A nation of 600,000 young, strong males has just left their masters in style. God has performed ten miraculous plagues on behalf of this nation. This nation is fully armed. 

She is pursued by her previous rulers and finds herself alone in the desert with her opponents. Instead of fighting, the nation cries to her leader, complaining that it was not worth leaving her ex-masters.    

Why? The Israelites have the numbers, the weapons; even God is on their side. What is preventing them from mustering a military challenge against the Egyptians? 

The Spanish commentator, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (1092-1167), explains that the Israelites were certainly physically well equipped to combat the Egyptians. Mentally and emotionally however, they were unable to do so. 

Having been under the servitude of the Egyptians for over 200 years, the culture of subservience to the Egyptians was entrenched within the DNA of the Israelites. They had neither courage nor nerve to be able to battle with the Egyptians. And since mentally they could not, physically they could not. 

Ibn Ezra adds that this inferiority complex was too ingrained within the Israelites and in order to conquer the Promised Land, the land of Canaan, a generation of slaves had to all die in the wilderness and a new generation without the slave mentality be born. 

Moses, conversely, grew up in the comfort of the Egyptian palace with freedom. This is why earlier in the book of Shemot, he was able to kill the Egyptian. This is why he was able to fight on behalf of the daughters of Jethro. Moses did not suffer from the oppressed mentality of his people and was thus able to stand up for others and lead a nation. 

Wittgenstein once said that his aim in philosophy was “to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle”. A fly has the ability to fly but doesn’t look up; thus, it stays trapped in the bottle. If we learn to look up in life, to believe in ourselves and others, the sky is the limit to what we can achieve.