Matzos because of Haste

At seudah shlishis today, a friend of mine asked why the reason given for Bnei Yisroel taking matzos with them is the lack of time necessary for the bread to rise brought about by the haste in departing, given the issur chametz. I tried to answer based on the Mishnah in the 9th perek of Pesachim (96), which states that Pesach Mitzrayim did not have the issur chametz kol shiv'a that Pesach l'Doros has, but forgot the conclusion of the gemara that aligns this mishnah with a drash of R' Yosei haGelili, that the issur still extended the entire first day.

After the fact, I wondered if there was any significance to the fact that the ba'al hashmu'ah of that (apparently accepted) shita is R' Yosei haGelili, who also holds by the unaccepted shita that there's no issur hana'ah by chametz at all (28b), so that in his mouth, the din would only be referring to an issur achila that spanned the first day, but it seems more likely that when the rabbanan accepted this drash, they interpreted it k'shitasam that even the issur hana'ah would have existed on the entire first day. At any rate, RYhG is coming to be meikil, so that even if we were to reduce the scope of his drasha, it would not achieve the desired result.

Although the drash of RYhG is based on the passuk "v'Lo yei'acheil chameitz", we hold like Chizkiyah (21b), who reads this passuk as referring to an issur hana'ah, so there doesn't seem to be a way out on that path, either.

To sum, then, it seems clear that there was an issur of owning chametz on the night of 15 Nissan until the end of the day. That being the case, why could we not say that the reason for their not carrying chametz with them was because of the issur, rather than using the practical reason of the haste that the passuk specifies?

R' Yitzchok Dovid Frankel asks a related question in Machat Shel Yad, and develops the idea that chipazon was an intrinsic part of Yetzias Mitzrayim, so that despite their ability to avoid the rush by anticipating the Yetziah earlier that day, there was a necessity that chipazon be associated with Yetzias Mitzrayim, based on HaShem's haste in taking us out at exactly the necessary time. This being the case, perhaps this could also serve as a reason for the Torah's pragmatic rationale for the matzos, rather than the latent halachic rationale.

Bo 2 - Ra?

Steg wonders if the word "ra'ah" in Sh'mos 10:10,

"וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם, יְהִי כֵן ה' עִמָּכֶם, כַּאֲשֶׁר אֲשַׁלַּח אֶתְכֶם וְאֶת-טַפְּכֶם; רְאו כִּי רָעָה נֶגֶד פְּנֵיכֶם",
"And he said to them: 'So be HaShem with you, as I will let you and your small children go; see, though, that evil is before your face'." ,

is at all related to the Egyptian sun-deity Ra.

In a comment there, Dave of BaLashon provides a link to an short article on this topic in the Journal of Biblical Literature, which is only accessible from academic institutions (like the one which I'm currently situated at, late at night). To quote my comments on Steg's post (it's easier than writing something from scratch):
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I was also wondering about that recently, but wasn't sure if it was more than a coincidence (depending on the equivalence of the 'ayin in the Ancient Egyptian language), but the name "Ra'amses" should have tipped me off.

I skimmed through the article linked to by Dave, and to quickly summarize, you were m'chavein to Midrash Lekach Tov (compiled by R' Toviah ben Eliezer in 11th century CE), who also says that this deity is identical to Ba'al Tzefon. Louis Ginzberg notes that this idea can be combined with the Midrash ShHSh"R quoted by Rashi which says that ra'ah was a star which symbolized blood and death to be a reference to Re', the sun deity of Egypt, symbolized by a red glowing disk (the sun in the minds of desert-dwellers, after all, is vastly different than the sun in our minds).

The author of the article explains that the statement of Pharaoh is thus a mocking retort along the lines of, "Yeah, your God had better be with you when I send you and your children, as you'll be entering the desert, where Re' is strongest."

He also supports the idea that Re' is Ba'al Tzefon by noting that once the Hyksos were expelled in 16th c. BCE (around the time of the shi'bud), Re' became amalgamated with the deity Amon, whose name has the same meaning in Egyptian, hidden, as the Hebrew tzafon.

Bo 1 - Say Cheese!

There's a story that's told about the Chida. I do not know the source for it, and suspect it may be apocryphal, but present it here, nonetheless (because it's cute, which is what counts in these stories).

It seems that he was traveling on a ship with a merchant who was in possession of a large supply of non-kosher cheese. The merchant hired some sailors to threaten to kill the Chida if he did not agree to give a hechsher to the cheese, so that he could sell it to Jews. Faced with this choice, the Chida reluctantly wrote up a te'udas hechsher and gave it to the corrupt merchant.

When the merchant arrived at his destination, he showed the teudah to the rav of the city. The rav looked at the document, and thought for a while. After some time spent in silent thought, he declared, "The cheese is treif!". The bystanders were astonished that the rav would not accept this teudah signed by the great Chida, so waited silently as he explained:

"The text of the teudah says that this cheese is hereby kosher, as it is written in Shmos, 'V'kacha toch'lu oso', 'And thus shall you eat it'. When I saw this latter clause, I immediately suspected that something was afoot. Why would the Chida include this extraneous clause in his teudah? And why specifically mention that this phrase, said in reference to the korban pesach, appears in Shmos? Upon thinking the matter through, it occurred to me that Shmo"T is often used as an acronym for shnayim mikra v'echad targum, which led me to believe that the answer may lay in the Targum on the verse in question. The words immediately following 'V'kacha toch'lu oso' are 'mosneichem chagurim', 'your loins shall be bound up', which Onkelos translates as 'chartzeichon y'hon asirin'. This Aramaic phrase, taken out of its context, can also be translated as 'Your cheese shall be prohibited'. Thus, I realized that the Chida must have been coerced into signing this document, and inserted this extraneous line as a means of signaling to readers that the cheese was, indeed. treif!"