“And it was at the time that Paroah drove out the Nation (from Mitzrayim), and Hashem did not take them through the land of the Pelishtim because it is close, because Hashem said to H.mself maybe the nation will have regret (that they left Mitzrayim) when they see a war and they will return to Mitzrayim.” (Shemos 13/17)
Zera Shimshon asks two questions. The first question is, why does the Torah refer to the time of the Exodus as "the time that Paroah drove the people out"? This implies that Paroah was responsible for the Exodus and not Hashem. It would seem more appropriate to refer to the time of the Exodus as "at the time that Hashem took the people out...", which is the way that Balak refers to the Exodus when he said, "Hashem (Kail) took them out of Mitzrayim...".
The second question is; there are two reasons written in the possuk why Hashem did not take Bnei Yisroel through the land of Pelishtim. One is because the land of the Pelishtim is close to Mitzrayim, and the second reason is that when Bnei Yisroel see a war there is concern that they will return to Mitzrayim. Simply understood, it seems like both of these reasons are really two parts of the same reason; if they will be near to Mitzrayim and they see war they will run back to Mitzrayim since it is not too far away. However, from the fact that each of these reasons is prefaced by the word "because" implies that they are two different reasons. Zera Shimshon asks, what are these two reasons?
Zera Shimshon answers these two questions in light of what is written in Parshas Shemos (Shemos 2/23), "And Bnei Yisroel groaned under the bondage and cried out..." Zera Shimshon explains that Bnei Yisroel did not just daven to Hashem to have mercy on them without a reason; rather, they came to Hashem with a strong claim. Bnei Yisroel argued that even though Hashem decreed at Bris Bein HaBessarim that they would be in bondage for four hundred years the suffering Bnei Yisroel experienced was so horrific that the two hundred and ten years they were slaves should be counted as the whole four hundred years!
The next possuk (Shemos 2/24), "And Hashem heard their crying and Elokim remembered the covenant.." and from possuk 3/9-10, "And now Bnei Yisroel's crying came before Me (Hashem)... and take My People, Bnei Yisroel out of Mitzrayim" gives the impression that Hashem accepted Bnei Yisroel's argument. However, it really is not so simple. If Hashem would have counted the monstrous (for lack of a better word) suffering of the bondage as a completion of the four hundred years there would be no need for all the plagues and there would be no need to ask Paraoh's permission to leave. Bnei Yisroel could have just got up and left. Since this did not happen, it appears that Hashem did NOT accept Bnei Yisroel's claim.
The reason Hashem did not accept this argument was that Hashem's Attribute of Justice argued that the four hundred years of bondage mentioned at the Bris Bain HaBessarim means 365x400 days without any tricks and peshtalach.
We have to understand, though, how then did Hashem's Attribute of Justice agree that Bnei Yisroel leave after only two hundred and ten years of bondage and not the full four hundred?
The answer is that the decree at Bris Bain HaBessarim was that Bnei Yisroel would suffer "normal" bondage. The Mitzriyim, however, dealt with Bnei Yisroel much more cruelly and inhuman than that. Therefore, even Hashem's Attribute of Justice agreed that Bnei Yisroel did not have to stay in Mitzrayim any longer.
However, since Bnei Yisroel did not suffer the full four hundred years of bondage they could not just get up and leave, since they were still in the middle of the years of bondage. Rather Hashem forced Paroah to let them leave.
According to this, the reason the Torah refers to the time of our Exodus from Mitzrayim as "And it was at the time that PARAOH drove out the people..." is not to say that Hashem did not redeem Bnei Yisroel, but rather to stress the fact that Bnei Yisroel could not leave by themselves since they still did not complete the whole four hundred years.
In light of the above, the phrase "it was close" does not mean that Bnei Yisroel were close to Mitzrayim physically, in distance, but it means that they left Mitzrayim "close" to the time that they were meant to leave, and they did not stay in Mitzrayim the full time, and this phrase is explaining why Paroah sent them out and they did not go out on their own.
The last phrase in the possuk, "because Hashem said to H.mself maybe the nation will have regret (that they left Mitzrayim) when they see a war and they will return to Mitzrayim." is coming to explain something different.
There is another ramification that Bnei Yisroel left Mitzrayim early, that even though they were freed from the bondage of Mitzrayim, Bnei Yisroel still have to suffer other exiles to complete the final one hundred and ninety years. Therefore there was a concern that Bnei Yisroel would return to Mitzrayim to complete the remaining one hundred and ninety years of bondage and suffering instead of finishing it up somewhere else. Hashem therefore commanded Bnei Yisroel to go in a winding route, through the land of the Plishtim, and not straight into Eretz Yisroel to prevent them from doing this.
