What Did Ruth and Boaz Do on the Threshing Floor?

Many people have different views as to what Ruth and Boaz did on the threshing floor during the night that the two were together. Here is what I wrote in my book “Unusual Bible Interpretations: Ruth, Esther, and Judith.” 

The two widows, Naomi of Judea and Ruth the Moabite, return from Moab to Judea some 10 years after Naomi left Bethlehem in Judea. They are penniless. To secure food Ruth gleans barley stalks in the field of Boaz, a kinsman of Naomi. Boaz is fascinated by Ruth from the moment he sees her, even before he knows who she is, and his interest in her increases upon acquaintance. However, after the barley harvest ends, after around three months, Boaz made Ruth no offer of marriage. Naomi suggests to Ruth that they need to take matters into their own hands.

Rabbinic sources agree that there was no premarital sex between Ruth and Boaz. Ruth Rabbah, for example, states that Boaz showed greater restraint than Jacob’s son Joseph when Joseph was propositioned by his master’s wife. Yet, many Bible interpreters disagree with the rabbis on this point, including Josephus.[1] Also evidence seems to indicate the “possibility” that a sexual encounter occurred. Let’s examine the evidence.

• Naomi tells Ruth that they need to find “rest” for her, meaning “security,” and security at that time was achieved for women by marriage.
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• She tells Ruth to go to Boaz at night when he is sleeping on the threshing floor. If the purpose was simply to talk, why was she told to go at night and why while he was sleeping?
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• She instructs her to “wash herself, anoint herself [put on perfume], and dress [in her best clothes].” This is usually not needed for a conversation. The only other time that the three instructions are used in Scripture is in Ezekiel 16:9–10, in regard to preparation for marriage.
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• Although Rashi did not think that Ruth and Boaz had a sexual encounter, he interprets the text to mean that Naomi suggested that Ruth wear her best Sabbath clothing; although Naomi told Ruth to clothe herself before going to the threshing floor, Ruth put on the special clothes after she arrived because “if I go all decorated, whoever meets me and sees me will say I am a prostitute.”
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• Naomi suggests that Ruth should not make herself known to Boaz until after he has “finished eating and drinking.” Is she suggesting that Ruth wait until Boaz is intoxicated? Gersonides interprets “do not make yourself known to the man” as “do not let anyone see you going to the field tonight.”
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• Ruth should then see where Boaz lies down, and then “go in and uncover his feet and lie down, and he will tell you what you should do.” Is the uncovering of his feet a euphemism? The word used here and translated as “feet” is margelotav, bearing the root r-g-l, “foot.” However, the term only appears in the Bible in regard to the unique feet (or lower extremity) of an angel in Daniel 10:6, where Daniel describes a vision he had of an angel that did not look like a human. Isaiah 6:2 uses the usual word for feet and states that he saw a vision in which an angel covered his face and feet with wings. Why did the angel need to cover his “feet”? Is it possible that Naomi (or the author of the tale) is using this form of “feet” as a euphemism for penis? If not, why does Naomi instruct her to uncover his feet? If the purpose was to alert Boaz that she was present, wouldn’t it make more sense to uncover the upper part of his body?[2]
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• Ruth agrees to the plan. The narrator states that after eating and drinking, Boaz’s “heart was merry” (inebriated?), Ruth “came softly, uncovered his feet, and lay down.”
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• It isn’t until around midnight that Boaz wakens and is startled to find a woman lying at his feet. Why didn’t he awaken when Ruth lay beside him? If one overindulges in alcohol, one frequently awakens in the middle of the night when much of the effects of the drink wears off.
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• Ruth identifies herself to Boaz and adds, “Spread your coat over your handmaid, for you are a near kinsman.” This reminds us of the Joseph story, in which Joseph escapes the clutches of his master’s wife, but she grabs his coat and holds onto it since he avoided having sex with her.[3] Here, Ruth is saying the opposite: “Spread your coat over your handmaid.” Does the narrator want us to understand that contrary to Joseph, Ruth is asking for sex? Or, is she asking for protection?
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• Besides reminding readers of the Joseph story, it is likely that the narrator wants readers to recall the story of Tamar and Judah. The patriarch Judah did not allow Tamar to fulfill the levirate marriage with his third son, because his first two sons had died after being married to her.[4] Like Ruth, Tamar clothed herself and resorted to sex: “She discarded her garments of widowhood, covered herself with a veil, and wrapped herself [like Ruth, in clothing].” She sat by the road and enticed Judah to have sex with her. He did so without knowing who she was (similar to Ruth meeting Boaz in the dark) and the levirate procedure was fulfilled, resulting in twins – one of whom, according to Ruth 4, was the ancestor of Boaz.
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• Boaz tells Ruth that he will do what she wants and says, “Tarry here tonight.” Why did he want Ruth to remain? Should we understand that he was not concerned with her returning home at night, given that she left hours later while it was still dark, “before one could recognize another person”?
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• Why did Boaz warn her to “let it not be known that the woman came to the threshing floor”?
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• Boaz gave Ruth a gift when she left the threshing floor to return home, and this reminds 
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• readers of the gift that Judah gave to Tamar after he had sex with her.[5]
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• When Ruth returned home, Naomi asked her, “Who are you, my daughter?” Was Naomi 
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• inquiring whether Ruth was now engaged to Boaz as a result of the encounter?
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• Ruth did not tell Naomi what Boaz “said,” she told her “all that the man had done to her.”
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• Needless to say, every one of these facts can be interpreted in an innocuous way.[6]

