Parshat Beshalach Rabbi Chaim Brovender

"Then Moshe and the children of Yisrael sang this song to Hashem…." (15: 1).

The response of the people, led by their leader Moshe to the great miracle of splitting the sea, was a song of thanks and praise. All this seems reasonable and understandable.

However Rashi saw a difficulty.

In Hebrew the verb "to sing" is rendered “yashir”. The prefix yod often indicates that the verb is to be understood as a future form (so Rashi). That would indicate that the singing is to be done in the future. Since, obviously, singing was taking place at that very moment, it is not clear why this form of the verb was used by the Torah. Rashi explains that the future tense refers to the thinking of Moshe when he saw the miracle and should be understood as follows: "When Moshe saw the miracle, it occurred to him that the proper response would be to sing a great song". The notion of the "future" is preserved, but the verse does not refer to singing in the future but to the thought as it originally occurred to Moshe that singing would be the proper response.

Rashi summarizes his position at the end of a long comment: "We have learned that the “yod” at the beginning of a verb may serve to indicate intent, and does not always indicate a specific action in the future". Rashi formulates a grammatical rule. He also adduces other examples (cf. Rashi at length) and maintains that the rule solves similar problems in those verses.

However, the dilemma was not entirely resolved. Assuming that the rule that Rashi discovered is in fact accurate, why did the Torah find it necessary to confuse us on this matter? Why didn't the Torah simply say that "they sang (together) the great song?” Why does the Torah have to tell us that Moshe thought about the response, and then acted according to his decision?

This difficulty prompts Rashi to add a second comment which he describes as medrash, a medrashic interpretation.

The future form of the verb implies that in the future the great song will be sung. Rashi specifically mentions the time as being the era of the resurrection of the dead. The medrashic rendition offers the meaning of the verb is as we thought it might be when we first encountered the verse. It seems to be a future form and according to the medrash it is in fact, referring to the future.

I imagine that Rashi felt that both interpretations were true simultaneously. Clearly the verse refers to the singing that was going on at that very time and not any future singing. This demands that we adjust our understanding of the verbal form (Rashi is willing to do this). On the other hand, there is a hidden meaning in the form which follows its more obvious meaning. That meaning suggests that the song sung after kriat Yam Suf remains a paradigm for song in all generations. The medrash adds that it anticipates the great song that will be sung at the time of the resurrection of the dead.

Clearly, peshat is not always simple.

Gut shabbos,
Chaim Brovender

Return to Yeshivat Hamivtar - Orot Lev