Their Single Merit

Shemos: 14:3: And Pharaoh will say to the Children of Israel, ‘they are confused in the land, the desert has closed them in’.
Rashi, Shemos: 14:3, Dh: “[this should be read as] about the Children of Israel”.
Targum Yonasan, Shemos, 14:3: “And Pharaoh will say to Datan and Aviram ‘they are confused in the land, the desert has closed them in’.

In this week’s Torah portion, after the Jewish people have left Egypt, God warns Moshe that Pharaoh will say that they are lost in the desert. The language used in the verse to describe Pharaoh’s view is “v’amar Pharaoh l’Bnei Yisrael”. This literally means that Pharaoh will speak “to” the Children of Israel. However, this reading is difficult as the Jews had already left Egypt. Accordingly, Rashi explains that on this occasion we have to translate the prefix as meaning that Pharaoh spoke about the Jewish people to the Egypt, rather than to the Jewish people.

However, the Targum Yonatan takes a totally different approach. He translates the prefix literally to mean “to” and he writes that the Jewish people referred to in this verse are none other than Datan and Aviram, the two seditious Jews who were constantly causing problems for Moshe and questioning his leadership. The Maharil Diskin¹ elaborates that Datan and Aviram did not want to leave Egypt due to their hatred of Moshe. Therefore, they remained behind and Pharaoh told them about the situation of the rest of the Jewish people. Indeed, they joined Pharaoh in his pursuit of the Jewish people but when they saw the miracle of the splitting of the sea they had a temporary feeling of regret, rejoined the nation and crossed the sea with them.

However, this gives rise to a very difficult question. The Sages teach that during the Plague of Darkness, four fifths of the Jewish people died because they had given up on the redemption and they did not want to leave Egypt. Why, then, were Datan and Aviram spared during the plague, given that they clearly did not want to leave Egypt?

The Maharil Diskin suggests a remarkable answer: He points out that Datan and Aviram had one great source of merit. They had been the taskmasters (shotrim) in Egypt. There were Egyptians who were the overseers, but the people who actually dealt with the Jewish slaves were these guards, the taskmasters. These taskmasters bore the burden of the Egyptian overseers. The overseers did not whip the slaves at the bottom of the ladder. They whipped the Jewish taskmasters whose job it was to ensure maximum work from the slaves at the bottom of the ladder. Datan and Aviram were part of that crew of taskmasters who bore the whippings of the Egyptian overseers.

The Maharil Diskin adds an amazing explanation of the taskmasters’ complaint to Moshe when he first approached Pharaoh in Shemot and he reacted by making the slaves work even harder. They complained, “You made us smell” (Hiv’ashtem es Rucheinu)². This is normally understood as a figure of speech to mean that you made Pharaoh be even more displeased with us. However, the Maharil Diskin interprets it literally – because of their wounds from the whippings that did not heal, their bodies smelt terribly.

This explanation underscores a powerful lesson: even individuals who are deeply flawed can possess tremendous merit due to a single act of self-sacrifice for one’s fellow Jews. This also reminds us that God’s judgment takes into account the entirety of a person’s deeds, weighing moments of selflessness heavily, even against a backdrop of sin.

What is also noteworthy about Datan and Aviram is that they continued their wicked behavior, even after they rejoined the Jewish people. They were central figures in multiple episodes of dissent, including the complaints against Moshe and Aharon and the incident with the manna. Yet it seems that their single merit still served to keep them from being punished. However, even this great merit did not suffice to protect them after their final, and most heinous sin – their alliance with Korach in his rebellion against Moshe’s leadership.

Why did their earlier sins not lead to immediate retribution but joining Korach’s dispute? The answer lies in the idea that dispute destroys all merit. The rebellion of Korach was not merely an act of dissent; it was an attack on the very foundation of Jewish unity and leadership. The destructive power of disputes is so great that it eradicates the protective merit of even the most selfless acts. Perhaps we can add that their merit was in the realm inter-personal relationships, and that stood in good stead for them in their subsequent sins. However, once they got involved in disputes, that erased their previous merit, because having disputes is the antithesis of good inter-personal relations.

We have learnt about the incredible greatness of self-sacrifice for one’s fellow Jews – enduring pain in order to protect others. At the same time, we have seen that even the merit of self-sacrifice is erased by involvement in disputes. May we all merit to apply both lessons to our actions.

1. Maharil Diskin Al HaTorah, Beshalach, 14:3.
2. Shemot, 5:21.

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