Josephus abridges the notices of Ruth 3:6-7 concerning Ruth's carrying out Naomi's instructions regarding the sleeping Boaz. His statement about Ruth's initially being "concealed" from him draws on Naomi's instruction (3:4) and Ruth's execution of these (3:7) Josephus eliminates the sexually "loaded" phrase about-her "uncovering" Boaz' "feet" (penis?).

Flavius Josephus: Judean Antiquities Book five page 82 By Flavius Josephus

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[1] Antiquities 5:9:3.

[2] Other examples where “feet” seem to be a euphemism for genitals are: II Samuel 11:8, where King David instructs Uriah to go home and have sex with his wife: “Go down to your house and wash your feet.” In Isaiah 7:20, the prophet predicts that God will have Assyria shave the Israelites’ beards and “the head and hair of the feet.” Deuteronomy 28:57 speaks of an afterbirth that came “out from between her feet.”

Why does Deuteronomy 25 rule that a man who refuses to perform the Levirate marriage has to have his shoe pulled off his foot? In the Ancient Near East, a shoe was a euphemism for the female genital. Pulling a shoe from a man’s foot may be a symbolic way to acknowledge his refusal to have sex with his brother’s widow in the Levirate ceremony (Richard Gist, You Don’t Understand the Bible Because You Are Christian [Friesen Press, 2014]).

F. Campbell in Anchor Bible lists other citations where foot may be a euphemism: Exodus 4:25; Judges 3:24; I Samuel24:3; II Kings 18:27; Isaiah 6:3, 36:12; and Ezekiel 16:25.

Ibn Ezra and Gersonides, avoiding any suggestion of intimacy, define margelotav as the feet and foot of the bed, respectively. Saadiah Gaon understands that Naomi was saying “lie by his feet.”

[3] Boaz is compared to Joseph in the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 19b, and in the Targum to verse 8.

[4] Genesis 38.

[5] Genesis 38.

[6] An argument can be made that the feet of many men get cold before the rest of their body and uncovering Boaz’s feet was a means to awaken him. The Targum states that Boaz acted toward Ruth “according to the prophecy that was revealed to him.”

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Joshua the son of Nun, married a prostitute called Rahab. this prostitute is one of the Great ancestor of Jesus.

