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The text suggests that this one plague carries a message about the oneness of God that is so overt, so utterly convincing, that it can be seen as equivalent to all the other plagues combined. Finally, look at how this same verse characterizes the target of the plague, as it were. Even more than the land that the plague will strike, it is designed to strike upon a more personal battlefield: This time, I will send all My plagues into your heart (Exodus 9:14)
And then God gives Pharaoh the answer: It was only for this that I’ve allowed you to stand: it was to show you My strength, so that My name will be told of, all over the world (Exodus 9:16)
there is an ominous undercurrent in God’s words to him. Despite your evil oppression of the Israelites, you can still play a constructive role here. But if you choose not to play it, there are other ways My ends can be achieved…
God would prefer that this revelation come about through Egypt’s free-willed recognition—either all at once, through a sign, or over time, with the plagues. But if not, it will come about through their destruction. One way or the other, the slaves will be freed and the world will learn that there is a Creator. And one way or the other, Pharaoh and Egypt will be the vehicles. The only question is: will they be actors, or mere pawns?
first, it is the only plague that comes with a warning from God as to how the Egyptians can avoid, or at least soften, the effects of the plague:
A power so assured of victory that it can afford to warn its enemy? A divine power that has compassion for its foe? If you are Pharaoh listening to this warning, this doesn’t sound at all like a pagan god addressing its enemy.
The fire and ice gods are mortal enemies. They extinguish one another; an alliance between them is impossible. Only one Being would conceivably have the authority to force cooperation between fire and ice: the God who created both of them.
And Pharaoh sent and called to Moses and Aaron and said to them: I have sinned this time. YHVH is the righteous One, and my people and I are the wicked ones (Exodus 9:27)
The hope of having Pharaoh recognize His Creator and respond to His wishes has finally been fulfilled. Or has it?
When Pharaoh saw that the rain, the hail and the thunders had ceased—he continued to sin, and he hardened his heart, he and his servants (Exodus 9:34)
after the plague of hail, when Pharaoh hardens his heart this time, it’s completely different. It is a tipping point in the whole Exodus story. Things will never be the same.
Pharaoh had never yet consciously recognized a moral force to which he was subject; he had never consciously recognized the existence of a Creator. Whenever he had previously hardened his heart, he was dogmatically reaffirming his polytheistic view of the world and his own place in it. In essence, he was ignoring all evidence that militated against his beliefs. But ignoring evidence is a subconscious act of resistance.
He is engaging in a conscious act of rebellion against the Creator. He is saying, in effect: I know there is a Creator, that I am duty bound to listen to Him, and I know what He wants from me. But I just don’t care. I’m keeping my slaves anyway. When Pharaoh reneges now, after the hail, he is not keeping the facts at bay; he is taking things he knows to be true and throwing them out, as it were, onto the sidewalk.
This is the first time that the text has used both key phrases at once—kibbud halev and chizuk halev—to describe Pharaoh’s state of mind: When Pharaoh saw that the rain, the hail and the thunders had ceased—he continued to sin, and he hardened his heart, he and his servants. And Pharaoh’s heart became strengthened, and he did not send out the Children of Israel (Exodus 9:34–35)
Remorse is a noble and sublime product of the free and unfettered human will. Once you cynically mock it, it doesn’t come easily anymore. And so it is with Pharaoh. He will never again see the truth of things as clearly as he does now. His actions in the wake of the seventh plague are fateful: he has started down a path that will be difficult, if not impossible, to depart from. In the great drama of the Exodus, he has chosen, in effect, no longer to be an actor, but a pawn.
We have never before seen language like this. The entire divine plan has evidently changed course. No longer do we hear the idea, so ubiquitous until this point, that the coming plagues will arrive so that Egypt will know that YHVH is God. No, the object is different now. The plagues will continue, to be sure, and they will continue to demonstrate the truth of the Creator-God. But Egypt and Pharaoh are no longer their intended audience. Instead, all this will happen... ...so that you will know that I am YHVH (Exodus 10:2)
Israel is the intended audience now. Pharaoh and Egypt may never recognize God, but Israel will.
Pharaoh will now be a pawn in the process, not an actor. He will be used for the Almighty’s own ends.
really: only after Pharaoh himself is willing to use the word sin to characterize his own actions, is the biblical narrator willing to use that word. Only after the king himself views himself as morally subject to God’s will is it a moral failure for Pharaoh to renege and continue to defy God.
Reality becomes just another enemy to be managed, and what better weapon to combat it than bullheadedness?
strength. Pharaoh was wrong, though. Denial of reality is never a strength; it is always a weakness.
And Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh and said to him: Thus says YHVH, the God of the Hebrews, ‘How long will you withhold yourself from bowing in submission before Me? Send out my people that they may serve Me!’ (Exodus 10:3)
How remarkable these words are. Moses and Aaron have never spoken to Pharaoh with this kind of audacity before. “How long will you withhold yourself from bowing in submission to Me?” Who talks that way to the King of Egypt? It is hard to convey in English just how provocative these words really are. I’ve translated the Hebrew word le’anot here as “bow in submission.” But to put that in context, keep in mind that the verb here, ‘a-n-h, appearing as it does in its pi’el form, is the classic Hebrew term for “enslavement” or “oppression.” It is, in fact, the precise term the Torah used earlier to
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In Plan C, God has a secret weapon. It is nothing fancy, nothing supernatural; the secret weapon is Pharaoh’s own pride, the root cause of his stubbornness.
But they understand something else, too: in describing Moses as a “snare” (or a “trap,” depending on how you translate the Hebrew term mokesh), they seem to intuit that Moses is laying an ambush for them.[41] And in this, of course, they are correct. It is a trap. But will they be able to persuade their master to resist taking the bait?
The absolute political power that Pharaoh has enjoyed until now is slowly slipping from his grasp. His own servants are now at odds with him.
The servants are desperately trying to broker a deal; they do have some power, if only covert power. Pharaoh may have resisted their advice, but he can’t shut them out of the process completely;
Moses and Aaron once again before him, and his disgruntled servants standing off in the shadows, it seems that Pharaoh is finally ready for a concession—a grudging one, to be sure, but a concession nonetheless: You can go serve your God. But tell me, who exactly do you want to go?
And Moses said: With our young and our old we will go. With our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and our cattle, we will go. After all, it is a holiday to YHVH for us! (Exodus 10:9)
God’s involvement in Pharaoh’s recalcitrance: in the end, it appears that God really did harden Pharaoh’s heart. But there was nothing supernatural about the process. Pharaoh had free will to the bitter end. His pride just didn’t let him use it.
It will happen this very night, at midnight: all firstborn in Egypt shall die.
But suddenly, when the tenth plague rolls around, the Children of Israel are no longer granted this automatic immunity. We are led to believe that Israelite firstborn will perish along with Egyptian firstborn unless the Israelites do something. They need to bring a special offering known as Korban Pesach, the “Pesach offering,” and place blood from this offering on the doorposts of their homes. But why would that be necessary?
No, the Korban Pesach actually did something: it transformed the people from a band of slaves into an independent nation committed to God in a certain, special way—a way that could best be described through the designation bechor.
these events were designed to achieve two purposes: they would free Israel, and demonstrate the existence of a Creator.
The Korban Pesach was the beginning of Israel’s attempt to answer that question. It suggested a willingness on the part of Israel to do something deeply personal for the Creator, to play a special role within God’s “family”—a role that helps bind the family together. It suggested their willingness to be God’s bechor, his “firstborn child.”
Israel was the first nation to burst onto the world scene wholly devoted to the idea of being a child in the family of the One God, the Creator of All.
If you were God, how could you transmit your values to your children?
Thus says YHVH: My firstborn child is Israel. I say to you: Send out my child that he may serve Me… (Exodus 4:22–23)
In so doing, she would be a living example of what it means to live the Parent’s agenda in the world of the child, in the world of people and nations.
That night, God would ask something of Israel: Would you be My bechor? If so, here’s what I need you to do… The people were asked to make a bold and brazen choice; they would be forced to choose between freedom and slavery. This would also be their first act of service to the divine Parent, the first time they could demonstrate what it means, in real life, to live as committed monotheists.
That night, they would begin to translate the idea of monotheism into concrete deeds. And so that night, through the medium of Korban Pesach, Israel became the bechor of the Almighty. It was, in a way, Israel’s “oneness offering”—for it proclaimed the oneness of God.[46]
Passover looks at the events of the Exodus as significant not in terms of history but in terms of destiny.
One thing stands out about being a “priest” or a bechor: your life is essentially selfless; your mission is one great act of service. The minute it starts becoming about you—
The mission of Israel only makes sense because God is intensely interested in a relationship with all humanity, and it is up to Israel never to betray its mission by losing sight of that.
When the Children of Israel walked through the sea on dry land, the Sages tell us, if you glanced to the right or left you wouldn’t just see walls of water. No, there was landscaping, too. There were fruit trees, they tell us, on the sides of the path. Apples and pomegranates, the Midrash says, were available for the taking (Exodus Rabbah 21:10).
And [the pillar] came between the camp of Egypt and the camp of Israel, and there was cloud and darkness, and it lit up the night (Exodus 14:20)
It is worth noting that this particular word for “dry land,” yabashah, is an unusual word in Scripture. It appears nowhere else in the Five Books of Moses other than in the Creation story and the Exodus drama.[48]
Moreover, the purpose of the dry land—its function in each story—is the same. In Creation, the dry land was a platform upon which animal life and human life would flourish.
The first four events of Creation, have now transpired again, one after another, at the Sea of Reeds.
The Exodus events, we’ve suggested, were a ratification of God’s role as Creator. Both Israel and Egypt had a choice to make: would they confront those events and take to heart that the world has a Creator, that all the powers of nature derive from a single Transcendent Force?
