Welcome to the alliteratively and delightfully entitled Qontroversial Questions on the Parashah. Subscribe to continue to receive these and please share with those you think would be interested.
I. The Second Big Reason
Last week, I mentioned the First Big Reason why I don’t like it when we try to rationalize the Ten Plagues as simply natural phenomena. That, when we try to claim historical, archeological, or scientific reasons for the plagues, it leaves us playing a game we’ll never win.
But my Second Big Reason is very different. Because it’s not just that I think it’s a bad idea to insist that there are scientific explanations for how the plagues could plausibly have happened – I think any attempt to do so absolutely misses the point of the Ten Plagues.
What I hope to show here is that, as much as it may cut against our instincts and beliefs, it’s only when the Ten Plagues are understood as supernatural phenomena that they can be properly appreciated.
II. Pharaoh’s Curse
I think the best place to start is with something that happens at the beginning of Parashat Bo, in which Pharaoh refuses to cave to Moshe’s demands. In declaring his refusal, Pharaoh’s outrage is apparent as he turns to Moshe and Aharon saying, ki ra‘ah neged peneikhem (Ex. 10:10).
But what’s clear from the radically different translations of this statement is that Pharaoh’s words here are really hard to translate. Take Artscroll, for whom it means “The evil intent is opposite your faces.”
I’ll be honest, at first I had no clue what that meant even though it’s, admittedly, a pretty literal translation. Ra‘ah means “evil,” neged means “opposite,” and peneikhem means “your faces.” Hence, “The evil intent is opposite your faces.” And, after about five minutes, I realized what Artscroll were suggesting here with their translation. Pharaoh suspects that Moshe and Aharon are acting in bad faith, which is why he’s refusing their demands. Had Artscroll been less literal with neged it could be translated as “the evil intent is clear upon your faces.”1
And that’s why JPS echoes the same idea but translates it into much less clunky language: “Clearly you are bent on mischief.”
But other translations disagree. Rabbi Sacks prefers “evil is staring you in the face,” which is also a pretty faithful literal translation of the words (and Robert Alter’s translation is pretty similar) – he’s just tweaking the thrust of the statement. And, for what it’s worth, The Koren Tanakh has a footnote on this verse, noting that translations here differ widely – but the main point is that Pharaoh is issuing some sort of threat.
And that’s why I think that the best and most fascinating translation of this verse comes from Rashi, who quotes a midrash that suggests that Pharaoh was invoking a kokhav, “a star,” named “ra‘ah” in order to curse Moshe and the Jewish People. Given that neged can also mean words that conjure the imagery of fighting, Pharaoh calls on a star to attack Moshe. Ki ra‘ah neged peneikhem thus means, “may ra‘ah fight against you.”
Though here there is one crucial tweak to make. It’s not that Pharaoh was invoking a kokhav, “a star,” named ra‘ah but something else that Rabbinic language often uses the word kokhav for. Becuase someone who engages in idolatry is termed an Oved Kokhavim. And while that literally means “a worshipper of the stars” the object of their idolatrous worship is clearly not always the stars.
And this means that Pharaoh invoked, not a star against Moshe – but a deity. And it takes about five seconds to figure out what that deity was that the Torah calls ra‘ah. It’s Ra! The sun-god and Chief-god of the Egyptian pantheon.
In other words, when Pharaoh expresses his outrage at Moshe and Aharon, he decides to make a bold claim – that, despite the successes of the plagues thus far, Egypt would fight back, Egypt’s gods would fight back.
III. Ra’s Fightback Fails
And this is why the plague of darkness is the final plague other than the killing of the firstborn.2 Because, at first glance, darkness doesn’t seem so bad in the grand scheme of things. Having read a story in which the Nile – the source of all water in Egypt – turns to blood and destructive hail rains down from the sky wreaking chaos, we can honestly wonder how darkness is worse than those – after all, no one is hurt from the darkness. Sure, we shouldn’t get too carried away, it’s a bad plague to experience – but why is it second-to-last? Why is it the capstone of the awe-inspiring feats performed by God?
The answer is clear once we embrace Egyptology to enrich or expand our understanding (rather than using it to prove anything). It’s because the plague of darkness represents Ra’s demise in the eyes of the Egyptians.
As the fantastic Koren Tanakh of the Land of Israel explains, Egyptians believed that Ra began a journey on his celestial boat every morning to bring the sun across the sky. But every night he had to fight his way through the netherworld in order to make the sun rise again each morning. And not only did this mean that the sun’s rising every morning was a miraculous moment, but also that, for Egyptians, their fear that darkness would remain – the fear that the sun wouldn’t rise – was real. Their greatest theological fear was that Ra would be defeated and not bring the sun out the following day.
And I think it’s no coincidence, then, that the plagues that follow Pharaoh’s declaration that Ra will fight back both involve the sun’s (i.e., Ra’s) power being weakened. First, while the plague of locusts seems to be more focused on the grasses, grain, and fruit of Egypt, Targum Onkelos adds two crucial words to the verse that tells us that “the [locusts] hid all the land from view” – he translates it as “the [locusts] hid the entire sun of the land from view” (Ex. 10:15). Already the locusts, for Onkelos, limited Ra’s power in the eyes of Egypt.
