Parashat Shemot

Oppression in Egypt

1 Now these are the names of Bnei-Yisrael who came into Egypt with Jacob, each man with his family: ² Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; ³ Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; ⁴ Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher. ⁵ The souls that came out of the line of Jacob numbered 70 in all, while Joseph was already in Egypt.

⁶ Then Joseph died, as did all his brothers and all that generation. ⁷ Yet Bnei-Yisrael were fruitful, increased abundantly, multiplied and grew extremely numerous—so the land was filled with them.

⁸ Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. ⁹ He said to his people, “Look, the people of Bnei-Yisrael are too numerous and too powerful for us. ¹⁰ Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, or else they will grow even more numerous, so that if war breaks out, they may join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.”

¹¹ So they set slave masters over them to afflict them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Raamses as storage cities for Pharaoh. ¹² But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread. So the Egyptians dreaded the presence of Bnei-Yisrael. ¹³ They worked them harshly, ¹⁴ and made their lives bitter with hard labor with mortar and brick, doing all sorts of work in the fields. In all their labors they worked them with cruelty.

¹⁵ Moreover the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ¹⁶ and said, “When you help the Hebrew women during childbirth, look at the sex. If it’s a son, then kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.” ¹⁷ Yet the midwives feared God, so they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the boys live. ¹⁸ So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this—let the boys live?”

¹⁹ The midwives told Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are like animals,^[a] and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” ²⁰ So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied, growing very numerous. ²¹ Because the midwives feared God, He gave them families of their own.

²² But Pharaoh charged all his people saying, “You are to cast every son that is born into the river, but let every daughter live.”

Young Moses

2 Now a man from the house of Levi took as his wife a daughter of Levi. ² The woman conceived and gave birth to a son. Now when she saw that he was delightful, she hid him for three months. ^{[b] 3} But when she could no longer hide him, she took a basket of papyrus reeds, coated it with tar and pitch, put the child inside, and laid it in the reeds by the bank of the Nile. ⁴ His sister stood off at a distance to see what would happen to him.

⁵ Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe, while her maidens walked along by the riverside. When she saw the basket^[c] among the reeds, she sent her handmaiden to fetch it. ⁶ When she opened it, she saw the child—a baby boy crying! She had compassion on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew children.”

⁷ Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a nurse from the Hebrews to nurse the child for you?”

⁸ Pharaoh’s daughter told her, “Go!” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. ⁹ Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. ¹⁰ After the boy grew older she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. So she named him Moses saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.”^[d]

Rehoboam’s Foolishness

12 Then Rehoboam went to Shechem for all Israel had come to Shechem to make him king. ² Now when Jeroboam son of Nebat heard about it, he was still in Egypt where he had fled from the face of King Solomon and settled in Egypt. ³ They summoned him, so Jeroboam and all the congregation of Israel came and spoke to Rehoboam saying: ⁴ “Your father made our yoke burdensome. Now therefore lighten the harsh labor of your father and his heavy yoke which he laid on us and we will serve you.”

⁵ He said to them: “Go away for three more days and then come back to me.” So the people departed.

⁶ Then King Rehoboam consulted with the elders who had served his father Solomon while he was still alive, saying, “How do you advise me to respond to these people?”

⁷ They spoke to him, saying: “If you will be a servant to this people today, serving them, granting them their petition, and speaking favorably to them, then they will be your servants forever.”

⁸ But he rejected the counsel the elders had given him, instead consulting with the young men who grew up with him and stood before him. ⁹ So he asked them, “How do you advise me to respond to these people who have spoken to me saying: ‘Lighten the yoke that your father laid on us?’”

¹⁰ The young men who had grown up with him spoke to him saying: “Thus you should say to these people who spoke to you saying ‘Your father made our yoke heavy, but you, make it lighter on us!’ thus you should say to them, ‘My little finger is thicker than my father’s loins! ¹¹ So now, my father laid on you a heavy yoke, and as for me, I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but as for me, I will chastise you with scorpions.’”

¹² Then Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day, as the king told them, saying, “Come back to me on the third day.” ¹³ The king answered the people harshly. He rejected the counsel the elders had given him, ¹⁴ and spoke to them according to the counsel of the young men, saying, “My father made your yoke heavy, but I will add to your yoke; my father chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions.”

Ten Tribes Revolt

¹⁵ So the king did not listen to the people. For it was a turn of events from Adonai fulfilling His word, which Adonai spoke by the hand of Ahijah the Shilonite to Jeroboam son of Nebat. ¹⁶ But when all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, the people answered the king saying:

“What share have we in David?

No inheritance in Jesse’s son!

To your tents, O Israel!

Now look at your own house, David!”

So the Israelites departed to their tents. ¹⁷ But as for the children of Israel who lived in the cities of Judah, Rehoboam reigned over them. ¹⁸ Then King Rehoboam sent Adoram who was over the forced labor, but all Israel stoned him to death. Then King Rehoboam hurried to mount his chariot to flee to Jerusalem. ¹⁹ Israel has rebelled against the house of David to this day.

