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There is a recurring theme in this week’s Parsha that deserves our attention as it brings together many ideas and sheds light on the entire Exodus. The theme is gratitude and a lack thereof. All of the success in the Parsha came from proper gratitude and all of the failures came from a lack of appreciation.

It always bothered me why the Sefer is called, “Shemos, Names.” It is true that Chazal call the Five Books by descriptive names such as “Sefer HaGeula, Exodus,” but the Early Rishonim already refer to the second Book as “Shemos.” What is this all about?

A baby was born and named ‘Tuvia’; when he was saved from the water by Basya (the daughter of Pharaoh), he was renamed ‘Moshe’. Out of gratitude, this was the name that stuck. In lieu of the water that saved Moshe’s basket as a child, he was not able to bring the Plague of Blood upon the water. The same held true with bringing Frogs. The same for Lice, since in this week’s Parsha Moshe killed the Egyptian that was beating a Jew and hid him in the sand, thus he was not allowed to hit the sand.

When the daughters of Yisro were saved by Moshe from the shepherds that tried to kill them they told their father that an Egyptian man saved them. This was to give gratitude to the fact that Moshe was running away from Egypt and thus came to their city of residence and was present to save them! Moshe promised to stay with Yisro out of gratitude for Yisro opening his home to him. Chazal (Tanchuma) learn from this that if someone opens his home for you, you owe him a lifetime of appreciation.

And now for the Evil: Pharaoh agreed to enslave the Jews because he “didn’t remember all that Yosef did for Egypt (Shemos 1:8)” This decision ultimately left his kingdom destroyed. Chazal learn from this: A person (Pharaoh) who denies the good that a human performed for him (Yosef) will come to deny the kindness of Hashem as well (Pharaoh asked Moshe, “Mi Hashem, who is Hashem?”). Dasan and Aviram were fighting and when Moshe reprimanded them, they turned him in to the government for killing the Egyptian. How did Dasan know? Because he was the Jew who was assaulted by the Egyptian and Moshe had saved his life! Dasan and Aviram had no gratitude and became the villains throughout the Chumash.

Hashem took us out of Egypt to show us that He loves us and cares for us. We can look around and see all of the great things that Hashem does for us and our hearts will fill with gratitude. Shemos means names. This signifies the fact that Hashem has a personal interest in each and every one of us individually. He knows our personal names and watches over us. For this we are forever grateful!

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Categories: Parshas Shemos Tags: HaKaras HaTov