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Eight prophets, who were also priests, descended from Rahab the prostitute, and they are: Neriah; his son Baruch; Seraiah; Mahseiah; Jeremiah; his father, Hilkiah; Jeremiah’s cousin Hanamel; and Hanamel’s father, Shallum. Rabbi Yehuda said: So too, Huldah the prophetess was a descendant of Rahab the prostitute, (Talmud Megillah 14b)

For Rahab (the prostitute)converted and married Joshua, and therefore Huldah descended from both Joshua and Rahab. (Talmud Megillah Daf 14b)

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According to the genealogy of Jesus found in Matthew, Rahab the Prostitute is one of his great ancestor. Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, (Matthew 1:5)

do Christians accept their god coming from the lineage of a "whore, prostitute"

Two Staffs

Moses had first encountered G-d, Who had dispatched Moses on his mission to redeem the nation of Israel. When Moses demurred, doubting whether the Jews would believe that he really had been sent by G-d, He gave him a sign to perform: “Hashem said to him: What is that in your hand? And he said: A staff. And He said: Cast it on the ground! So he cast it on the ground, and it became a snake” (Exodus 4:2-3).

This week’s parashah recounts the riposte. G-d sent Moses and his brother Aaron to confront Pharaoh with the demand to send out the Children of Israel. And when confronting Pharaoh, the staff and its transformation was again a major theme.

But there are two important differences between the two events. The first is that in the interaction between G-d and Moses at the burning bush, it was Moses’s staff that was transformed. When Moses and Aaron confronted Pharaoh it was Aaron’s staff that was transformed. G-d told Moses: “Say to Aaron, Take your staff and cast it before Pharaoh” (Exodus 7:9).

The second difference is the animal that the staffs were transformed into. Moses’s staff at the burning bush was transformed into a נָחָשׁ, nahash – a snake. Aaron’s staff in Pharaoh’s palace was transformed into a תַּנִּין, tannin – a crocodile.

This difference is often lost in translation: the JPS translation, for example, renders both נָחָשׁ(Exodus 4:3) and תַּנִּין (7:9) as “serpent”; ArtScroll translates them both as “snake”; the Margolin Edition translates נָחָשׁ as “snake” and תַּנִּין as “serpent” – as though the words are synonymous.

This is not as unfounded as it seems: Rashi interprets תַּנִּין in Exodus 7:9 to mean “snake”; and Targum Yonatan renders נָחָשׁ (4:3) into Aramaic as חִוְיָא (snake), and תַּנִּין (7:9) as חִיוִי חוּרְמַן, “poisonous snake”. Several Midrashic and Talmudic sources (such as Sh’mot Rabbah 3:12, Lekach Tov on Exodus 7:9, Avot de-Rabbi Natan 43, and others) also imply that נָחָשׁand תַּנִּין are synonymous.

However, the fact remains that the Torah uses two distinctly separate words in these two instances. According to the simple reading of the text Moses’s staff turned into a snake and Aaron’s staff turned into a crocodile, and “no Scriptural verse leaves its plain literal meaning” (Shabbat 63a, Yevamot 11b et. al.).

According to the Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, France, c.1160-c.1235), the word תַּנִּין applies to two different species: “Those mentioned on the land are a kind of species of snake, and those mentioned in the water are a kind of species of huge fish which resembles a snake” (Sefer ha-Shorashim, entry תנן).

Rabbi Yosef Tzvi Hertz (Chief Rabbi of the British Empire 1913-1946), in his commentary to Exodus 7:9, writes that “the Hebrew tannin denotes any large reptile, sea or river monster, and more especially the crocodile, as the symbol of Egypt”.

Commensurate with this, the S’forno (commentary to Exodus 4:3), the Ibn Ezra (commentary to Exodus 4:17 and 7:10), the Ramban (commentary to Exodus 4:21), the Malbim (commentary to Exodus 7:15) and others distinguish between the נָחָשׁ (snake) which Moses’s staff became and the תַּנִּין (crocodile) which Aaron’s staff became.

The Ibn Ezra, for example, explains the word הָאֹתֹת, “the signs” (Exodus 4:17) to mean that the staff “turned into a snake in the sight of Israel and a crocodile in front of Pharaoh” – that is to say, there were two separate signs (hence the word “signs” in the plural). And later, when Moses and Aaron stood before Pharaoh, and Aaron cast his staff onto the ground (Exodus 7:10), the Ibn Ezra comments that “this, too, was a miracle – that the staff turned into a crocodile, which was unlike the miracle that He performed for Israel, when it only turned into a snake”.

Why the difference?