²⁰ Now when all Israel heard that Jeroboam had returned, they summoned him to the assembly and made him king over all Israel. Only the tribe of Judah remained loyal to the house of David. ²¹ When Rehoboam arrived in Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah as well as the tribe of Benjamin—180,000 select soldiers, to fight against the house of Israel in order to restore the kingship back to Rehoboam son of Solomon.

²² But the word of God came to Shemaiah the man of God, saying: ²³ “Speak to Rehoboam son of Solomon, king of Judah, and to all the house of Judah and Benjamin and to the rest of the people saying, ²⁴ Thus says Adonai: you are not to go up or fight against your brothers, the children of Israel. Turn back every man to his own house, for this matter is from Me.”

So they heeded the word of Adonai. They turned and went back, according to the word of Adonai.

²⁵ Then Jeroboam rebuilt Shechem in the hill country of Ephraim and resided there. From there he went out and built Penuel.^[a]

Jeroboam Resorts to Idolatry

²⁶ But Jeroboam said in his heart, “Now the kingdom may return to the house of David. ²⁷ If this people keep going up to offer sacrifices in the House of Adonai at Jerusalem, then the heart of these people will turn back to their lord—to King Rehoboam of Judah. Then they will kill me and return to King Rehoboam of Judah.” ²⁸ So the king sought counsel and made two golden calves. He said to them, “You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough! Here are your gods O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” ²⁹ Then he set up one in Bethel and the other he put in Dan. ³⁰ Now this thing became a sin for the people went to worship before the one even up in Dan.

³¹ He also made shrines on the high places and appointed priests from among the people, who were not sons of Levi. ³² Then Jeroboam instituted a festival in the eighth month, on the fifteenth day of the month, imitating the Festival that is in Judah. He went up to the altar that he built in Bethel, to sacrifice to the calves that he had made. He installed in Bethel the priests of the high places that he made. ³³ Then he went up to the altar which he had made in Bethel on the fifteenth day in the eighth month—in the month that he had made up from his own heart—and made up a festival for the children of Israel, and went up to the altar to burn incense.

Prophet Against Bethel

13 Unexpectedly, a man of God came from Judah to Bethel with the word of Adonai while Jeroboam was standing by the altar to burn incense. ² He cried out against the altar with the word of Adonai and said: “O altar, altar, thus says Adonai, behold, a son shall be born to the house of David, Josiah by name, and upon you will he sacrifice the priests of the high places who burn incense on you, and human bones will be burned upon you.’” ³ The same day he gave a sign, saying, “This is the sign that Adonai has spoken, the altar is about to be split apart and the fat ashes on it will be poured out.”

⁴ Now when the king heard the word of the man of God, which he proclaimed against the altar in Bethel, Jeroboam stretched out his hand from the altar saying: “Seize him!” But the hand which he stretched out against him withered—he could not even draw it back to himself. ⁵ The altar also was split apart and the fat ashes poured out from the altar, just as was the sign that the man of God gave with the word of Adonai.

⁶ So the king responded by saying to the man of God: “Please seek the face of Adonai your God, and pray for me, so my hand may be restored to me!” So the man of God sought the face of Adonai and the king’s hand was restored to him, becoming as it was before.

⁷ Then the king said to the man of God: “Come home with me and have something to eat, and then, I will give you a reward.”

⁸ But the man of God said to the king: “Even if you give me half your house, I will not go with you nor will I eat bread or drink water in this place. ⁹ For so I was charged by the word of Adonai, saying, ‘You are to eat no bread, nor drink water, nor return by the way by which you came.’” ¹⁰ So he took another road and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel.

¹¹ Now one old prophet was living in Bethel. His son came and told him all the deeds that the man of God had done that day in Bethel and all the words that he had spoken to the king they related to their father. ¹² Then their father asked them: “Which way did he go?” For his sons had seen which way the man of God that came from Judah went.

¹³ Then he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me!” So they saddled the donkey for him and he rode away on it. ¹⁴ Then he went after the man of God and found him sitting under an oak tree. He said to him, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”

“I am,” he said.

¹⁵ “Come home with me,” he said to him, “and eat bread!”

¹⁶ But he said: “I cannot return with you nor go with you, nor will I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. ¹⁷ For it was said to me by the word of Adonai: You shall eat no bread nor drink water there, nor should you return back by the way by which you came.”

¹⁸ So he said to him: “I also am a prophet like you. An angel spoke to me with the word of Adonai saying, ‘Bring him back with you to your house that he may eat bread and drink water.’” (He lied to him.) ^{[b] 19} So he went back with him and ate bread in his house and drank water.

²⁰ Now while they were sitting at the table, the word of Adonai came to the prophet who had brought him back, ²¹ and he cried to the man of God that came from Judah saying, “Thus says Adonai: Because you rebelled against the word of Adonai, and did not keep the commandment which Adonai your God commanded you, ²² but turned back, ate bread and drank water in the place of which He said to you, ‘Eat no bread and drink no water,’ your carcass will not enter the tomb of your fathers.”

