Pharaoh's Daughter's Bath

Exodus 2:5:

וַתֵּ֤רֶד בַּת־פַּרְעֹה֙ לִרְחֹ֣ץ עַל־הַיְאֹ֔ר וְנַֽעֲרֹתֶ֥יהָ הֹֽלְכֹ֖ת עַל־יַ֣ד הַיְאֹ֑ר וַתֵּ֤רֶא אֶת־הַתֵּבָה֙ בְּת֣וֹךְ הַסּ֔וּף וַתִּשְׁלַ֥ח אֶת־אֲמָתָ֖הּ וַתִּקָּחֶֽהָ׃

Or, in English:

And the daughter of Pharaoh came downe to waſh her ſelfe at the riuer, and her maydens walked along by the riuer ſide: and when ſhee ſaw the arke among the flags, ſhe ſent her maid to fetch it.

(I don't know why the King James Version translates "suf" as "flags"; I was always taught that it meant "reeds".)

Anyway, our scholar comments:

ותרד בת פרעה לרחץ. שירדה לרחוץ מגילולי בית אביה, כמו: אם רחץ יי את צואת בנות ציון
לרחץ. רחיצה זו מצויינת. היא רחיצה ממש וטהרה מגלולים ומעוונות. וזהו לרחץ, תגין: רחיצה משיינ'
ונערתיה הלכת. ונערתיה, עין משונה, רמז שהיו נערותיה חפיצות לעכב הדבר כדאיתא בסוטה, אלא שבא גבריאל וחבטן ומתו, חוץ מאחת, דלאו אורח ארעה למלכה ללכת לבדה. ולכך הע', כי נערותיה רצו לעכב והיו ביד רמה הולכות
הלכת. חסר. הליכתן חסירה שהמיתן גבריאל, כמו שנאמר: הולך למות.
ונערתיה. חוזרת הרי"ש, כי רצו להמניע הדבר ולעכב.

Or, in English:

And the daughter of Pharaoh came downe to wash her ſelfe. She went down to wash herself clean of the idols of her father's house, like [the washing mentioned in Isaiah 4:4]: When the Lord shall have washed away the filth of the daughters of Zion.
To wash. This washing is special, a true washing off of idols and sinfulness. Therefore, the word לרחץ is marked with tagin* - a different [?] washing.
And her maydens walked along. The ‘ayin of the word ונערתיה is different.** This is a hint to the story that they tried to prevent her [from rescuing baby Moses], as told in [Tractate] Sota [12b], and [the angel] Gabriel came and beat them all to death, except for one, for it is not seemly for royalty to be walking completely alone. That is the reason for the ‘ayin, for they were walking be-yad rama [a Hebrew expression literally translating to "with upraised arm", but denoting defiantly, haughtily], and they wanted to stop her.
Walking [holkhoth]. The word הלכת is spelled defectively [i.e., without the letter vav to indicate the /o/ vowel], for their walking was defective, for [the angel] Gabriel killed them; [thus, "walking" here] is like [the meaning of the word in Genesis 25:32], behold I am going [holekh] to die.
And her maydens [ve-na‘arotheha]. The resh goes backwards,*** for they wanted to prevent the matter from taking place.

*The final tzadi has a tittle on the right head, and three on the left head. In today's Torah-scroll, every tzadi always has three tittles on the left head, but it is not clear that this would have been the case in the Middle Ages; perhaps only the midrashically significant letters got tagin back then. (It is interesting that their tagin actually had meaning, whereas today's are purely ornamental, and cannot have specific meaning, because they are applied to certain letters of the alphabet across the board. Any meaning that they have will be no more specific than the "meaning" of the particular letter of the alphabet.)







**In the manuscript, the left leg of the ‘ayin shoots up much higher than the right head.
***In the manuscript, the resh has an antenna coming out of the middle of its head, pointing toward the right, i.e. backwards (from the point of view of a right-to-left writing system).





SIGNIFICANCE TO NA"KH:

I would consider writing the final tzadi in רחץ in Isaiah 4:4 with the one tittle on the right head and the three on the left, to "activate the hyperlink" of intertextuality from both ends. In the Torah scroll, it indicates "there's a comment on this somewhere in Nakh", and in my Isaiah scroll, it would indicate "this is a kind of dibbur ha-mathḥil. As I heard at a shi'ur on Genesis Rabbah on Monday evening, "Ḥazal read the rest of the Bible as a commentary on the Torah."