A Teacher Teaching Shemot - Part II

(Continued From Eight Posts Before) (And also this earlier post)

Why was Paroh afraid of the Jews leaving his land, if you don't like someone don't you want them to go away? (Don't answer that he didn't want to lose his slaves, because they weren't his slaves at this point. That comes later.) Rashi says two words here - "al korcheinu," against our will. When you're forced to do something, even if it's something you want, you're not happy about it; it's a control issue. Rashi offers a drash following this pshat: Paroh was speaking euphemistically, really meaning to say that he feared the the Jews would force the Egyptians to leave their own land.

The Ramban says a straightforward pshat - that Paroh feared that the Jews would win a war against them and then leave - with all of the Egyptians' stuff! He didn't mind them going but he minded seeing his stuff lost and gone forever. It's interesting that this is what actually happens in the end, and it might not have happened had Paroh not enslaved the Jews to try to prevent this from happening! Two lessons here, from different angles. On the one hand, "Rabot machshavot beleiv ish ve'atzat Hashem hi takum," - the idea that you can't fight against G-d's plan and if you try to, then the way you attempt to stop the plan ends up being the way that the plan gets carried out. From another angle you can argue psychologically that we cause to happen those things that we fear most. Perhaps we do this just to right - even at our own expense. More likely, we do this because we so fear that this thing might happen, that we'd rather it happen sooner and not later, and so we sometimes bring upon ourselves bad things that we fear.

Rav Hirsch says that when Paroh said that he feared that the Jews would leave the land he meant the land of Goshen. He feared that they were growing and would spread out throughout the land of Egypt. Do you think that's a stretch from the words? Do you like it? Both?