אז ישיר משה ובני ישראל את השירה הזאת לד' ויאמרו לאמר אשירה לד' כי גאה גאה סוס רכבו רמה בים
“Then Moshe and Bnei Yisroel sang this song to Hashem saying, ‘Great and Mighty is Hashem, for he threw the horses together with their riders into the sea’”. (Shemos 15:1)
After witnessing the drowning of their Egyptian pursuers in the Yam Suf, the Jewish people were inspired to express their gratitude to Hashem through song. In the first pasuk in this song, they invoked the fact that Hashem threw the Egyptian horses into the sea together with their riders. Rashi explains that if a horse and its rider fall into a body of water, the rider will ordinarily fall off the horse, but in this case, Hashem kept them connected as the water lifted them up and pulled them down. Since Hashem does not perform miracles needlessly, what was His intention in doing so?
In Parshas Vayeishev (Bereishis 39:10), the Torah records that Yosef did not listen to Potiphar’s wife as she tried to persuade him: לשכב אצלה להיות עמה - to lie with her and to be with her. Rashi writes that this seemingly repetitive expression refers to two different periods in which Yosef rejected her, explaining that when a person sins and does not do teshuvah, that transgression remains with him for eternity. The Torah alludes to this by stating that if Yosef succumbed to her advances, he would be stuck with her forever – even in the World to Come.
Divrei Torah for the Shabbos Table
In this world, a person can sin in private, but when he comes to the next world, his misdeeds will be bound to him for all to see. As a symbolic depiction of this teaching, Rav Yisroel Reisman suggests that the Egyptians, who had the gall to chase the fleeing Jews into the Yam Suf even after everything they had witnessed throughout the previous year, were joined to their horses even as the water tossed them up and down.
Rav Elchonon Wasserman was known for his stern demeanor, and he rarely smiled or laughed. One of the rare episodes that elicited a smile from him was a mashal [parable] he heard to illustrate this idea. A simple farmer had to travel to a big city for a medical procedure. He was told that the fastest way to get there was by train, a mode of transportation completely unfamiliar to him. The farmer scraped together the money to buy a third-class ticket and set off on his journey.
He found his accommodations hot and uncomfortable, but he had little recourse. At one point along the way, the train entered a long tunnel. Assuming that the rest of the trip would pass in darkness, the farmer decided to cool off by removing his clothes. Much to his chagrin, just as he was starting to get comfortable and enjoying the ride, the train emerged from the other end of the tunnel.
This mashal is an analogy for our time in this world, where many people think they can get away with discreetly removing their “spiritual clothing” and disregarding any laws they find inconvenient or challenging, relying on the fact that nobody will be any the wiser. Chazal describe this world (Avos 4:16) as a tunnel-like antechamber leading to the World to Come. When the time inevitably comes to exit this tunnel into the pure brightness of the World of Truth, they will be pierced to the core by intense shame.
Awareness of this concept can be a powerful tool in our lifelong battle against the yetzer horah. We may occasionally feel tempted to give in to its allures in private, confident that nobody will ever know what we have done. At these times, we should ask ourselves whether this is an act to which we want to be eternally linked in Olam Haba for all to see. (R’ Ozer Alport)
