ובני ישראל פרו וישרצו וירבו ויעצמו במאוד מאוד ותמלא הארץ אותם
“And the children of Israel increased, and they multiplied profusely, they grew, and they became very, very powerful. And the land was filled with them ”.
I confess that I’ve always read this verse in a different way than I am reading this year. I understood this text like this: The Jews in Egypt had become a demographic threat to the Egyptians. “And the earth was filled with them”, means that the Egyptians noticed the Jewish presence everywhere. The text itself does not praise the Jews for their impressive economic achievements, but neither does it appear to criticize them. The text only mentions the facts and explains why Pharaoh decides to put an end to the growth of the Jews.
Let me now present an alternative reading of this text, especially the last words, and a slightly different conclusion.
LIVING OUTSIDE A COMMUNITY
The text begins by describing the demographic explosion and the success of the Jews (= they grew), and then it explains what the Jews did once they succeeded. When they arrived in Egypt, Jews were living secluded in the land of Goshen. They were a society of privileged foreigners. But now, probably 60 – 70 years, or two generations later, Egypt-born Jews no longer felt like foreigners but an integral part of the affluent Egyptian society. And the ghetto was now too small for them! The Tora tells us here that many Jews voluntarily left their territory – their Jewish quarter and their community– and began to scatter throughout the country (“And the land, Egypt, was filled with them”), looking for more real-state, more wealth, more power, and more influence. The ethnic or social barriers that living in a community provided, protecting them from assimilation, were now an obstacle to their progress and economic development. It was the first time — but not the last — that assimilation began to take shape as a result of prosperity and success on the part of Jews who felt that they belonged in the Gentile society.
FORGETTING GOD
While this negative reading of this text is a bit speculative, there are reasons to think that it may not be too wrong. In very different contexts, the Tora repeatedly warns the Jewish people about the “risks” of material abundance. In the book of Debarim (Chapter 8: 11-14) the Tora describes the wealth that the Jews will enjoy in the Promised Land and then it says: “Be careful lest you forget HaShem your God and abandon His commandments… when you have eaten your fill, and you have built beautiful houses to live in, and your cows and herds multiply, and your silver and gold have increased, and you have prospered in all that you possess … beware! Lest your heart grow arrogant and you forget HaShem your God, who delivered you from the land of Egypt…. ”. How does assimilation begin? By forgetting God when you do not “need”Him because you already have all that you need and then more. And when did Jews remember God? When they were poor or suffering the horrors of starvation or slavery.
FORGETTING ISRAEL
There is an additional element that might show the criticism of the Tora to the fact that Jews “filled the land of Egypt with their expansionist presence.” That is the remarkable silence of the Tora regarding the expected return of the people of Israel to their land. We all remember that Jacob’s children came to live temporarily (lagur) in Egypt: they were supposed to stay there until the situation improved and then return to the land of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob! In Egypt, God blessed them with progeny and prosperity. That should have motivated the children of Israel to return to Israel with their wealth and resettle in their ancestors’ land as consolidated people. But this verse seems to say that the Jews, once they started to enjoy a very high standard of living in Egypt, felt comfortable there and were looking to move not to Israel but even deeper to the south, into the land of the Nile.
Understood in this way, this verse seems to express the concern that the Jewish people were at risk of losing their identity and spirituality and forgoing their plans to return to Israel.
Ironically, but in a way that should not surprise us in our modern times, it seems that the one thing that “saved the Jews from complete assimilation” and finally got them to return to their land was Egyptian antisemitism.
This is the Hebrew text that inspired this interpretation of the biblical text.
ההעמק דבר
ותמלא הארץ אתם. מהם מיבעי וכן ת״א מנהון. אבל לשון המקרא אותם. בא ללמד דלא ארץ גושן לבד שהי׳ מיוחד לישראל ומלאה מישראל לבד. אלא אפילו כל א״מ שהי׳ עיקר ישיבת עם מצרים מ״מ מלאה הארץ את ישראל. ומשמעות אותם עמם. כמש״כ בספר ויקרא י״ז ה׳ עה״פ וזבחו זבחי שלמים לה׳ אותם. והיה כל מקום פנוי שמצאו ישראל לקנות ולדור נתישבו שמה. והיינו דכתיב במכת בכורות ופסח ה׳ על הפתח הרי שהיו הרבה בתי ישראל בקרב בתי מצרים. ואע״ג שיבואר להלן ב׳ כ״ה וג׳ ז׳ שפרעה נגש לישראל ולחצם לדור במיצר כדי להשפיל דעתם. מ״מ הי׳ באופן שנשארו בקרב ערי מצרים בין בתיהם. ובא הכתוב להקדים בזה סיבת שנאת מצרים וגזרת המלכות. ומחשבת חשד מה שלא עלה ע״ד ישראל. כ״ז בא משום שבקשו לצאת מרצון יעקב אביהם שישבו דוקא בארץ גושן כדי שיהיו בדד ונבדל ממצרים כמש״כ בפ׳ ויגש. אבל הם לא רצו כן. ובש״ר איתא עוד שפסקו למול מזה הטעם שאמרו נהיה כמצרים. דאחר שקבעו דירתם בקרבם מצאו טוב להם להשתוות למצרים ולא יהיו ניכרים שהמה יהודים. ומשום זה ביאר המדרש שהפך ה׳ לבם לשנוא עמו. וכבר ביארנו בס׳ בראשית עה״פ כי גר יהיה זרעך וגו׳ אשר היא הסבה שבכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותנו בשביל שאין אנו רוצים להיות כגרים ונבדלים מן האומות
“And the land was filled with them”. What does it mean? …it comes to teach us that not only the area of Goshen, which was originally designated for Israel, was filled with them, but even all other Egyptian cities were also filled by them. This means wherever the Jews found an empty space in Egypt, they bought it and settled there. This is what is written in The Plague of the Firstborn God had to differentiate between the houses of the Israelites and the Egyptians because the Israelites [stopped living in their neighborhoods] to live among the Egyptians. Although the Pharaoh forced the Jews to live in narrow conditions to degrade their spirits, they resettled within the Egyptian cities, among their homes. This text, therefore, comes to anticipate the reason for Egypt’s hatred and decree against Israel: the suspicion that Israel harbored thoughts to betray them and take over Egypt! This was why their father Jacob wanted them to dwell specifically in the land of Goshen and be separated from Egyptians, as it says in Parshat Vayigash. But the Jews did not want that. And as a result [in order to assimilate], they even stopped circumcising themselves for this reason, saying that they want to become like the Egyptians… and not be recognized as Jews. And therefore, the Midrash explains that God turned the Egyptians’ hearts to hate the Jews.
As we have already explained in the book of Genesis, “your offspring shall be [=behave as] strangers in a land..” (Genesis 15:13): when the Jews do not behave as such, the nations stand against us to destroy us, because we do not want to be like strangers and live separated from them.
