One generation goes, another comes

Kohelet used these words to signify the staticness of life, but in this week's parshah the passing of one generation and the coming of the next likewise represents a different way employed by Hashem in relating to the Jewish people. 

Heretofore, there seemed to be perfect divine providence; our fathers and mothers couldn't be hampered by anyone without reason - everything could be explained by the lessons God sought to teach them. This is so even to the extent that some say the test of Isaac's binding was to punish Avraham for making a covenant with Avimelech and his general, Pichol. 

The passing of a generation, an age, percolated into the very mindset of the Jewish people in Egypt. They no longer felt the same providence, and rhyme and reason, behind God's actions. Never before - that is from the mindset of the Jewish people - had they seen a time when God sought to act in a way that was seemingly indiscriminate. It could be that they knew of the tradition that they would be enslaved as per Hashem's words to Avraham - "your offspring will be strangers in a land unbeknownst to them, and they will be enslaved," but still it offered little solace. 

The reality in which Hashem acts in a way totally different and diametrically opposed to that which they were used to must have been a very sad awakening - for the people had no inkling as to why their father in Heaven seemed so distant. What had they done wrong? The simple meaning conveyed by the Torah is nothing whatsoever, which really elicits questions as to Hashem's manner of intervening in this world. 

And it is for this very reason that Hashem instructs Moshe to tell the elders that it was Hashem, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that revealed Himself to him. The same loving God, who was now acting, perhaps with a different prerogative - a national one - but who cared about them no less than he did prior. "I will be" is the name Hashem relays to Moshe, "I will be who I will be," in other words, you will see my hand expressed in a different way, but that notwithstanding, the one constant is that I love you, now, not as mere individuals but as a people who need to be forged, and coalesced into one who can call out in my name - Hashem tells them - and to do that, you need to have a reawakening, one where there will be casualties, hardship and suffering but you will come out all the strong, with the fiber, mettle, desire and design to fulfill a higher goal than had you not undergone those travails. 

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