ספורנו — ויריצוהו מן הבור

Q — Why does the Torah bother with the small word "ויריצוהו" — that Yosef was *rushed* out of the pit? It feels like incidental color.

A — For Sforno this word encodes a foundational principle about how divine salvation operates: "כדרך כל תשועת ה' שנעשית כמו רגע." He marshals four supports. Yeshayahu 56:1 — "כי קרובה ישועתי לבוא"; Tehillim 81:14-15 — "לו עמי שומע לי... כמעט אויביהם אכניע," where Sforno glosses "כמעט" as "כמו רגע." The Exodus — "כי גורשו ממצרים," which Sforno (on Va'era) reads not as the dough being caught short but as the journey itself being too fast for fermentation: "מרעמסס... עד שהגיעו לסוכות שהיא חוץ לגבולם." And future redemption — "ופתאום יבוא אל היכלו האדון אשר אתם מבקשים" (Malachi 3:1). Yosef's running out of the pit is a paradigm: tehu'ah does not arrive gradually; it arrives suddenly. The peripheral verb anchors a Sforno-wide principle.