ספר שמות

Exodus 5,22. “Moses said to G’d: ‘what is the purpose ‎of Your having brought harm to this people, etc;?”, ‎ויאמר ‏ה' אל משה עתה תראה כי ביד חזקה וגו'‏‎ , “G’d said to Moses: ‎‎‘now you will see that with a strong hand, etc.’”‎We do not only need to understand what Moses meant by ‎adopting what sounds like accusatory attitude vis a vis G’d, but ‎that far from this being the case, he alluded to a very important ‎aspect of Judaism with his wanting to know G’d’s purpose in the ‎details of how He guides the fortunes of the Jewish people. [After ‎the sin of the golden calf, Moses again persists in his desire to be ‎taken into G’d’s confidence. [Compare Exodus Exodus ‎‎33,13-16 Ed.]‎In our daily prayers in the amidah we pray for ‎‎Hashem to redeem us, justifying our request by the ‎conviction that it is within His power to do so by saying: ‎כי גואל ‏חזק אתה‎, “for You are a powerful redeemer.” Why did the sages ‎who formulated this prayer find it necessary to add the adjective ‎חזק‎, “powerful,” after the word ‎גואל‎, “Redeemer?” The very idea ‎of G’d “requiring” to resort to ‎התחזקות‎, “strengthening Himself,” ‎is strange, seeing that we perceive of Him as the personification ‎of “Strength.” Let us first explain another verse in Exodus 13,2: ‎וידבר ה' אל ‏משה קדש לי כל בכור פטר כל רחם וגו'‏‎, ‎Hashem said to Moses: ‎‎‘sanctify unto me every first born male produced by the womb of ‎a Jewish mother, etc.’” In an apparent response to this ‎commandment, the Torah quotes Moses as saying (verse 3) ‎ויאמר ‏משה אל העם זכור את היום הזה אשר יצאתם ממצרים...כי בחוזק יד הוציא ה' ‏אתכם מזה‎, “Moses said to the people to remember this day when ‎you left Egypt, for Hashem took you out from here using ‎the “strength of His hand.” Moses appears to have departed ‎materially from what G’d had told him to tell the people in His ‎name. Instead of telling the people to sanctify their male ‎firstborns, both of man and beast (in most instances) he tells ‎them to remember the day that they left Egypt!‎‎