Parashat Va'era: A Plague On Both Your Houses!

Joe Cohen has managed to beat forty other applicants by reaching the final stage of the selection process for a senior position at Microsoft.  He leaves his house early but encounters a ten-mile tailback on the motorway due to a serious accident.

He arrives at the car park with a few minutes to spare but there are no free spaces.  Driving around and around, he starts panicking and in a moment of desperation looks up to the sky and cries out, “Oh Gd, I’m desperate to make this appointment on time.  If you could find a way of arranging this for me, I promise you that I will go to shul/synagoue every day for every service, give 50% of my monthly salary to Tzedaka/charity and promise to learn a page of Gemara/Talmud (Daf Yomi) every day for the rest of my life.”

As the final words leave his lips, the car in front pulls out of the spot enabling him to park directly opposite the entrance to the building.  He looks up at Gd and says, “Don’t worry, I’ve found one!”

In Parashat Va’era, we read of the first seven plagues that Hashem inflicted upon the Egyptians.  Reading them as we do on an annual basis in this week’s Parasha and then again at our Pesach Sedarim, how many of us give much thought as to their significance?

From an early age, we are taught the story of how Pharaoh refused to free the Israelites, so Gd punished the Egyptians and eventually, following the deaths of the firstborn sons including Pharaoh’s own heir, he caved in and ‘let the people go’…only to change his mind and pursue the Israelites to the Yam Suf/Sea of Reeds.

Have you ever asked yourself what the purpose of the plagues was and who they were aimed at? 

We have been brought up being told that the Egyptians were the intended target of Gd’s ire but perhaps the answer to the question is not as simple as we have been led to believe.

The Rambam in his ‘Guide for the Perplexed’ writes:

‘The object of all these plagues was to establish in the minds of that people as well as in the minds of the Israelites, the existence of Gd and the idea that He is the living Gd who can do whatsoever He pleases.

They were also meant to show that by His word the laws of nature are set aside and that He is not like the gods of the nations which have no power over anything and are themselves subject to the same laws of nature as other bodies.

The plagues were further intended to prove to the Israelites that Gd had not forgotten them and that He would fulfil His promise made to their ancestors.

Lastly, they served as a preparation for the giving of the Law, which was to be proclaimed amidst great and fearful signs and wonders, in order that the people might firmly believe in the prophecy, and might for ever know that whatever the prophet commanded in the name of Gd was true, right, and obligatory.’

As per our simple reading of the Torah (i.e.  on the Peshat level), Gd was demonstrating to the Egyptians, and by extension the Bnei Yisrael, the awesome power of His majesty.  Nothing was beyond His control, from turning water to blood, through decimating livestock, afflicting people firstly with lice and then boils, to destroying crops by sending locusts and combining fire and ice to form deadly hailstones – Gd had dominion over every aspect of the natural world.

It doesn’t take much to imagine what it must have felt like to be an Egyptian living through those traumatic times.  Their entire world and belief system was under attack, even to the extent that the sun god (Ra), which they worshipped, was hidden from them during the three days of the penultimate plague of darkness.  They were living through a nightmare brought on as a result of their cruel behaviour towards the Israelites. 

The Midrash Tanchuma states that each of the plagues represented punishment for a particular wrong that the Egyptians did to the Israelites:

·         They made them drawers of water and so their river was turned to blood;

·         They made them load their freight and the frogs destroyed it;

·         They had the Jews sweep the streets and the dust turned into lice;

·         They made the Jews watch their children and God flooded the country with wild animals that ‘devoured the children’;

·         The Egyptians made them cattle-herders, whereupon the pestilence killed the herds;

·         They used them to prepare their baths and then they developed boils which made it impossible for them to wash;

·         The Jews were made stone-cutters and HaShem sent hailstones against the Egyptians;

·         They were forced to tend the vineyards and fields and the locusts consumed all that grew;

·         The Egyptians sought to keep the Jews as prisoners and were themselves shackled by the thick darkness that fell upon Egypt;

·         Their murderous designs upon the Jews brought the killing of the firstborn and their drowning of Jewish children was repaid by their death in the Sea of Reeds.

(source: https://www.betemunah.org/plagues.html#_ftnref38)

Thus far, according to the Rambam and the Midrash, we can see that the Egyptians are being punished ‘mida keneged mida’ or measure for measure in respect of the way they treated the Bnei Yisrael.

If we look at the Rambam’s second and third points, the focus shifts from the Egyptians to the Bnei Yisrael.  As well as demonstrating Gd’s awesome power over nature, Gd was simultaneously providing a Divine-sourced morale booster to the subjugated descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov.  He was reminding them of the promise he made to all three that one day, in the not-too-distant-future, they would be able to leave Egypt behind and return to the ‘land flowing with milk and honey’.  Gd could and would arrange this.  They just had to ‘hold tight’ and know that this would transpire.  The plagues that He was inflicting on the country would inevitably force Pharaoh and his minions to free the Bnei Yisrael and send them on their journey to The Promised Land.

Which leads us to the final objective suggested by the Rambam and this is the one which links to the joke I started my Drasha with.  Gd’s inflicting the plagues upon Egypt was meant to cement the legitimacy of Moshe, in the eyes of the people he was soon to lead out of the country, via the miracles being performed both in the Court of Pharaoh and through the initiation of each plague, via the actions of Moshe and Aharon. 

If you read the text, you will see that aside from the final plague, which we will encounter next week, the brothers were instrumental in summoning the power of Gd to send each plague.  Aharon struck the waters of the Nile and after turning into blood, they later brought forth a frog (or frogs, depending on which interpretation you follow).  When Moshe’s staff encountered the dust on the ground, this was miraculously transformed into lice and so on and so forth.

Gd’s splitting of the Sea had not yet taken place yet.  A bevy of miracles and wonders to prepare them for the greatest one of all – the giving of the Torah on Sinai.

And yet, no sooner had they crossed the Yam Suf, having witnessed miracles that no-one had seen before, they were complaining about not having water to drink.  It is as though the staff transforming into snakes, and all the events that had led to their exodus, were but a distant memory.  In the parlance of our protagonist, a plea from the people to Gd, dismissing His intervention in their lives instead of recognising His Divine handiwork.

Ironically, one could argue that at least Pharaoh had received His message loud and clear, as per his allowing the Bnei Yisrael to leave.  So, the Rambam’s first objective was met.  One would like to assume that their morale was boosted but this seems short-lived as they were already complaining by the time they reached the Yam Suf.  As for the third point, their lack of belief accompanied them throughout their wanderings in the desert.  It accounted for the sin of the Golden Calf as well as the failure of the spies’ mission.  They even criticized the manna they received.  A miracle, if ever there was one.

When I titled this Drasha ‘A Plague on Both Your Houses’, my intention was to explain the idea both from a physical and metaphorical viewpoint.  Whereas the Egyptians were afflicted, our ancestors were also impacted, if not literally, then figuratively.  Had they understood and taken on board (if we follow the Rambam’s commentary) the purpose and significance of the plagues, they could have avoided all the challenges that they had to deal with over the four decades, that led to their eventual demise in the deserts separating the land of Egypt and its northern neighbour.  How different our story would have been!

Miracles happen on a daily basis.  We can choose to acknowledge them or act like Joe Cohen, refusing to recognise them for what they are.  Whenever Gd does his bit to help us (which we call Hashgachat Pratit – or Divine Providence), let’s take a moment and thank Him.  It will remind us of the lessons we can still learn from the plagues that struck Egypt so many years ago and of course The Rambam would be very proud!

Shavuah Tov