“In G-d’s Name, Three Days Is All I Need”

“...you shall go to the king of Egypt and tell him, “The Lord G-d of the Hebrews has revealed Himself to us. Send us forth now for a three-day journey”

The purpose of the exodus from Egypt was specifically to leave the land of Egypt forever. G-d tells Moshe at the beginning of his mission to free the Jews:

“And I have declared: I will take you out of the misery of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, to a land flowing with milk and honey.”

G-d’s intent was not for a three-day festival. It was for a complete withdrawal from Egypt. There was no plan to return once the Jews had left. Why then does G-d tell Moshe to mislead Pharaoh into thinking it was only a three-day sojourn?

Why mislead Pharaoh and the Egyptians in this way?

The Abarbanel says that this was more than just a festival to G-d. He says:

In that gathering of joy and contentment, they would accept upon them the covenant of the Torah.

It seems that the three-day festival was more than just a ruse to allow Pharaoh to send the people. It would effectively be enough time for the Jewish people to receive the Torah, entering into a covenant - a special relationship which emphasises that the only ruler the Jewish people could accept would be G-d. Therefore, once they had returned to Egypt, even though they were servants to Pharaoh, their hearts and minds would be subservient to Hashem.

The Abarbanel also says that the three-day strategy was offered to Pharaoh, to….

…show to people the strength of his heart, and his stubbornness. The judgements and law placed upon Pharaoh were completely correct and righteous. They did not ask from him but a “journey of three days”. Pharaoh did not listen to their prayers and their supplications. How much more so would he not have listened to them had they requested to send them out. Without a doubt he would not desire to listen to them.

According to this view, Pharaoh would never have relented to let the Jewish people go out forever. He did not have it in him to relent.

This carries itself out into the Parasha of Beshalach, where Pharaoh realises that this wasn’t a three-day sojourn. The Torah relates:

“It was told to Pharaoh that the people had fled, the hearts of Pharaoh and his people were turned around, and they said: 'What is this that we have done, that we have sent Israel from our service?'”^[1]

It is therefore important to have a different evaluation of the events post the physical exodus from Egypt. The Torah tells us as follows:

G-d led the people towards the desert to the east of Egypt, rather than to the North, which would have led them directly into the land of Israel. He did this for various reasons, amongst them, because travelling to the desert was exactly the direction that Moshe had said they would go. He asked for three days in the desert, where the people would sacrifice at the time when G-d would confirm for them.

On the first day of their travels, the nation arrives at Eilim. So far, the Jewish people are doing exactly as they said they would do: travelling to the desert. However, G-d asks Moshe to travel to the mouth of Chirot in front of Baal Tzafon between Migdal and the red sea.

Note, that at no time had the Bnei Yisrael lost their three days' grace which Pharaoh had given to them. They could hypothetically still have brought sacrifices to G-d, and returned back to Egypt in a few days' time. Furthermore, Pharaoh knew that the Jews were protected by G-d - he had witnessed this through the plagues.

However, the Jewish people were betrayed. The Torah states: “It was told to the king of Egypt that the people had fled”. It was then that he realised that the pieces of the gameboard had shifted.

The three days that Moshe requested was very much part of G-d’s celestial plan. It gave Pharaoh the information that his heart required to finally kill the nation that had plagued and betrayed him. If Moshe had requested for the Jewish people to leave for ever after the 10 plagues, Pharaoh would never have had the courage to refuse him. He would have let them go. This would have prevented the miracle of the red sea splitting, something that G-d wanted, not only to destroy the Egyptians for their evil deeds, but also to entrench the faith that the Jewish people had in both Moshe and Hashem.

Three days was always a subterfuge. It was not the truth, but it revealed the evil machinations of Pharaoh’s heart, for which he and his people paid the ultimate price.

^[1] Exodus 14 5