The Nature Of The Plagues?
Why does G-d choose these specific plagues?
Nile-to-Blood. Frogs. Lice. Wild Animals (or flies). Plague on livestock. Boils. Thunderstorm. Hail. Locusts. Darkness. Death of the Firstborn.
Why these? And why this order?
Some have posited that each of these corresponds to an Egyptian deity. Each of the plagues can be seen as striking against the power of a deity, e.g. the frog deity, the Nile deity, the Sun deity, etc. – so G-d is showing that G-d is superior in power to each of the known deities of the Egyptians. Hence the rhetorical Mi Kamocha B’elokim following the Exodus. Clearly G-d is more powerful than all these deities.
What if there are different plausible explanations? Consider from a direction-of-source perspective: aren’t the first plagues from under foot, then plagues from ground level, and then plagues from the sky? Is G-d showing dominance over each physical realm in turn?
Are there other patterns we can identify? For example, do the plagues become more personal over time – from national blood and pestilence to solitude with your thoughts in darkness, to familial death?
Who is the audience for the plagues? Is it the Jewish people? Or is G-d really targeting the non-Jewish world? What is G-d trying to achieve, and why? Might answers to this question explain the choice and order of the plagues?
Guild Pride?
What happens when someone in a job loses sight of the Big Picture?
Perhaps the Torah tells us about it. After all, the magicians take pride in their profession. When Moses and Aharon make a rod into a snake, the magicians do likewise. And then, when the Nile turns to blood, and then produces frogs, they demonstrate that they, too, can turn Nile water into blood, and create frogs.
Isn’t this ridiculous? Egypt did not need more blood and frogs! So why did the magicians do it?
Imagine, if you will, being a court magician in ancient Egypt. You have prestige and pride, and you can do things that nobody else can.
One day, some amateurs with no pedigree walk in and show off their own set of tricks! This cannot be tolerated!
There was a bigger story going on, but the magicians could not see it. They put their own honor first.
Isn’t the Torah offering us a very important lesson about entrenched bureaucracies of every kind? Does this not apply today to every manner of older guild or profession, focusing on their own status instead of the larger mission? Have we not seen this in history with great nations hobbled by internal entitlement-seeking (China, Rome, Byzantium), as well as great corporations (RCA, General Motors)?
Is this example of the Magicians indeed applicable as a cautionary tale today? Or am I taking it too far?
The Nature of Pagan Deities?
וַיֹּ֤אמֶר yה-וָה֙ אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֔ה רְאֵ֛ה נְתַתִּ֥יךָ אֱלֹ-ִ֖ים לְפַרְעֹ֑ה ׃
And the Lord said to Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh
The text uses the word Elokim clearly: G-d makes Moses into a deity… how?! Surely we don’t think Moses was a god?! How can the text say it?!
Is the answer found when we understand the nature of paganism: in “natural” pagan religions, doesn’t every physical force have its own god (which is why idol worship is inherently polytheistic)?
So it follows that anyone who exhibits natural powers is a god? Note that the text does not – exactly – say that Moses is a god. Instead, see the modifier: I have made thee a god to Pharaoh. Does that not mean that in Pharoah’s mind, Moses must be a deity?
When Pharoah says I do not know your god, isn’t he saying that, to the Egyptians, a deity who does not project a physically detectable force is no god at all?
If so, the G-d of the Jews, who has no corporeal form or elemental force (like the wind or sun or sea), is entirely unknown and unknowable to Pharoah?
Does G-d try to educate Pharoah? Or just work within Pharoah’s limitations? Why?
Isn’t this a lot like Scientism today, the idea that the only things that matter in the world are the things we can physically measure? Is this not the belief of many atheists as well?
Moses’ Speech Impediment
Moses says he had a sfas orlah, a speech impediment. Yet nobody else in the text ever has trouble understanding Moses. Nobody else even mentions this “impediment.” Why?
And then… despite not having any corrective surgery or physical therapy, Moses goes from being unable to talk to Pharaoh, to confronting Pharoah and speaking to him directly! And from that point on, Moses talks directly, without relying on his brother to be his mouthpiece. The “impediment” is never mentioned again!
How does he lose the impediment? What changes?
Might it be connected to Moses’ origins? Moses was abandoned on the banks of the Nile. The word in the Torah for “bank” is safah. It is the same word used in the Torah for “lips.” And it is the same word that Moses uses to describe his impediment: a blockage of the safah, his lips. So doesn’t Moses claim to have a blockage that is linguistically connected to the banks of the Nile where Moses had been left in a basket by his mother?
Might Moses see his limitations in communicating as stemming from his past?
Moses’ impediment seemingly connects to his origins in the banks of the Nile. But then it goes away!
Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is coming out to the water, and station yourself before him at the bank (safah) of the Nile taking with you the rod that turned into a snake.
Moses goes back to the place where he had been abandoned. And there, in that place, he finds himself in precisely the place where he had first been left. He goes back to his roots, and gets a do-over. And the speech impediment vanishes for everyone – including Moses – from that point on! But how does that work, exactly?
Also – note the snake. The first snake in the Torah was transformative. Did not the snake lead Adam and Eve toward knowledge of good and evil, to self- awareness?
Might the snake have done for Moses precisely what it did for Eve: effect permanent change?