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You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink, the old adage says. In other words, you can influence animal behavior to a point, but not beyond that. If a horse isn’t thirsty, it simply won’t drink. But what does all this talk about horses have to do with this week’s Torah portion, Beshallach?
A lot, it turns out. The Torah portion praises G-d for throwing “the horse and his rider into the sea.” Which leads to the question – once you’ve gotten the horse to water, can you make him go into the drink?
I decided to do a bit of research on equines and swimming and here’s what I found out. It turns out that horses can swim, and some can even become very proficient at it. And you know from Westerns that horses will enter shallow water and be unafraid. There are even rehabilitation centers for injured horses, where the animals are put into a pool and swim for a few minutes to strengthen injured limbs. If you look at the clips available online, you’ll see that water rehab plans for horses are strikingly similar to those prescribed to humans recovering from similar types of injury or disability.
There is, however, one caveat. Horses cannot hold their breath underwater as humans can, and horse rehabilitation is focused on keeping the horse’s head above the water. Horses won’t enter deep water willingly because there is a high risk of drowning.
All of this leads to the question – if Pharaoh’s cavalry was pursuing the Israelites at the sea, wouldn’t the horses have refused to enter the water? Wouldn’t the riders have had to abandon their animals and continue their pursuit on foot? And if so, why does the Torah declare that horses, like their riders, were drowned chasing the Israelites?
In the rabbinic imagination, it’s clear that G-d must have performed a miracle. And that’s just what we read in a commentary known as Exodus Rabbah (11th century):
- The waves of the sea appeared in the form of mares, while the Egyptians rode stallions. They kept running into the sea after the apparition of the mares until they were drowned in the sea. The Egyptian riders would say to the horses, “Yesterday I had to walk into the Nile with you to drink, and you were reluctant to follow; now you are about to drown with me in the sea.” The stallion replied, “I couldn’t help myself. Look at all those beautiful mares in the sea.”
All of which is to say that human beings can’t change equine behavior, but a divine miracle might just do the trick.
- Rabbi Scott Hoffman
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