author):
הנה נודע שנשמת משה רבינו עליו השלום היתה מבחינת אצילות וכן נשמת אברהם והיינו שבמשה רבע"ה ובאברהם היה מאיר בהם אצילות בבחינת גילוי למטה
It is known that the soul of Moshe Rabeinu Alav Hashalom was ...
8
The reason is that Job was not dictated to Moses by Hashem for the purpose of being put into the Torah. The words of the Torah were specifically for the history, halachos, and hashkafa of Bnei Yisrael. Thus Moshe wrote it at the lower level of nevua set up for Kesuvim.
The Chumash is like the Neviim in that they were given as a message by Hashem to the Navi ...
8
According to רמב"ן (Nachmanides) on that verse (2:1), a discussion of the lineage of Moshe and his parents would prolong the narrative unnecessarily; at this point, the Torah would like to just get on with the story.
ויקח את בת לוי ולא הזכיר הכתוב שם האיש ולא שם אשתו אשר לקח, והיה זה בעבור כי יצטרך ליחסם ולהזכיר שמם מי אביהם ואבי אביהם עד אל לוי,
ועכשיו ...
8
Midrash Tehilim 18:29 (in the name of R. Luliani) says that Hashem spoke with Moshe with the voice of Moshe himself:
רבי לוליאני בשם רבי ישמעאל אמר בנוהג שבעולם הרב אומר והתלמיד עונה. אבל
הקב"ה אינו כן (שם יט יט) משה ידבר והאלקים יעננו בקול. הוי וענותך תרבני
Seems that the any other characteristics mentioned when applied to G-d's voice deppends on the ...
8
2:10 וַיִּגְדַּ֣ל הַיֶּ֗לֶד וַתְּבִאֵ֙הוּ֙ לְבַת־פַּרְעֹ֔ה וַֽיְהִי־לָ֖הּ לְבֵ֑ן וַתִּקְרָ֤א שְׁמוֹ֙ מֹשֶׁ֔ה וַתֹּ֕אמֶר כִּ֥י מִן־הַמַּ֖יִם מְשִׁיתִֽהוּ׃
2:11 וַיְהִ֣י׀ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיִּגְדַּ֤ל מֹשֶׁה֙ וַיֵּצֵ֣א אֶל־אֶחָ֔יו וַיַּ֖רְא בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם וַיַּרְא֙ אִ֣ישׁ מִצְרִ֔י מַכֶּ֥ה אִישׁ־עִבְרִ֖י מֵאֶחָֽיו׃
As usual, link to Mefarshim (2:10) is here....
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