Let us begin our answer with a question: When G-d first charged Moses with the task of redeeming the Jewish nation and he doubted that they would believe him (Exodus 4:1-5), why did G-d use the transformation of the staff into a snake as a sign? What kind of faith can be based on a conjuring trick? Transforming a staff into a snake? Well, yes, impressive, but Pharaoh’s magicians matched it. Indeed plenty of stage magicians can probably do better.

In fact, when G-d transformed Moses’s staff into a snake, He was giving an important coded message. Several Midrashim (for example Sechel Tov on Exodus 4:3, Sh’mot Rabbah 3:12, and Tanhuma, Sh’mot 23 among others) explain that the snake is the symbol of lashon ha-ra, evil speech, slander. When Moses had argued that “they [the Children of Israel] will not believe me” (Exodus 4:1) he had slandered them unjustly, and G-d implicitly reprimanded him by transforming his staff into a snake.

Hence the transformation of staff into snake (which sign Moses did not have to do for the Children of Israel) was intended not as a miracle for Israel to make them believe, but rather as a reprimand to Moses for this unwarranted slander.

Transforming Aaron’s staff into a crocodile was also symbolic: as several Midrashim (for example Sechel Tov on Exodus 7:9, Sh’mot Rabbah 3:12, and Yalkut Shimoni, Exodus 181 among others) explain, the crocodile represents Egypt and Pharaoh, following “Thus says Hashem G-d: I am hereby against you, O Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great crocodile” (Ezekiel 29:3).

By transforming his staff into a crocodile, Aaron challenged Pharaoh and Egypt. And when Pharaoh’s magicians reproduced the sign by transforming their own staffs into crocodiles and Aaron’s crocodile ate theirs (Exodus 7:10-12), he allegorised Pharaoh and the Egyptians’ inevitable defeat at the hand of Israel.

In the words of the Ba’al ha-Turim (Rabbi Ya’akov ben Asher, Germany and Spain, c.1275-1343), “he allegorically demonstrated to him that just as this crocodile returned to being dry wood, so too Pharaoh would return to being dust and rotting [flesh] and worms”. Or as Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch (Germany, 1808-1888) expressed it two-thirds of a millennium later, “This sign says to Pharaoh, ‘You and your gods are no more than a stick in my hand’”.

It is intriguing, then, to note in this context that in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, the god Sobek – the god of pharaonic power, fertility, and military prowess and who was supposed to provide protection against malignant forces – was written either as a crocodile on a shrine or as a mummified crocodile; also that the hieroglyph for a generic pharaoh was a pair of crocodiles.

Why was it Aaron’s staff rather than Moses’s which G-d transformed into a crocodile?

I suggest that we can extrapolate the answer from the Midrashic explanation of why G-d told Moses to tell Aaron to use his staff to transform the waters of the River Nile into blood (Exodus 7:19), to bring the frogs up from the rivers (8:1), and to smite the dust of Egypt that it turn into lice (8:12). Why Aaron with his staff, and not Moses with his staff?

The waters of Egypt had protected Moses when, as a helpless baby, the ark in which he lay floated peacefully on the River Nile. Thus it was not appropriate for Moses, whose life had been saved by the waters, to then smite those waters, either by turning them to blood or by bringing forth the frogs. Smiting the waters was left to Aaron.

Similarly, when Moses had killed the Egyptian slave-driver for beating the Jewish slave (Exodus 2:11-12), he hid the corpse in the sand, giving him time to avoid detection for the time it took him to escape from Egypt. It was thus equally inappropriate for Moses to smite the dust of Egypt by turning it to lice; that, too, was left to Aaron and his staff (Sh’mot Rabbah 9:10, 10:4, 10:6; Tanhuma, Va’eira 14).

And extrapolating from this, it is consistent that it was inappropriate for Moses, who had been raised in Pharaoh’s palace, fed and clothed, educated and protected, by the Egyptian royal house, to have his staff transformed into a crocodile, for him to show how Egyptian royalty was no more than a piece of dead wood.

Moses owed some residual loyalty to the Egyptian royal house which had rescued and raised him as an infant.

