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Why does the Torah (תורה) threaten that if you oppress a widow or orphan, God will kill you and leave your body unfound—punishing your own wife and children? Rashi (רש"י) reveals the Torah is addressing someone who failed to understand what a father means to a child or a husband to a wife—because his own family never made him feel it. God's fury is personal because He is a partner in every family unit.
This shiur explores a deeply troubling and profound passage in Parshas Mishpatim (Shemos 22:21-23) regarding the prohibition against oppressing widows and orphans. The Torah (תורה) states that if you oppress them and they cry out, God will hear their cries, become furious, kill the oppressor with a sword, and leave his wife as a widow and his children as orphans. Rabbi Zweig carefully analyzes Rashi (רש"י)'s reading to unpack multiple layers of meaning embedded in the text. The first anomaly Rashi identifies is grammatical: the Torah begins by warning against oppressing "the widow and the orphan" (both plural), but then says "if you oppress him and he cries out"—using the masculine singular, which refers only to the orphan, not the widow. This shift signals that the Torah is focusing specifically on the orphan's cry, not the widow's, which requires explanation.
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Shemos 22:21-23
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Why does the Torah separate Avrohom's eulogy for Sarah from his crying for her? The shiur shows that Sarah required a public eulogy focused on the communal loss of a leader, not Avrohom's private grief. This teaches that we must view Jewish tragedies through a national lens first, seeing attacks on Am Yisrael as collective losses that dwarf personal concerns.
