וַיְהִי בַיָּמִים הָרַבִּים הָהֵם וַיָּמָת מֶלֶךְ מִצְרַיִם וַיֵּאָנְחוּ בְנֵי־יִשְׂרָאֵל מִן־הָעֲבֹדָה וַיִּזְעָקוּ וַתַּעַל שַׁוְעָתָם אֶל־הָאֱלֹקִים מִן־הָעֲבֹדָה: וַיִּשְׁמַע אֱלֹקִים אֶת נַאֲקָתָם וַיִּזְכֹּר אֱלֹקִים אֶת בְּרִיתוֹ אֶת אַבְרָהָם אֶת יִצְחָק וְאֶת יַעֲקֹב: (ב:כג-כד)
And it happened during those many days, that the king of Egypt died, and the Children of Israel groaned because of the work and they cried out. Their outcry because of the work went up to G-d. G-d heard their moaning, and G-d remembered His covenant with Avraham, with Yitzchak, and with Yaakov. (2:23-24)
In the sefer Baal Shem Tov al HaTorah (Parashat Noach, section 153), it is written as follows: “A wise and discerning person should take to heart and understand that the pain a person experiences is the pain of the Shechinah, as it is stated in Sanhedrin (46a): ‘My head hurts, etc.’ One should pray for the pain of the Shechinah, and as a result, the person’s own pain will pass.”
These ideas are further elaborated in the holy sefer Noam Elimelech at the end of this parashah (5:23): “Behold, we are in this bitter exile, and in our suffering, it is the Shechinah that suffers, as the Shechinah was exiled with us. Therefore, we should not grieve or lament over our own hardships but rather over the exile of the Shechinah. We should not focus at all on our own troubles but only on the pain and exile of the Shechinah. If our aim and pain were solely for the pain of the Shechinah and not for our own suffering, we would certainly be redeemed immediately. However, because we are flesh and blood, it is impossible for us to endure our own pain and suffering entirely. As a result, the days of this bitter exile have been prolonged due to our many sins, as we mix our pain with the pain of the Shechinah and focus on our own suffering. If only there were one true tzaddik of this nature, he would save the entire world from exile.”
From their holy words, it is explained that all of a person’s intentions in his service and prayers should be solely for the sake of rectifying the holy Shechinah and not for his own sake at all. If a person prays for his own needs, it is not guaranteed that the Creator will fulfill his request. However, if his request is for the sake of the pain of the holy Shechinah, his request will be accepted. Moreover, it is precisely for such prayers that the Creator, Yisbarach eagerly waits.
Nonetheless, a person must truly direct his heart toward the pain of the Shechinah. This idea is hinted at in the pasuk, for once the text already states, ‘And the children of Israel sighed because of the work’, we already understand that when it says ‘and their cry ascended to G-d’, it was ‘because of the work’. Why then does the pasuk need to elaborate further by adding these words again?
To explain this pasuk, I will first introduce a pasuk from Tehillim (22:6) and the words of our chachamim (Midrash Tehillim) regarding this pasuk. It is written: וְנִמְלָטוּ, בְּךָ בָּטְחוּזָעֲקוּאֵ לֶיךָ וְלֹא בֹשׁוּ – To You they cried and were saved; in You they trusted and were not shamed. This pasuk speaks about the exile from Egypt, as the Midrash states: “In You, our ancestors trusted—in Egypt—they trusted, and You saved them from Pharaoh. To You, they cried, as it is said, ‘And the children of Israel sighed because of the work, and they cried out’ (Shemos 2:23). And they were saved, as it is written, ‘And Hashem saved them on that day’ (14:30). And why did this happen? Because ‘in You they trusted and were not shamed.’”
Now that we know from the words of Chazal that this pasuk speaks about the redemption from Egypt, we must analyze the specific wording, “To You they cried.” This implies that it was specifically their cry that caused the salvation and not the sighing that preceded it. The reason for this is that their cry was directed “to You”, meaning it was on behalf of the pain of Your Shechinah.
The well-known question arises: why did our forefathers in Egypt not cry out to Hashem until the moment when the king of Egypt became afflicted with leprosy (tzaraas)? Were they enjoying themselves in Egypt throughout all the years of enslavement? From the very beginning of their bondage, Pharaoh issued a decree likening the Israelites to animals, treating them as though they were abandoned in a swamp of ownerless property, free to be used at the whim of the Egyptians. They were subjected to grueling forced labor, their children were killed in cruel ways, thrown into the Nile immediately after birth, or embedded in the walls of buildings. Were the Israelites not worthy of crying out before that moment?
Indeed, we can say that the Israelites were worthy of praying about their enslavement and unbearable suffering throughout the years of exile. However, knowing their degraded state after sinking into the impurity of Egypt, they were deeply ashamed to lift their eyes to Hashem. They believed themselves unworthy of redemption and thought they had no choice but to resign themselves to their anguish. But when Pharaoh exceeded all bounds of cruelty and began slaughtering their children merely to bathe in their blood, they could no longer bear their suffering. Up until that point, all the Egyptians’ actions against the Israelites stemmed from hatred and fear of them. The Egyptians’ strategy was to humiliate the Israelites so that they would internalize their own degradation and not entertain any thought of rising up or taking control over Egypt. Even the Israelites themselves understood the Egyptians’ intent, and they believed that by accepting their humiliation willingly, they were acknowledging their own lowliness. In turn, they thought this would pacify the Egyptians and prevent their annihilation.
However, when they saw that even this strategy failed to satisfy that wicked man and that he continued to add wickedness upon wickedness, slaughtering multitudes of children to bathe in their blood, they realized his cruelty was not motivated by fear but by sheer malice. This led to the invention of the idea that their blood contained a “raw material” beneficial for curing leprosy, reducing them to the status of wild beasts for whom there was no moral reason to refrain from slaughtering, Rachmana litzlan. This was something the Israelites could no longer endure. As a sign of their unbearable suffering, they sighed deeply. However, they still did not dare to pray, for who better than they knew their spiritually degraded state? At that time, they were already immersed in the forty-nine gates of impurity and understood well that their enslavement was justly decreed by their Creator. Knowing this, they found no justification to open their mouths in prayer before Him. But upon further reflection, they concluded that, while they were indeed unworthy to pray for their personal suffering, there was no reason why they should not pray for the suffering of the Shechinah, which was in pain because of their plight. It was then that they began to cry out to Hashem, and this prayer was accepted. Their cries stirred the heavens to hasten their redemption.
These ideas are precisely reflected in the pesukim. Note that the text separates the term “sighing” from the term “crying out” and does not say, “And the children of Israel sighed and cried out because of the work.” This is because the sighing and the crying out did not stem from the same intent. The sighing was over their personal suffering, as implied by the pasuk: “And the children of Israel sighed because of the work.” Only afterward did they arrive at the conclusion that they needed to fulfill “and they cried out”, which was directed solely for the sake of Hashem.
It was specifically this cry that caused their salvation, as hinted at in the aforementioned pasuk in Tehillim: “To You they cried out.” Indeed, the pasuk testifies that this was the reason for their salvation: “And their cry ascended to G-d.” That is, the cause of their redemption was their cry over the suffering of the Shechinah. This prayer had a great virtue compared to their earlier sighing “from the work”, which stemmed only from their personal anguish over their labor. In contrast, this cry was for the sake of Hashem. Therefore, “G-d heard their groaning,” saw their suffering, and was stirred to redeem them to remove the pain of His Shechinah.
