In the context of the Torah’s accounts, a dream interpretation affects its realization; similarly the response to a divine mission affects its outcome.

• The implication of God’s initial command to MR [3:8-10] is that Pharaoh will listen to his request to free the Jews.

• It’s possible, however, that MR’s negative replies altered this intended future.

• MR’s first response to this command, “Who am I to do this?” could have derived from his humility, and God replies in kind ^[1], however analysis of the text (of God’s responses to MR) indicates that with each successive remark by MR in this cosmic dialogue, the fated negativity associated with the mission increases.

Serpents, Lepers, and Blood:
The Signs as Warnings/Punishments/Portents

Although MR was the most worthy of his generation, and all subsequent generations, nevertheless as a human being he did have faults. Had MR immediately acquiesced in his mission and gone to confront Pharaoh, perhaps the entire mission would have gone successfully from the onset. As a result of his inadequate replies he was punished: the three signs served as punishments/warnings and also as portents of future calamities which would befall him if he did not change:

• The first sign is the staff turning into a snake, and then back again. This symbolized the counsel of the snake of Eden to disregard God’s commandment: MR disregarding God’s command to go and so the first sign was a warning to him.

• It served also as an augury of the future, in the matter of his son’s brit (see my article).

• The next sign involved MR’s hand turning white like a ‘metzora’; tzara’at was punishment for slander, MR slandered the elders and the people saying ‘they won’t believe me’.

• This sign too was also an augury of a future calamity which he might perhaps have acted to prevent: his actions led to Miriam slandering him, and she was punished with this same disease.

• The third sign was that of the Nile waters turning to blood. By causing the convincing of the Jews to be due to a display of miracles rather than due to their faith, MR caused a ‘chilul hashem’, for which the punishment is death, and hence the first sign was the turning to blood of the waters (MR had been saved by the Nile, and so this was especially significant.) However, since it was only later that this chillul hashem would come about, it was only then that he deserved punishment, and so as opposed to the other two signs, this one was not performed until later, at the Nile, in front of the People.

• As augury of future: the Nile was the river which had saved him. The water turning to blood symbolized his eventual death due to the fiasco over the drinking-water-from the stone in the desert.