And this is then followed by a supernatural darkness. Here, we often fixate on the Torah’s description of the darkness’ tangible quality, that it is ḥoshekh afēlah, “thick darkness” (10:22). And I think that’s because, for us, the most terrifying thing about the plague of darkness is not that it simply made it night – it’s that it paralyzed the Egyptians with a supernaturally-imposed blindness.
But, as scary as that would have been, that wouldn’t have been the most terrifying aspect for the Egyptians. For them, the impact of the plague of darkness was much more Route 1:3 it meant that their Cheif-god, Ra, was dead. That their greatest theological fear has come to pass.
IV. It’s the Most Magical Time of the Year
There’s a Pandora’s Box that could be opened here but I don’t want to right now – it’s a Qontroversial Question for another time.4 But there does seem to be a recurring theme throughout Yetziat Mitzrayim that the Torah validates the idea that Egypt’s gods are, in some sense, real.
Admittedly, it might only validate them from the perspective of the Egyptians themselves – and the Jewish people enslaved to those Egyptians – but some verses raise this major question.
Take the verse describing the killing of the firstborn in which God declares that, in addition to everything else, uvkhol elohei mitzrayim e‘eseh shefaṭim, “and I will mete out punishments to the all the gods of Egypt” (Ex. 12:12). If everyone hearing this verse is a Strict Monotheist, then it’s a meaningless claim. It would be a bit like me asking you all to appreciate the fact that I recently eradicated all of the Googly-Gurgles from the shul basement.5
But to appreciate the Ten Plagues – and to understand my Second Big Reason for resisting any rationalization of the Ten Plagues (which I mentioned was the point of this about 1,200 words ago) – we don’t need any definitive answer to this Qontroversial Question. All we need to know is the obvious fact that the Egyptians believed in a pantheon to which they attributed supernatural powers.
And sure, some of those powers are now known to be natural phenomena – such as the sun’s rising and setting. But it doesn’t change the fact that, as the Torah describes Yetziat Mitzrayim, it’s describing a magical experience (in the terrifying world-ending sense rather than the trip-to-Disney-World sense) afflicting Egypt in which their gods are defeated by God.
And the only thing to do is accept and embrace it. Because the magic of the story suffuses the entire thing. It starts really early on in the story with Pharaoh’s ḥarṭumim, a word that might be most accurately translated as “Lector Priests” but that’s also a translation that takes all the fun out of the story – because they are Pharaoh’s magicians or wizards or necromancers. The point is that magic is real in the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim.
But in our desperate desire to rationalize everything – to make as little of the Torah require our suspension of disbelief – it makes us miss the entire point of Yetziat Mitzrayim. Because we’re supposed to read the plagues as this incredible, epic, nature-defying, God-revealing experience.
But if, instead, we insist that the Nile didn’t actually turn to blood – it just “turned to blood” because there were lots of red algae, we eradicate any sense of magic from the story. And while it doesn’t change the fact that the Egyptians themselves would still have interpreted the red algae as a terrifying portent, it’s no longer magical to us. If the hail is a natural phenomenon, if the darkness is easily explainable – then sure, it’s easier to believe it happened, but now what we believe to have happened is much less noteworthy.
V. When Rationalism Ruins the Story
What I’ve learned writing these emails thus far, is that, while I still consider myself a rationalist Jew – while I embrace science and I’m generally skeptical of the supernatural – there’s a line I don’t want my rationalism to make me cross.
And in this case, it’s not even that the line is theological – chalking up the plagues to God-driven natural phenomena doesn’t change the theology of the story – but it just ruins it. Because the Torah has miracles. We believe in a God who can perform miracles.
And what gets lost in our attempt to hyper-rationalize – what we lose when we attempt to make the story more plausible – is the story itself.
Ultimately, what I’ve come to realize is that when the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim is read closely, when we carefully read the details of the Ten Plagues, they are supposed to exist at the blurred part of the line between fantasy and reality.
And it’s this blurred line between fantasy and reality that I’ve discovered is the Quintessential Qontroversial Question – and it’s one that will continue to arise over the weeks and months ahead.
Let’s all bask in the irony that Artscroll have actually translated something literally and it still doesn’t help.
This is a much bigger idea for another time, but we really have to think of the killing of the firstborn as a completely different kind of plague.
This is an English term that has no equivalent. From the internet: “‘Route 1’ typically refers to a direct, straightforward method or path, often used in the context of sports, particularly soccer, where it describes a style of play involving long, high kicks towards the opponent’s goal, considered a simple and direct way to attack rather than intricate passing plays; essentially, the ‘most obvious route’ to the goal.”
If you’re wondering, yes, I did just delete a few hundred words when I realized it would take us too far afield.
My favorite example of this is the statement before taking out the Torah on Shabbat and Yom Tov, ein kamokha ba-elohim, Hashem, which is often translated as “there is none like You among the mighty, God” – but that doesn’t strike me as a particularly ambitious praise of God, it’s an obvious point. If elohim in this statement, however, means “other gods” then we’re making a powerful anti-polytheistic declaration as we take out the Torah, which seems much more appropriate.