The mitzvah of faith is the very first mitzvah with which Hashem Yisbarach commanded us at the exalted Revelation at Sinai, in the first utterance of the Aseres HaDibros. As the Rambam zt”l writes in Sefer HaMitzvos, in the first commandment of the count of the Taryag mitzvos, and these are his precise words: “The first mitzvah is the command to believe in Godliness. That is, that we believe that there exists a Cause and a Reason, Who brings into existence all that exists, and this is His statement, may He be blessed: I am Hashem your God.”
It is not without reason that the mitzvah of emunah, faith, is considered the first of all the mitzvos, even though several mitzvos preceded it historically, such as the mitzvah to bear offspring, milah, gid ha’nasheh [the forbidden displaced sinew], kiddush ha’chodesh [sanctifying the new month], and the like. Rather, this commandment—the mitzvah of emunah—contains within it the foundation and root of all the mitzvos of the Torah. For in the absence of faith, it is impossible to fulfill any mitzvah of the Torah, when one’s heart questions the very existence of the One Who commanded the mitzvah, chas veshalom. Therefore, the mitzvah of emunah is the most essential and fundamental of all the mitzvos. Indeed, all the mitzvos of the Torah are included within it, as David Hamelech a”h alluded in the pasuk (Tehillim 119:86), כָּל מִצְוֹתֶיךָ אֱמוּנָה - All Your commandments are faith, to indicate that all the mitzvos are encompassed within the commandment of faith (Maharsha, Chiddushei Aggados, Makkos 24a, end of s.v. Ve’amar she’ba).
For this reason, when the prophet Chavakuk came and saw a need to establish the entire Torah upon a single foundation, he based it upon this very mitzvah, as stated at the end of the Gemara Makkos (24a), “Chavakuk came and established them upon one, as it is stated (Chavakuk 2:4), And the righteous person shall live by his faith.”
Now, the wording of the pasuk —I am Hashem your God, Who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage—appears to link the very foundation of the mitzvah of emunah to the exodus from Mitzrayim. This comes to teach us that the more one merits a greater “exodus from Mitzrayim, from the house of bondage,” the more one can merit pure and genuine faith; for faith in Hashem is bound up with faith in the exodus from Mitzrayim.
It is well known from the holy sefarim that just as there exists, in the collective sense, an exodus from Mitzrayim for Klal Yisrael, so too, on the individual level, each person has his own personal “Exodus from Mitzrayim”—from all the forces of the yetzer hara and the sitra achra that cling to his soul and hold it imprisoned within their straits. As the pasuk teaches us: Who brought you out of the land of Egypt. It is impossible to remain within “Mitzrayim”—that is, within material and physical constraints and limitations—and at the same time to be a believer in Hashem.
Therefore, the pasuk attaches the root of the commandment of faith to the departure from evil and the abandonment of impurity. Through meriting to emerge from denial and to be freed from the, ‘לֹא יָדַעְתִּי אֶת ה - I do not know Hashem (Shemos 5:2) that Pharaoh established—the hard shell of Mitzrayim—one thereby receives, in its fullness, faith in, I am Hashem your God. For these two are absolute opposites.
In this manner, a Jewish person can properly fulfill the mitzvah of emunah, as we were commanded in this parashah, and as we heard from the mouth of the Almighty at Sinai: I am Hashem your God.
