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All that, a creator can do. But the creator doesn’t live on the board. That’s not his natural place. The board is the environment put in place for the created, not the Creator.[15]
When we look around the universe demanding to touch, feel or see the Creator—we are looking in the wrong place; we are treating the Creator as if He were one of us. The universe is the place made for creatures; it’s not the natural domicile of the Creator.[16]
To make it short and sweet, the Sages simply called God The Place. The Definition that Wasn’t
point. You want to know who I am? God is saying. The best I can give you is this: I am that which I am. There is no other way to define Me other than in terms of Myself. And if you stop to think about that for a moment, you’ll realize why that has to be true.
So that’s step one: pick your god. Step two? Try your best to appease it. As I mentioned before, gods in the polytheistic pantheon are powerful, but they are not all-powerful—which means they have needs. And if they have needs, they can be bribed; or, to put it more charitably, they can be bartered with. I can give the god something of value. And maybe if I do that, the god will not be so oblivious to my quickly-wilting crops.
what? I am part of that grand tapestry of existence, too. I find myself in possession of this marvelous gift called life—and I have the Creator to thank for that. I quite literally owe the world to this Being.
The idea that a human being ought to actually feel love toward the Divine is perhaps the great innovation of monotheism. Take a look at the Shema—the basic credo of the faith of Israel. First come the words: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.” That sentence appeals to the mind; it expresses acceptance of an idea—belief in the One God. Now look at the very next words, and you will find that they address not the mind but the heart: “And you shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your might, and with all your soul.” The Torah is clear about this. The most
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so: If I really have a Creator, then my life is not just the byproduct of cold, blind chance. Someone wants me to be here, brought me into this world, and gave me the wherewithal to make something of myself here on earth. Love seems an entirely fitting response to that.
why would it be important for God to reveal to the world that He was not merely El Shaddai, a very powerful force—but YHVH, the one Creator-God? The answer should now be evident. It wasn’t just a matter of divine ego, or dispensing with false competition from imaginary gods. It was about changing the very meaning of spirituality. It was a matter of introducing the ideas of gratitude, morality and love into the vocabulary of human interaction with the Divine. It was a matter of revealing to mankind that there was a Parent up there in the heavens, a parent who cared about what went on with His
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And Egypt will know that I am YHVH, as I stretch My hand out over Egypt, and deliver the Children of Israel from their midst (Exodus 7:5)
If you are the Master of the Universe, and you want to effectuate the release of the Hebrews from Egyptian bondage, what is the best way to achieve that aim?
your goal might be to defeat the idea that keeps the Hebrews enslaved. If you could change the oppressor’s allegiance to that idea, then servitude and oppression would fall away of their own accord.
If, somehow, Pharaoh could be convinced of the truth of the Creator-God’s existence, and come to see himself as a subject in that Creator’s kingdom—well, there could be no more elegant, nor speedier, way to cause the evil of Egyptian slavery to simply melt away, as if on its own.
it appears God tried to do exactly this. Pharaoh and Egypt, in the end, weren’t up to the task of honestly accepting the declaration and the accompanying sign. But the good-faith attempt was made. We might call it Plan A—the optimal way of achieving the release of the Hebrews.
The idea that the Exodus had a dual purpose—freeing the Israelites, and establishing the knowledge that YHVH is Creator,
For some reason, he seemed more impressed with the precision of a given plague than with the raw power evinced by that plague.
As it turns out, the issue of power versus precision is one of the overlooked crossroads where the paths of paganism and monotheism diverge.
In a polytheistic universe, you would see lots of power, but very little control. No one could predict with precision which force would hold sway at 4:30 pm next Tuesday. It is control, therefore—the precise, pinpointed application of power—that really gets Pharaoh’s attention. Precise control over the plagues, even more than their power, calls into question the intellectual foundations of paganism.
And there was hail—and fire encased inside the hail (Exodus 9:24)[25]
If there were ever two gods that could be counted upon to never join forces, it would have to be the ice and fire gods. They are sworn enemies: mere contact between them leads to their mutual extinction.
There are at least two ways that Pharaoh could ruin everything through an unpredictable exercise of free will.
In effect, God’s stance toward Pharaoh, in strengthening his heart, would be something like this: Let’s not let expediency decide this conflict between you and Me. Let’s decide this on principle. If, throughout this struggle, you ever want to give in on principle, if you ever lose confidence in the justness of your position, if you ever come to the conclusion that I am in fact the Creator, and that you are duty bound to release My people that you have enslaved—I will gladly accept your surrender, and we will call an end to the conflict. If, on the other hand, you have not changed your mind
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What if, instead of giving in too soon, Pharaoh never gives in and recognizes the Creator, even when the evidence is absolutely overwhelming? We might call this the problem of stubbornness.
kibbud halev, which literally translates to “hardness of heart,” or more colloquially, “stubbornness”
Were he to concede that the force opposing him is actually his Creator—well, that comes with a shattering and humbling duty to reappraise who he really is.
