Word: נחם, nacham, literally, נחה אותם, “He led them”
Context: The first verse of the parsha says: When Pharaoh sent the Israelites out of Egypt, God “did not lead them,” lo nacham, on the shorter path but on a longer, circuitous route, pen yenachem ha’am, “lest the people regret” leaving Egypt upon seeing war and turn back (Exodus 13:17).
Interpretation of the two nacham verbs in this verse: This verse uses the letters n’ch’m twice to mean two different things. In the beginning of the verse, the verb nacham means “lead,” referring to God, whereas in the end of the verse, the verb yenachem (root n’ch’m) means “regret” and refers to the Israelites – while the people of Israel are anticipated to be “regretting” their exodus from Egypt, God is “leading” them forward. Perhaps the sense of “regret” can also be read back into the first verb here and applied to God, who – unlike the wavering Israelites – “does not regret” taking them out, but on the contrary, is committed to leading them for the “long haul,” with no short cuts. Lo nacham. God does not regret.
Earlier in the Torah: Significantly, the only other previous place in the Torah where the verb nacham is used with this meaning of “regret” is the story of Noah (whose very name comes from this nacham root), a story whose drowning waters are also naturally resonant with our Red Sea context.
In the flood narrative, the Torah reports repeatedly that God “regretted” (nichamti) that He had made humanity. With this flood context in mind, we can hear the implied message in our verse – while in the past, God did regret a commitment He made by creating the human being, now, in choosing the Israelites and bringing them out of Egypt to be His people, He has no regrets. This decision, this connection, is final and forever. The Israelites themselves may still be unsure, but God is holding strong and steady. Lo nacham. God does not regret.
Message: We sometimes imagine that we can lose divine love. We feel the need to earn that love, not once, but continuously, again and again, and even then, we feel we are in danger, at any moment, of losing it, either because of our own faults and misdeeds, or for some incomprehensible reason unrelated to us. We do not fully trust in the permanence and stability of God’s commitment to us. We imagine that God may “regret” having created us; that He may “change His mind” with regard to us and cease considering us worthy of love and connection.
What would it be like to trust in the steadiness of God’s devotion to us, to see that we may waver, like the Israelites here, we may waver and doubt and be unsure, but that God is ever as firm and steadfast as a mountain? If we really believed in God’s commitment to us and were able to relax into it, how much more secure would we be, how much freer and more generous with our own love?
It is like the Sea: The waters seem unstable, chaotic and overwhelming, and there may be no bottom or end or path in sight. But when we walk through them with faith, when we walk through them with an awareness of God’s steady love supporting us, as the Israelites did, then the ground beneath us becomes firm and solid, and the path before us bright and clear.
Lo nacham. God does not regret creating you. Rest in the knowledge of that unshakable love.
