When You Will have Been Long in the Land
Now let us turn to explain our problems with this parshah. The beginning of this Parshah speaks about the terrible exile, up until this final, bitter exile, as we read on Tishah B’av, When you beget children and grandchildren and you will have been long in the land... which can be understood to mean that after the many years of this bitter exile, the Jewish people, who will have been long in the land and become used to this terrible exile, have lost all the life and enthusiasm in Torah and mitzvos. To counter this, the Torah continued, a few pesukim later, to remind us of the greatness of the Jewish people, starting from the great miracle of receiving the Torah – For inquire now regarding the early days that preceded you, from the day when Hashem created man on the earth, and from one end of the heavens to the other end of heaven: Has there been anything like this great thing or has anything like it been heard? Has a people heard the voice of God speaking from the midst of the fire as you have heard, and survived?
With Signs and With Wonders and With Wonders
Then it goes back to the beginning of becoming a people, leaving Egypt, which has been explained above as an individual connection to Hashem, and the group miracle of the sea, putting them together, Or has any god ever performed miracles to come to take for himself a nation from amidst a nation, with challenges, with signs, and with wonders, and with war, and with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, and with greatly awesome deeds, such as everything that Hashem, your God, did for you in Egypt before your eyes? In other words, it starts and ends with the miracles of leaving Egypt; with war, representing the sea, in the middle. In this way, the Torah alludes to Hashems kindness in dealing with us both on the group level and on the individual level, each according to the needs of each time.
For Hashem Fought for Them in Egypt
Thus, Rashi explained that war referred to the miracles of splitting the sea, although in its place, Rashi explained that it could refer both to the Egyptians at the sea, as well as the Egyptians back in Egypt. Here he understood the possuk as wanting to refer to the individual as well as to the group, so he spoke here of the war as referring just to the group, with the rest of the possuk referring to the individual.
So May Hashem Do to All Enemies Whom You Fear
We now turn to next weeks parshah, where war is omitted. The possuk there is just a continuation of the earlier pesukim: Perhaps you will say in your heart, “These nations are more numerous than I, how will I be able to drive them out?” Do not fear them! You shall remember what Hashem, Your God, did to Paroh and to all of Egypt. The pesukim there...
