In classical rabbinic interpretation The parashah is discussed in these rabbinic sources from the era of the Mishnah and the Talmud: Numbers chapter 33 A Midrash taught that God told the Israelites that during all the 40 years that they spent in the wilderness, God did not make it necessary for them to flee. Rather, God cast their enemies down before them. As reports, there were numerous snakes, fiery serpents, and scorpions in the wilderness, but God did not allow them to harm the Israelites. Thus, God told Moses to write down in the stages by which Israel journeyed in the wilderness, so that they would know the miracles that God had performed for them. Noting that both and Psalm report that the Israelites travelled "under the hand of Moses and Aaron," a Midrash taught that the similarity served to confirm that God led the Israelites in the wilderness (in the words of ) "like a flock." A Midrash compared the listing of the Israelites' journeys in to a king who had a sick son whom he took to a distant place to get cured. On the way back, the king retraced all their previous journeys, noted where his son caught cold and where his son's head ached. A Midrash used the report of to explain why the Israelites had to leave Egypt to conduct their sacrifices. The Midrash interpreted the words of , "Lo, if we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us?" to teach that the Egyptians saw the lamb as a god. Thus, when God told Moses to slay the paschal lamb (as reflected in ), Moses asked God how he could possibly do so, when the lamb was as Egyptian god. God replied that the Israelites would not depart from Egypt until they slaughtered the Egyptian gods before the Egyptians' eyes, so that God might teach them that their gods were really nothing at all. And thus God did so, for on the same night that God slew the Egyptian firstborn, the Israelites slaughtered their paschal lambs and ate them. When the Egyptians saw their firstborn slain and their gods slaughtered, they could do nothing, as reports, "While the Egyptians were burying them whom the Lord had smitten among them, even all their firstborn; upon their gods also the Lord executed judgment." Reading , "Upon their gods also the