The trend emerges that Moses’s staff was designated to perform wonders for Israel, while Aaron’s staff was designated to perform wonders for the Egyptians. So complementing this, when Israel stood at the shore of the Red Sea with Pharaoh and the remnants of the Egyptian army closing in on them, G-d told Moses – not Aaron – to stretch forth his staff over the waters to split the sea for Israel (Exodus 14:15-16).

Likewise when battling Amalek, it was Moses who stood “with the Staff of G-d in my hand” (Exodus 17:9).

And one final thought about Moses’s and Aaron’s staffs. Aaron was the leader whose overriding characteristic was peace, whose most powerful instinct was his love of peace. “Hillel said: Be of the disciples of Aaron, loving peace and pursuing peace” (Pirkei Avot 1:12). The Talmud and the Mdrashim are replete with stories of how Aaron would do anything for the sake of peace.

This was the contrast between Moses and Aaron: “Moses would say: Let the law [i.e. strict justice] pierce the mountain! Whereas Aaron loved peace and pursued peace, always bringing peace between man and his fellow” (Sanhedrin 6b).

Moses kept the nation in line through justice, while Aaron kept them in line through peace and love of peace:

“Whenever Aaron would walk along the way and encounter an evil man, he would greet him with peace. If the next day that same man would consider committing any sin, he would say to himself: Woe is me! How will I be able to raise my eyes after doing this and look Aaron in the face?! I would be so ashamed before him, since he greeted me with peace! And consequently, that man would restrain himself from sinning” (Avot de-Rabbi Natan 12:3).

Therefore when it came to striking against a truly evil nation, enemies of Israel, Aaron was the right man for the job, and his staff was the right tool for the job. Moses, the man of strict justice, was not the right man to bring plagues against Egypt: after all, what sin had the ordinary Egyptian civilian committed, that he deserved to be smitten with blood, frogs, or lice? Strict justice may have prevented the blanket condemnation of the nation.

It was Aaron, the supreme peacemaker, and his staff who had to bring these plagues upon Egypt. It was only Aaron who could teach us the message: If you want peace, then you have to destroy the enemy of Israel whose ambition is to exterminate Israel. That is the way to bring peace into the world – even, when necessary, when that entails suspending strict justice.

by Daniel Pinne

THE OLD TESTAMENT AND ITS CORRUPTION

fact, the author of Chronicles... makes the claim that the 70 sabbatical years from the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites until the destruction of the Temple were not observed. (6)

According to the Damascus document (of which seven copies were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls) the Lord gave the Torah to Moses in its entirety in written form. These writings were sealed in the Ark for approximately five centuries, however, and were therefore unfamiliar to the masses. Discussing the problem of David’s adulterous relationship with Bathsheba (7) and why he was not put to death, the Damascus document answers, “the books of the Law had been sealed in the Ark from the time of Joshua \c. 1200 B.C.E.] until the time of King Josiah of Judah [seventh century B.C.E.] , when they were rediscovered and republished [see 2 Kings 22] .” (8) Meaning that David and the rabbis who were his contemporaries were completely oblivious to what lay written in the Torah.

Whether we conjecture that the Torah was placed within the .Ark or simply beside it, the subject is highly convoluted. The .Ark itself was lost to the Philistines for seven months during the Philistine invasions (c. 1 050- 1020 B.C.E.); upon its recovery, fifty-thousand and seventy Israelites from the town of Beth-shemesh were destroyed by God for daring to peek intothe Ark. (9) By the time King Solomon ordered that the Ark be  moved to the First Temple, 1 Kings 8:9 informs us that its sole contents were the two tablets which Moses had brought back from Sinai - not the entire Law. Even if the Torah was kept separately from the Ark, it seems to have disappeared entirely from Jewish life for centuries. Seventy sabbatical years (five centuries), if not more, passed without any public recital of the Law, culminating in the introduction of foreign gods and pagan rites into the Israelite populace. This is surely a clear indication that the Torah had long since been erased from the nation’s collective memory. Not until the eighteenth year of King Josiah’s reign (640-609 B.C.E.) was the Torah ‘miraculously rediscovered,’ 10 prompting Josiah’s sweeping reforms against child sacrifice and other pagan rituals. But the Torah was still not in common use for another two centuries at least. It seems to have disappeared from Jewish consciousness as suddenly as it appeared. There is good evidence to suggest that the first reading and expounding of the Law to the general public (after the time of Moses) did not occur until Ezra’s promulgation c. 449 B.C.E. Note that there is a massive gap of over 170 years from the time of the Law’s rediscovery (621 B.C.E.) to Ezra’s recital. (11)

footnote :

