Cyberdov

Tamar shared the following observation with me. When you read the story of the beginning of the oppression in Egypt, do you get a vague feeling of deja vu? Perhaps because you have heard this story before, with different characters - Avraham, Sarah, and Pharoah.

Consider the following parallels:

1. Avraham says to Sarah: they will kill me, and keep you alive (Bereisheet 12:12). Pharoah says to the midwives: If it is a boy, kill him, if it is a girl, she may live (Shemot 1:16)
2. Pharoah rewards Avraham (11:16); God rewards the midwives (1:20)
3. God strikes Pharaoh with great plagues (11:17) - parallel to the 10 plagues in Shemot
4. Pharoah ’sends away’ (’vayishlach oto’) Avraham et al (1:20), echoing Shemot (’Beshalach’)

The parallels in theme and language are striking. What are we to make of this? Other than a general sense of ‘Maaseh Avot Siman Lebanim’ and foreshadowing, I suggest that just as Avraham comes off looking not so good for selling Sarah out - could there be a hint of such an idea in Shemot, that God doesn’t look so good to us for having sold us into slavery in the first place? Some food for thought.
And now for blog readers only - an addendum with the same theme (of literary parallels), from the ‘DovBear‘ blog:

Everyone and his uncle knows Rashi’s explanation for the six-fold language used here:וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל, פָּרוּ וַיִּשְׁרְצוּ וַיִּרְבּוּ וַיַּעַצְמוּ–בִּמְאֹד מְאֹד; וַתִּמָּלֵא הָאָרֶץ, אֹתָם
And the sons of Israel were fruitful, and swarmed and multiplied, and grew very vast; and the land was filled with them.

He says, briefly, that this means to tell us Jewish children were born six at a time. Nice, and based on the midrash, but here’s something else, something I like a little better:

The language the Torah uses here appears to be a concious echo of the language used to describe the first 6 days of creation. On day 5, the waters “swarm with swarms of living creatures.” Later that day, God says to the animals: ‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.” On day 6, His blessing to the first couple is “‘Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth”

Fruitful. Multiply. Swarm. Fill the earth. The only term missing from the Genesis story is “grow very vast” and that is echoed in the promise God gave to Abraham (Gen 18:18) : “Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation” The word here for “great” is the word used in Shemos for vast: עָצוּם
..
Why is this the language used? Perhaps because the Torah wishes to tell us that the promise of creation is being fulfilled through these Israelites. Perhaps it’s away of linking the stories, of showing us that the intention of creation, and the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham is soon to be realized through this nation.

Addendum from cyberdov: regarding ‘Atzum’, the first use of a word with this root is the first instance of procreation - ‘etzem me-atzamai’, referring to the creation of Eve from Adam’s rib (Bereisheet 2:23).

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