The Sea Saw

Pesah Yizkor 5777 / 18 April 2017

I’m still thinking about קריעת ים סוף, the splitting of the Red Sea, which we read yesterday. The climax of the Exodus, it’s a vivid image — miraculous and mysterious — echoed in the verses we sang earlier this morning during Hallel.

One of the delightful features of scripture is its habit of doubling back on itself, one text expanding upon, reinforcing, or challenging another. In Psalm 114 — בצאת ישראל — one verse makes an off-hand allusion to קריעת ים סוף, and raises an intriguing question about the story. The Torah’s account describes Moses holding his staff over the sea and God blowing an “east wind” — associated with dry sandstorms that would blow across from the Arabian peninsula — through the night to carve a path through the sea.^[1] In the third verse of בצאת ישראל, however, we sing הַיָּם רָאָה וַיָּנֹס, “The sea saw and fled.”^[2] Until now we haven’t heard about seeing anything. Where does this come from, and what does it mean for our understanding of the story?

Our Sages of Blessed Memory were drawn to the very same question. In the Midrash, they ask: what did the sea see, that prompted it to flee? They offer myriad answers, each beautiful in its own right. Today I am drawn to one in particular: Shimon, a man from Kitron, says that the sea saw the Israelites carrying a coffin containing Joseph’s bones; and because Joseph had fled temptation with Potiphar’s wife, the waters were compelled to flee before his holy remains.^[3]

If you’re asking yourself what Joseph’s bones have to do with anything in the Exodus, don’t worry. They’re mentioned just once in the Torah. In the midst of the Israelites’ escape, the Torah tells us:

 וַיִּקַּח מֹשֶׁה אֶת־עַצְמוֹת יוֹסֵף עִמּוֹ כִּי הַשְׁבֵּעַ הִשְׁבִּיעַ אֶת־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר פָּקֹד יִפְקֹד אֱלֹהִים אֶתְכֶם וְהַֽעֲלִיתֶם אֶת־עַצְמֹתַי מִזֶּה אִתְּכֶֽם.

Here the story refers us back to the final verses of Genesis, where Joseph, on his deathbed, asks his brothers to swear this very oath: that one day, when God takes them back to their ancestral land, they will bring his remains with them. Then the Torah tells us, וַיָּמָת יוֹסֵף… וַיַּֽחַנְטוּ אֹתוֹ וַיִּישֶׂם בָּֽאָרוֹן בְּמִצְרָֽיִם, “Then Joseph died… and they mummified him and put him in a coffin in Egypt.”^[5] Centuries later, as Joseph’s words come to fruition, Moses delivers on the promise and brings Joseph’s bones along on the Exodus — but it wasn’t easy.

Again, the Midrash fleshes out the scant details offered by the Torah.^[6] On the night of the Exodus, with Egypt in chaos over the slaying of the first-born and the Israelites hurriedly preparing to leave, Moses runs throughout the land in a frantic search for Joseph’s resting place. He looks high and low but can find no trace. Just before dawn, completely worn out, he encounters a woman who seems impossibly old, Serah bat Asher, Joseph’s niece. Seeing his exhaustion, Serah asks Moses to explain and he recounts his agonized and ultimately futile search for Joseph’s burial site. Taking his hand, Serah says, “Come with me and I will show you where he lies.”

She took Moses down to the Nile, to a certain spot, and told him: “In this place, Pharaoh’s magicians made a lead coffin weighing five hundred talents” — 28,000 pounds — “and cast it into the river; for they had told Pharaoh, ‘If you wish to ensure that this people can never leave your land, as long as they can not find Joseph’s bones, they can not leave.’”

Walking down to the water’s edge, Moses took a gold tablet and inscribed the divine name upon it. He cast the tablet into the water and cried out, “Joseph, Joseph! The time has come for God to fulfill God’s promise to redeem us; if you will come up now, we will fulfill our promise to you, but if not let us be absolved of responsibility forever more!” With that, the leaden casket rose from the depths as if it were made of wood. Moses lifted it onto his shoulder and carried it back to the Israelites, and it traveled with their camp throughout their journeys.

A dramatic story, to be sure, with only one problem: why go through so much trouble to bury Joseph in the land of Israel, when just before his death the twelve brothers had accompanied their father Jacob’s body back to Canaan for burial? If it was so important to Joseph that he be buried in Israel, why not just ask for that? Why the complications of hanging around Egypt and the attendant headache of recovering his body before leaving?

I don’t think burial in Israel was the point. In asking his brothers to swear that they would bring him back to Israel when they left, he also made them swear to keep his bones in Egypt until then. Rather than seeking to ensure his burial in the land of Israel, Joseph actually wanted to prevent his brothers from repatriating his remains until all of the Israelites left Egypt. In a sense, Joseph left his body as collateral on the promise of God’s eventual redemption, a physical guarantee of his hope for the future.

The verse describing Moses’ taking the bones draws an unusually tight connection back to the original story — quoting the oath word for word. In going to such great lengths in search of Joseph’s remains, Moses demonstrates his fidelity to family, to history, to inherited obligations. His search, the Israelites’ carrying Joseph’s coffin with them throughout the wilderness, serves to affirm that even as they launch a new nation, they do so in full awareness of their past and their heritage.

What does it mean that the sea split when it saw Joseph’s bones? His bones represent the intersection of fidelity to the past — as demonstrated by Moses’ fulfillment of the oath — with hope for the future, symbolized in Joseph’s insistence on remaining with his people to the end. The story wants us to understand that we will find miracles wherever we blend these two foundational commitments, to those who have gone before us and those who have yet to come. Our history, whether national, familial, or personal, is an heirloom passed down for us to hold in trust for a future generation. The future is a seed that we must nurture and cultivate, holding out hope — just as Joseph did — that the generations to come might enjoy whatever redemption we have not yet attained.

As we summon the memory of our loved ones, take a moment to think for yourself: for whose values do you feel fidelity and attachment? Who, among those we call to mind this morning, held onto hope for the future and inspired that hope in us? Whose memory continues to evoke these feelings in us? We find miracles, redemption, deliverance, when we bring these threads together.

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