page_title: Beshalach
section_title: Commandments
hierarchical_section_title: Beshalach / Commandments
caption_attribution_description: English: Song of the sea, Az yashir.
context_page_description: Beshalach, Beshallach, or Beshalah is the sixteenth weekly Torah portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading and the fourth in the Book of Exodus. It constitutes Exodus 13:17–17:16. In this parashah, Pharaoh changes his mind and chases after the Israelite people with his army, trapping them at the Sea of Reeds. God commands Moses to split the sea, allowing them to pass, then closes the sea back upon the Egyptian army. There are the miracles of manna and clean water. The nation of Amalek attacks and the Israelite people are victorious.
  The parashah is made up of 6,423 Hebrew letters, 1,681 Hebrew words, 116 verses, and 216 lines in a Torah Scroll.
  Jews read it the sixteenth Sabbath after Simchat Torah, in January or February. As the parashah describes God's deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt, Jews also read part of the parashah, Exodus 13:17–15:26, as the initial Torah reading for the seventh day of Passover. And Jews also read the part of the parashah about Amalek, Exodus 17:8–16, on Purim, which commemorates the story of Esther and the Jewish people's victory over Haman's plan to kill the Jews, told in the book of Esther.
context_section_description: According to Maimonides and Sefer ha-Chinuch, there is one negative commandment in the parashah:
  Not to walk outside permitted limits on the Sabbath.
caption: The Song of the sea as it is written in a Sefer Torah
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