A consequence of distinguishing between chizuk halev and kibbud halev, as we have done, is that it may change our thinking about whether God ever deprived Pharaoh of free will at all. To know for sure, we’d have to trace our way through the Ten Plagues, and for each instance in which Pharaoh changed his mind, ask two crucial questions: What, exactly, is happening to Pharaoh’s heart? Is the text describing Pharaoh as becoming more “courageous” or more “stubborn”? To find out, we need to look at the verbs the Torah is using: Is it talking about chizuk halev or kibbud halev? Who, Exactly, is
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When you think about it, chizuk halev and kibbud halev are opposites. Strength of heart is a good thing: an actual, biological heart is a muscle, and when it’s strong, it’s flexible. A hard heart is a bad thing: it suggests calcification, inability to change. Courage is the vision to pursue my goal; stubbornness is a doom-inducing blindness to the fact that my goal is not achievable.
The story of the plagues is, to some extent, the story of a protracted negotiation between Moses and Pharaoh, a process marked by constant changes of mind on the part of the Egyptian king.
by two different Hebrew phrases, chizuk halev and kibbud halev, which we have rendered as “strengthening of heart” and “hardening of heart,”
The notion of celebration implies a deity that values a relationship with people. It implies that joy can be part of a relationship with the deity.
That there is a Being up there who truly desires a “personal” connection with people, a YHVH Creator-Being—this makes no sense to Pharaoh. Nobody celebrates with a god.
Pharaoh may have rejected what Moses has said, but he has heard it. The process of education has begun. Moses has set forth an end point for that process, a goal. One day, Pharaoh may yet come to recognize the kind of God Moses has introduced here. But until then, Moses and God will take small, incremental steps toward showing that this vision of the Creator is real.
Moses’s second speech makes sense to Pharaoh. This god doesn’t sound as crazy to him as the last one, which explains why his response to it is so different from his response to the first speech:
Consequently, Pharaoh issues orders to make the slaves work harder. It’s a perfectly logical, if evil, response. Pharaoh is just trying to make sure his slaves understand who their “true” master really is.
If Pharaoh continued to prove himself amenable to thoughtful consideration and reason, there might be no need for harsher measures like plagues.
Had Pharaoh been open to learning the truth about this Creator-God, it was there for him, on a silver platter. It was there in the only sign God ever instructed Moses to perform for Pharaoh, and it predated the plagues. The process of education did not necessitate the eventual violence of the plagues.
We are going to read through the Torah’s recounting of the plagues, and as we do, we will pay special attention to some of the nuances we talked about earlier—the “power” and “precision” of the plagues, as well as the words the Torah uses to characterize Pharaoh’s response to them: chizuk halev and kibbud halev, the “strengthening” and the “hardening” of Pharaoh’s heart. We will regard “strength of heart” as a synonym for courage, and “hardness of heart” as a synonym for stubbornness.[33]
And YHVH said to Moses: The heart of Pharaoh is hardened. He’s refused to send out the People (Exodus 7:14)
Whether Pharaoh’s response is one of courage or stubbornness is a matter of perspective. Pharaoh thinks of himself as courageous, but God Himself sees things differently. As God expresses it to Moses, he’s made himself stubborn (kaved lev).
He is blinding himself to a truth he does not want to see. He is hardening his heart, not strengthening it.
As you wish! So that you should know, that there is none like YHVH, our God! (Exodus 8:6)
when Pharaoh reneges on his commitment to let his slaves go, look at the language the Torah uses to express this turn of events: And Pharaoh hardened his heart… (Exodus 8:11) It’s the first time the text uses that language. All of a sudden, the Torah characterizes Pharaoh’s decision to hold on to his slaves as an act of stubbornness. What earlier was seen as courage is now deemed blind obstinacy.
Had Pharaoh allowed the implications of this to enter his heart, he would have had to abandon the struggle; he would have had to recognize YHVH’s true identity as the Heavenly Power that has no competition. But Pharaoh does not do this. He “hardens his heart,” keeping the threatening evidence at arm’s length. He blinds himself to the implications of what he’s just seen, and continues his struggle against the God of the Hebrews. All of a sudden, Pharaoh has a new enemy. It is no longer just Moses, or even Moses’s God, that Pharaoh opposes. He is now at war against the ancient and timeless enemy
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And the astrologers told Pharaoh: It is the finger of ‘elohim’ (Exodus 8:15)
God set a particular, appointed time for the plague, saying: Tomorrow, this thing will happen (Exodus 9:5)
And the magicians could not even stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boils were upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians (Exodus 9:11)
Until now, the biblical text is very clear that Pharaoh had been the one to strengthen or harden his own heart; God had not involved Himself in the affairs of Pharaoh’s heart. Now, for the first time, that will change.
And God strengthened the heart of Pharaoh (Exodus 9:12) For the first time, during the sixth plague, God is on record as having interfered, so to speak, in the affairs of Pharaoh’s heart. Why?
Should Pharaoh ever actually give in on his vision, should he ever acknowledge his subservience to his Creator—that would be another matter entirely. God would surely accept a surrender on grounds of principle. But failing that, God would ensure that Pharaoh was equipped with the mental resolve to press his case to the very end. The issues at stake were too important to be decided in any other way.
But the Torah itself regards the plague of hail as unique among the plagues. How else are we to understand these words, which Moses is instructed to deliver to Pharaoh:
