Shuvoo Newsletter

Issue 10 – March 23, 2006

 

Thoughts on Ancient Times & Current Events by Ashirah Yosefah

 

 

 

RAAH AND THE PESACH LAMB

 

Sheep gather to drink from an ancient well in the Judean desert.

© Ashirah Yosefah Photo

 

 

Purim is now past.  Pesach is fast approaching.  Soon all Israel will be consumed with Pesach cleaning and preparations to ensure every last crumb of chametz (leaven) is routed out and disposed of.  Pesach has been a memorial observance for the Children of Israel since the time of the Exodus.  In recent years, many Christian groups have also taken an interest in Pesach and hold various forms of Passover celebrations and seders of their own, but what is Pesach really all about? 

 

While studying Torah commentaries on Parasha Bo a while back, I came across interesting commentaries on the reason Hashem commanded the Children of Israel to sacrifice a lamb at the time of the final plague He brought against the Egyptians, the plague that climaxed with the miraculous deliverance of Israelites from their 210 years of Egyptian exile.  Hashem had already brought upon the Egyptians a series of plagues that had wrecked havoc with their rivers, crops, livestock, their health and sources of food and livelihood. 

 

The ancient gods were often associated with the forces of nature and worship of the sun and stars.  Hashem orchestrated the forces of nature at His bidding in a direct affront to the plethora of gods worshipped by the Egyptians.

 

"And Hashem said to Moshe: 'Go in to Pharaoh; for I have let his heart and the heart of his servants be unmoved in order to set up these My signs in his midst, so that you may tell in the ears of your son, and your son's son, the succession of acts in which I have revealed Myself upon Mitzrayim, and My signs that I have established among them; that you may recognize that I am Hashem.' "  (Exodus 10:1-2, The Pentateuch, Samson Raphael Hirsch) 

 

From the very onset, each of the plagues directly challenged and proved impotent the various gods the Egyptians revered.  They worshipped the River Nile.  When Moshe went out to speak with Pharaoh, as commanded by Hashem in Exodus 7:15, Pharaoh was performing his morning worship ritual on the banks of the Nile.  The gods of Khnum, Hapi, Nu and Osiris were all associated with the Nile.  Hashem turned the river waters to blood and refuted the assumed powers of these false deities. 

 

The multitude of gods associated with nature worshipped by the Egyptians were many, but there were more than a few direct associations between these gods and the plagues which preceded the Exodus:  Frogs - Hekt; gnats/vermin - Geb; flies - Amon-Ra; cattle disease - Hathor and Apis; boils - Imohept, Serapis and Thoth; hail - Seth, Shu, Nut and Horus; locusts - Isis, Min, Nepri and Thermuthis; and darkness - Horus, Ra, Tem and Shu.  Pharaoh himself was regarded as a god ... the son of the venerable sun.  His patron deity was Osirus, the judge of the dead, who was obviously sleeping on the job the night of the plague which brought about the death of the firstborn of Egypt. 

 

Yet, there was another Egyptian deity associated with that unforgettable night; the night when Hashem struck the firstborn of Egypt and stayed the destroyer from the homes of the Israelites, those who had placed the blood of a lamb on their lintels and doorposts.  What a curious commandment Hashem had given them.  First, He commands them to sanctify the beginning of the month (Exodus 12:2), then to count ten days from the first of Aviv (Nissan) and take a lamb for each household.  They would later slaughter these lambs ‘between the evenings’ on the 14^th of Nissan and apply their blood to their entries to their homes, then roast and eat the lambs.

 

Topics that follow each other in the Torah are usually related in some manner.  Is there a  connection between sanctifying the first of the month and the Pesach sacrifice?

 

Sun worship, and the worship of the stars and heavenly bodies, goes back to the days of Enosh, according to Maimonides (RAMBAM).  In his Mishnah Torah, he discussed the development of sun and star worship in the chapter entitled "Idolatry and Heathenism". He also referred to it in his "Guide to the Perplexed", 3:29.

"1.    In the days of Enosh, the people fell into gross error, and senseless was the counsel of the wise men of that generation.  Enosh himself was among those who committed the error.  Their error was this:  They said that in view of the fact that G-d created the stars and celestial spheres to guide the world, setting them on high and honoring them, and they are His ministering servants, they deserve to be praised, glorified and honored.  It is the will of G-d, Blessed be He, that we glorify and honor anyone He has glorified and honored, just as a king desires that respect be shown those who stand and minister before him, since this is an indirect way of honoring the king himself.  When this notion entered their mind, they began to build temples in honor of the stars and offered sacrifices to them, praising and glorifying them in speech and prostrating themselves before them, in order to win the favor of the Creator, according to their wrong thinking."  (Mishneh Torah, Idolatry and Heathenism, Chapter 1.1, Maimonides)

 

Kli Yakar (R. Shlomo Efraim of Luntchitz, 1550-1619) in his Torah commentary, "Kli Yakar", noted the fact that the Egyptians were strong believers in astrology.  Shprintza Herskovits in her Parasha commentary "Rays of the Sun, Illuminations of the Weekly Parsha", Parsha Bo, pgs. 131-132, writes:

 

"At one point Pharaoh told the Jewish people not to leave Egypt because "See that Raah is before you." (Exodus 10:10).  The commentaries tells us that "Raah" was the name of a certain star which is a symbol of blood, and that Pharaoh was implying that if the Jews left Egypt, they would face death.  (The irony is that "Raah" ended up being a sign of death for Pharaoh's own nation instead of the Jews!)  Among the astrological signs, the lamb is considered to be the "firstborn", and thus the strongest.  As a result, the Egyptians worshipped the lamb as a god.  When Hashem wanted to show that He was the most powerful Being and the ONLY G-d, He specifically told the Jews to take the Egyptian god (i.e. the lamb) as a sacrifice.  As far as why Hashem specifically told the Jews to take the lamb on the tenth of Nissan, it is because Nissan is the month of the lamb.  In addition, the tenth of the month (i.e. the first third of the month) is when the Zodiac sign is the strongest.  Thus the Jews were told to take a lamb to be killed in the month that the lamb reigns supreme and on the day of the month that the lamb is supposed to have the most power (i.e. the tenth.)  This would be the ultimate proof that Hashem has total domination over this so-called "god."  But in order to do this properly, the Jews had to know when the tenth of the month was.  Therefore they were given the Mitzvah of sanctifying the new moon which taught them when the first of the month was, so that they could accurately count to the tenth day on which they had to take the lamb."

 

In most English translations of the Bible, "Raah" is translated as "evil".  The Hebrew word, ra, does mean evil; but "Raah" is also the name of a god worshipped by the ancient Egyptians.  The two words are spelled identically.  Each one of the previous plagues confronted, demoted, and revealed as false one or more of the false deities of ancient Egypt.  Why would the final plague be any different?    

 

When Ya'akov and his family joined Yosef in Egypt, Yosef gave them a curious piece of advice.  It would ensure that Pharaoh allowed them to settle in Goshen and not in the midst of the Egyptians:

 

"If Pharaoh will then call you and say: 'What is your occupation?'  Then you, too, shall say: 'Your servants have been breeders of herds from our youth until now, both we and our fathers,' so that you may dwell in the land of Goshen, for every shepherd is an abomination to Mitrayim." (Genesis 46:33-34, The Pentateuch, Samson Raphael Hirsch)

 

Shepherds were an abomination to the Egyptians because they worshipped the lamb.  The god Raah, a god of blood, was represented by the lamb and based upon a constellation in the heavenlies. When the final plague came, "Raah" was helpless to prevent the death of the firstborn of Egypt.  The firstborn of Israel, on the other hand, were "passed over" by Hashem when they took the symbol of Raah -- the lamb -- and used its blood to paint the doorposts and lintels of their homes.  They then roasted and ate the lamb, in haste, before morning came and they fled to freedom.  This act was commanded by Hashem to be observed as a memorial for all generations of His mighty deliverance of the Children of Israel from the land of Egypt -- a promise He had earlier made to Avraham (Genesis 15:13-16).

 

"You shall keep this word so that it may be a statute for you and your children forever.  And it shall come to pass that when you come to the land which Hashem will give you as He has said, so you shall keep this service.  And it shall come to pass that when your sons will say to you: 'What is this service to you?', you shall say: 'It is a meal of a deliverance performed through a pausing passing-over, consecrated to Hashem, Who paused as He passed over the houses of the sons of Yisrael in Mitzrayim when He struck Mitzrayim mortally and rescued our houses!"  And the people bowed and cast themselves down." (Exodus 12:24-27, The Pentateuch, Samson Raphael Hirsch)

 

The Pesach sacrifice had nothing to do with atonement for sin.  It was a direct affront to an Egyptian deity, and it commemorates a mighty deliverance ... the prophesied rescue and release of the Children of Israel from exile and slavery in the land of Egypt.  The Pesach lamb was instituted as a memorial meal, an eternal remembrance of the mighty acts of the G-d of Israel when He displayed His power and His might before Pharaoh and the Egyptians, demonstrating clearly that He alone is the One True G-d of the Universe.  Atonement for sin, freely given by Hashem in response to true repentance (teshuvah), is commemorated by the Yom Kippur sacrifice of a bull and a goat (Leviticus 16).  A lamb is not a goat.

 

For nearly 2000 years, the Christian church has wrongly associated Pesach (Passover) with their celebration of Easter (Ishtar ... an Egyptian fertility goddess).  They have connected Pesach with atonement for sin ... which the Torah simply does not do.  They herald one of the godhead they worship as "the lamb of G-d", the "Passover lamb".  Constantine, the father of the Christian church, was an avid sun worshipper who continued to worship the sun despite his professed conversion to Christianity.  Sun worship was not monotheistic.  It also involved worship of the constellations and the false deities associated with them since ancient times, including the lamb god, Raah.  Something to think about.