Parashat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16)
For several weeks, we have been reading the Torah portions that describe the Ten Plagues: blood, frogs, lice, raging beasts that were composites of multiple animals, animal pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness and death of the first born.
We all know the sequence and images, so central both to the Exodus from Egypt and to the haggadah narrative at the seder, where we commemorate our liberation from slavery. In this week’s parashah, the final plagues unfold, and our nation goes free.
For many, the plagues seem a fanciful account. However, if we look beyond the plastic figurines of frogs that children are given as playthings at the seder, perhaps the plagues take on a more reasonable meaning. Let us consider three approaches:
First, the plagues eradicated the Egyptian food supply, step by step, bringing the world’s then-mightiest power to its knees. The blood destroyed the water supply, and the frogs that emanated from the pollution confirmed that something was perilously toxic in the Nile and elsewhere. The lice permeated the soil, destroying vegetables about to grow. The mixed animals came “from out of nowhere,” violently trampling all vegetables that already had grown.
Next, the pestilence wiped out the meat supply, killing horses, donkeys, camels, cattle and sheep. After the boils isolated the Egyptian leaders, fiery hail balls rained down, smashing grain stalks and incinerating the surrounding dried terrain. The locust plague followed, cleaning out all fruit on the trees.
The entire food supply now was destroyed, and the plague of darkness descended, affording the Egyptians an opportunity to sit quietly and to ponder what slavery had wrought. When they still did not free the Jews, the Tenth Plague struck every Egyptian home.
Another perspective: The Ten Plagues were conducted purposefully, unleashed as methodically as a military battle plan. First, attack by sea: The waters were stricken and placed off limits to the Egyptians. Then the amphibious attack unfurled, as the teeming frogs burst forth from the bloodied waters, raging throughout the land.
Next, the attack moved to land. The soil was destroyed by lice, the mixed animals ran amok throughout the land, and domesticated animals that provided Egyptian meat and milk and helped work the land were destroyed. And with boils, the generals were removed from battle.
Finally, came the air campaign: the fiery hail balls screaming down with incessant terror like aerial bombs. Locusts next burst forth, overwhelming and blackening the atmosphere. And then the very daylights were knocked out from above, leaving three days of shrouded blackness, breaking the Egyptian spirit. With Egypt still refusing to free the Jews, the magnitude of the tenth plague hit the nation like a nuclear bomb.
And a third perspective: The Ten Plagues were designed to demonstrate to the Egyptians — and to the Hebrew slaves exposed culturally to the Egyptian pantheon of gods that contrasted so dramatically from the Jewish belief in monotheism — that their “gods” had no power and indeed were non-extant.
Thus, the first plague targeted the Egyptians’ all-purpose deity: the Nile. As the ancient Greeks later would worship Poseidon and the Romans Neptune, so the Egyptians believed in a water god. The first plague demolished that conviction. Next came the plague of frogs, directly negating the reverence that Egyptians accorded to Heqat, the frog-goddess of childbirth.
The third plague, by which lice destroyed the soil, negated the Egyptian earth goddess, the equivalent of Demeter (Greek) and Ceres (Roman). The fourth plague was marked by rampaging animals that were strange composites; the Egyptians worshipped just such figures as divinities. The fifth plague demolished the invincibility ascribed to Hathor, the god of cows.
Each plague targeted the belief in specific gods that populated the Egyptian pantheon, culminating in the plagues of darkness — which demonstrated the emptiness of the sun god, Ra — and the tenth plague, which challenged the belief in the one remaining major Egyptian deity, the dog god of death, Anubis. Amid the nocturnal dying among the Egyptian first-born children, something strange happened: All dogs in Egypt suddenly went silent (Exodus 11:7).
In all, viewed from this third perspective for understanding the Ten Plagues, we also better comprehend God’s words in the Torah: “And I shall execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt, for I am God” (Exodus 12:12).
These alternate perspectives reflect that the Ten Plagues came in a precise order with the three-fold purposes of elevating the God of Israel and simultaneously nullifying the Egyptian pantheon, militarily subduing Egypt into submission, and eradicating the Egyptian food supply. The plagues left Pharaoh and Egypt starving and parched, defeated so thoroughly in physical might and spiritual inspiration, that their resistance ultimately broke, and Pharaoh finally let our people go.
Rabbi Dov Fischer, adjunct professor of law at Loyola Law School and at UC Irvine School of Law, is a columnist for several online magazines and is rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County. His writings appear at rabbidov.com.