6 A. Demsky, “Who Returned First: Ezra or Nehemiah”, Bible Review, vol. xii, no.
2, April 1996, p. 33.

7 For the story of Bathsheba see 2 Samuel 1 1 .

8 G.A. Anderson, “Torah Before Sinai - The Do’s and Don’ts Before the Ten
Commandments”, Bible Review, vol. xii, no. 3, June 1996, p. 43.

9 See 1 Samuel 6:19.

10 2 Kings 23:2-10.

11 Dictionary of the Bible, p.954

“Angels don’t harm Prophets”

A Christian said “Angels don’t harm Prophets” he was trying to make a point saying, that Prophet Muhammed Pbuh was “harmed” in the Cave when he received his first revelation.  Firstly, Prophet Muhammed Pbuh was not “harmed or attacked” in the Cave. Secondly, he was squeezed tightly, there was no grievous bodily harm in any way, scholars have given their opinion to why he was squeezed.  Some scholars say he wasn’t dreaming, this was a real event, it was a physical event not a dream. Others say Gabriel (Pbuh) is indicating Prophet Muhammed Pbuh will be inspired with a heavy message, it was not going to be easy and physically painful.  And some scholars deprive, this was an indication of three significant trials, (1^st the boycott, where Muslims for two and a half years literally had almost no food to eat. 2^nd the assassination attempt, and the Hijra 3^rd the most difficult time for Prophet Muhammed Pbuh was the battle of Uhud, when Prophet Pbuh was surrounded by the Quraish). So, these three times it is as if he is being indicated, you will have three traumatic experiences and every time Allah Swt will open the way out for you.

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We can conclude the tight squeeze had its unique meaning behind it. Christians who bring this event trying to show a negative meaning behind it only dig their hole even deeper. One doesn’t have to go far to destroy this argument that “Angels never harm the Prophets”. If there’s one thing that we can be certain about is, Christians have no knowledge of the Midrash relating to the story of Moses, or else they would have refrained from making such ludicrous claim.

We have writings found in the Midrash where Moses was harmed by an Angel.

The midrash tells that the daughter of Pharaoh would kiss and hug Moses as if he were her own son, and she would not take him out of the royal palace. Because of his beauty, everyone desired to see him, and no one who saw him could tear his eyes away. Moses’s life was in danger, despite the daughter of Pharaoh’s guarding of the infant. One time Pharaoh held Moses and hugged him. Moses took Pharaoh’s crown from the monarch’s head and put it on his own, as he would later do when he grew up. Pharaoh’s magicians, who were sitting there, explained: “We fear that this child will take your crown and place it on his own head, lest this be the one who we prophesy will seize the kingdom from you.” Some of the magicians said to kill the child, and some said to have him burnt. Jethro was sitting among them (as one of the magicians). He told them: “This child is witless. In order to test him, set before him two bowls, one containing gold, and the other, a coal. If he stretches his hand to the coal, he is witless and does not deserve to die; but if he stretches his hand to the gold, he did this with intelligence, and he is to be put to death.” They immediately set before him the gold and the coal and Moses put forth his hand to take the gold, but Gabriel came and pushed his hand away. Moses took the coal and put his hand, with the coal, in his mouth. His tongue was burnt, thus causing him to be (Ex. 4:10) “slow of speech and slow of tongue” (Ex. Rabbah 1:26). The Rabbis observe that the daughter of Pharaoh raised in the palace the one who would eventually bring all manner of troubles upon her father as punishment for the subjugation of Israel, as is said in Ezek. 28:18: “So I made a fire issue from you, and it has devoured you,” thus symbolizing the manner in which the future redemption would occur.

