Yitro’s Proclamation of Midah K'neged Midah and Ketz

In this parsha, Yitro proclaims G-d’s greatness based on the principle of midah k’neged midah. He says (Exodus 18:11), “Now I know that God is greater than all the deities, by turning the very scheme that they plotted against others, against themselves!” It is in G-d’s ability to “cook someone in their own pot” that earns Yitro’s highest level of attribution.

Were there not other great things that could have made Yitro say, ‘Now I know,’ such as the actual redemption or the splitting of the sea?

What is it about the midah k’neged midah principle that makes G-d supreme over all?

First, we must affirm it with gematria, the sign of upgraded wisdom. Midah, of course, equals forty-nine, representative of the complete and final level, and that is, k’neged, with k’neged equaling seventy-seven, which spells out the word az in Hebrew, which means strength, and the strength is that it is equal to midah, forty-nine. Equality, one thing equaling another is total balance, just as meting out the exact same punishment to someone in the exact way they wanted to inflict it.

As a small tangent, this idea and gematria points to another powerful gematria that points to ketz.

It’s true that we had to be in galus for four hundred years. But the actual hard work was shortened to two hundred and ten years, as the galus began from Yitzchak’s birth.

How is that exact, though? Shibud Mitzrayim had to be four hundred years - where is the exactitude? The answer is that the first one hundred and ninety years were also a sacrificial time in the world, because it was then that the potential of slaying Yitzchak came into the world. One hundred and ninety is equivalent to the word ketz in Hebrew. With the harsh potential born of a father to be asked to slay his son, came the notion of ketz. This is sacrifice to the highest order and is equivalent to physical shibud. G-d and equivalency are one.

Nonetheless, we had to endure two hundred and ten years, and in the end the Torah confirms our leaving through the word beshalach. Beshalach equals b’gematria three hundred and forty, spelling the word shem in Hebrew referring to Shem Hashem. We were told to sacrifice and in the end G-d triggered the existing promise to Avraham. We adopt sacrifice and G-d follows up with an indisputable promise. This represents a combination of sacrifice on our part and a triggering of the word of G-d, two linked components.

Returning to the original question, why is only midah k’neged midah representative of G-d’s omnipotence? The answer must be that if man were ever to profess himself to be a god, he could never manipulate nature in such a fashion. It destroyed the possibility of a future being ever to claim sovereignty. The reason is because inner pain and suffering could never be equally matched to physical pain. The ketz involved a spiritual-type sacrifice, and the shibud was physical. No man will ever be able to calculate these two phenomena together - the brain, emotions and physicality. Therefore, now Yitro knew who was the Omnipotent, who could scale out every possible feeling, emotion and touch equally. This is the G-d we turn to.