²³ So after he had eaten bread and after he had drunk, he saddled the donkey for him, for the prophet he had brought back. ²⁴ But when he was gone, a lion met him along the way and killed him. So his carcass was thrown on the road with both the donkey and the lion standing beside the carcass. ²⁵ Then, men passed by and saw the carcass thrown on the road with the lion standing by the carcass. So they came and told it in the town where the old prophet lived. ²⁶ Now when the prophet who had brought him back from the road heard it, he said: “It is the man of God who defied the word of Adonai; therefore Adonai gave him to the lion which mauled him and killed him, according to the word Adonai spoke to him.”

²⁷ Then he spoke to his sons saying: “Saddle the donkey for me!” So they saddled it. ²⁸ Then he went and found his carcass lying on the road, with the donkey and the lion standing by the carcass. The lion had not eaten the carcass nor mauled the donkey. ²⁹ Then the prophet picked up the carcass of the man of God, he laid it on the donkey and brought it back to the town of the old prophet to mourn and to bury him. ³⁰ He laid his carcass in his own tomb and they mourned over him saying, “Oy, my brother!” ³¹ After burying him, he said to his sons, “When I die, bury me in the tomb where the man of God is buried; lay my bones beside his bones. ³² For the message he declared by the word of Adonai against the altar in Bethel, and against all the shrines of the high places which are in the towns of Samaria, will surely come to pass.”

³³ Even after this, Jeroboam did not turn back from his evil way, but once again, he appointed priests for the high places from among all ranks of the people. Whoever wanted to be a priest, he consecrated him for the high places. ³⁴ So this matter became sin against the house of Jeroboam, in the end, wiping it out and destroying it from the face of the earth.

Back to Teaching His Own

17 Then Yeshua said to His disciples, “Stumbling blocks are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom they come! ² It would be better for him to have a millstone put around his neck and to be hurled into the sea, than for him to cause one of these little ones to stumble.

³ “Keep yourselves alert! If your brother sins, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. ⁴ Even if he sins against you seven times a day, and seven times returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”

⁵ Then the emissaries said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”

⁶ Then the Lord said, “If you have faith like a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. ⁷ But if you have a slave who is plowing or tending sheep, who among you will say to him when he comes in from the field, ‘Come right in, and recline at table’? ⁸ But won’t he instead say to him, ‘Prepare something for me to eat! Dress yourself and wait on me while I eat and drink; and afterward, you may eat and drink’? ⁹ He doesn’t thank the slave because he did what he was commanded, does he? ¹⁰ So you too, when you’ve done everything you are commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy slaves. We have done only what we were supposed to do.’”

On the Move through Samaria

¹¹ Now while going up to Jerusalem, Yeshua was passing between Samaria and the Galilee. ¹² As He entered a certain village, ten men with tzara’at came toward Him. They stood some distance away ^{[a] 13} and raised their voices, saying, “Yeshua, Master, have mercy on us!”

¹⁴ When He saw them, He said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the kohanim.”^[b] And as they went, they were cleansed. ¹⁵ Now one of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back, glorifying God with a loud voice. ¹⁶ And he fell at Yeshua’s feet, facedown, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.

¹⁷ Then Yeshua answered and said, “Weren’t ten cleansed? But where are the nine? ¹⁸ Weren’t any found who came back to give glory to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹ Then Yeshua said to the man, “Stand up and go! Your faith has made you well.”

²⁰ Now when Yeshua was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, He answered them and said, “The kingdom of God does not come with signs to be seen. ²¹ Nor will they say, ‘Look, here!’ or ‘There!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst.”

²² Then Yeshua said to the disciples, “The days will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you will not see it. ²³ They will say to you, ‘Look, there!’ or ‘Look, here!’ Do not go and chase after them. ²⁴ For just as the lightning flashes from one part of the sky and lights up another part, so will the Son of Man be in His day. ²⁵ But first He must suffer much and be rejected by this generation. ²⁶ As it was in the days of Noah,^[c] so will it also be in the days of the Son of Man. ²⁷ They were eating, drinking, marrying, and being given in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.

²⁸ “It was just the same in the days of Lot.^[d] They were eating, drinking, buying, selling, planting, building. ²⁹ But on the day Lot left Sodom, it rained fire and sulfur from heaven and destroyed them all. ³⁰ Things will be the same on the day when the Son of Man is made fully known. ³¹ In that day, the one who is on the roof, and his possessions in the house, must not go down to take them away. In the same way, the one who is in the field must not turn back. ³² Remember Lot’s wife! ^{[e] 33} Whoever tries to keep his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life will preserve it.

³⁴ “I tell you, on that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken along and the other left. ³⁵ There will be two women grinding at the same place. One will be taken and the other left.” (³⁶ )^[f]

³⁷ “Where, Lord?” they replied.

And He said to them, “Where there is a corpse, there also will the vultures be gathered.”^[g]