 The midrash replies that she saw the Shekhinah (the Divine Presence) with him, and the wording “va-tire-hu” alludes to the name of God (Ex. Rabbah 1:24). Another approach is based on the continuation of the verse, that relates that the child’s weeping motivated the daughter of Pharaoh: “She saw that it was a child, a boy crying. She took pity on it.” The Rabbis maintain that divine intervention was needed for the infant to cry, which they learn from a close reading of v. 6. The beginning of the verse refers to Moses as a “child [yeled],” and then calls him a “boy [na’ar],” from which the Rabbis learn that Moses was a yeled, that is, an infant, but he conducted himself as a na’ar (an older child). Thus, when the daughter of Pharaoh opened the ark, Moses, unlike other babies, did not cry. The angel Gabriel immediately came and hit Moses so that he would cry, thereby arousing the compassion of the daughter of Pharaoh (Ex. Rabbah 1:24). Another tradition claims that the daughter of Pharaoh suffered from leprosy and she went down to bathe in the water to be cured of her disease. When she touched Moses’s ark, she was miraculously cured, leading her to take pity on the child and love him so strongly (Ex. Rabbah 1:23).

Notice how Angel Gabriel according to the Jewish Midrash pushed baby Moses’s hand towards the coal, which he eat and burnt his mouth causing him speech impediment. Also Angel Gabriel according to the Midrash “hit Moses when he was a baby” arousing compassion to the daughter of Pharaoh.

In both instance the Angel caused actual physical harm to Moses, that is when he was a baby! So much for “Angels don’t harm Prophets” it gets worse we read from the “Torah” Yahweh tried to kill Moses?

At a lodging place on the way the LORD met him and sought to put him to death. (Exodus 4:24)

Wait a tick Yahweh wanted to kill Moses what for?  Starting from verse 1 all the way to verse 23 there is no sign of Yahweh showing his wrath to Moses. Yahweh had a straight forward conversation with Moses commanding and instructing him what needs to be done. Why all of a sudden did Yahweh sought to kill him? For what reason do you see the gap between verse 23 and 24 like a major leap something happened in between those verses. What could have possibly happened that Yahweh wanted to kill him? Something is missing, furthermore there is no grammatical or linguistic way to solve this problem. this isn't half of what comes next.

Here’s what Rashi say’s regarding this verse

on the way, in an inn and sought to put him to death: [I.e., He sought] Moses, because he had neglected to circumcise his son Eliezer. Because he neglected it, he was [to be] punished with death. It was taught in a Braitha: Rabbi Jose said: God forbid! Moses did not neglect it, but he reasoned: Shall I circumcise [him] and go forth on the road? It will be dangerous for the child for three days. Shall I circumcise [him] and wait three days? The Holy One, blessed be He, commanded me, “Go, return to Egypt.” [Moses hurried to Egypt intending to circumcise Eliezer upon his return.] Why [then] was he to be punished with death? Because first he busied himself with [the details of] his lodging. [This appears] in tractate Nedarim (31b). The angel turned into a sort of serpent and swallowed him [Moses] from his head to his thighs, and then [spit him out and] swallowed him from his feet to his private parts. Zipporah therefore understood that it was because of [the failure to perform] the circumcision [that this occurred]. — [from Ned. 32a, Exodus Rabbah 5:5]

we have a very graphic and detailed explanation of what really happened according to Jewish belief. Here's the striking part on how an Angel turned into a Serpent and swallowed Moses half way? 

"The angel turned into a sort of serpent and swallowed him [Moses] from his head to his thighs, and then [spit him out and] swallowed him from his feet to his private parts."This is an unusual event which is spoken by classical Jewish scholars. Can you imagine Yahweh sent an Angel to kill his Messenger who he himself, sent to carry out a mission?

Christian don’t believe in Hadiths, nor do they Believe in the Midrash or the commentaries written by Rabbi, either way Christian have no say. Both Muslims and Jews have their own Belief and tradition written down in black and white. Unfortunately, Christians have nothing of the sort, so when they come across the Midrash or Hadith they feel frustrated.

to sum it all up:

Moses was “Hit” by an Angel when he was a baby. He was made to eat hot coal by an angel which burnt his mouth and he was also half swallowed by a serpent send by Yahweh who tried to kill him and this is all found in the Jewish oral tradition. we conclude according to the Jews “Angels do harm Prophets”