Wait, There's an Eleventh Plague?!

Understanding God's endgame

Next Thursday, February 5, I’m the guest speaker for Torah-in-Motion’s Parashah Shiur at 8:30 PM ET/7:30 PM CT. You can register for the online link by clicking here.

I. “Ten Plagues” is an artificial construct

There are two glaring problems with framing God’s miraculous interventions against Egypt as “the Ten Plagues.”

The first is that the Torah itself never calls them “plagues,” preferring terms like ’otot u-moftim, “signs and wonders” (e.g. Ex. 7:3, 9; 10:1 for just ’otot), shefaṭim, “judgements” (e.g. Ex. 12:12), and nega‘, “affliction” (e.g. Ex. 11:11) – though this term is used exclusively when discussing the slaying of the firstborn.

The second, and far more interesting problem with the “Ten Plagues” for our purposes, is that the Torah never claims that there are, in fact, ten of these we’ll-still-call-them-plagues-for-simplicity’s-sake. Indeed, there are a couple of significant miraculous events in the story of the Exodus that, despite not making the official count, seem to be as plaguey as the Ten Plagues themselves.

Nonetheless, already by the Second Temple period, Jews spoke of ten plagues – with the Book of Jubilees an early example of Jews taking it as a given that there were ten (Jubilees 48:7) – and Ḥazal frequently refer to the ‘esser makkot, “Ten Plagues” (e.g. Shemot Rabbah §8:3; mAvot 5:4), effectively canonizing our understanding of God’s miraculous intervention through specifically these Ten Plagues.

But there have always been commentators who have considered other miracles in Egypt on par with the Ten Plagues. Here, I don’t want to focus on what we might call the “zeroth plague” (that is, the plague that precedes the first plague of blood), but there’s much merit in recognizing how much the episode in which Aharon’s staff turns into a serpent (Ex. 7:8–13) mirrors many of the other plagues.

Instead, I want to focus on the “eleventh plague,” the splitting of the sea in Parashat Beshallaḥ – an event already recognized by some commentators as a plague. The famed Italian Torah commentator, Rabbi Ovadiah Seforno (1470–1550), for example, considers Pharaoh’s (or the Egyptians’) drowning as an event on par with the slaying of the firstborn (Seforno, Ex. 4:23; 7:4).

Likewise, the celebrated 19th-century Italian commentator, Shmuel David Luzzatto – better known by his acronym, “Shadal” – includes the splitting of the sea within his analysis of the plagues (Shadal, Ex. 7:17).

But what I want to argue here is that you don’t need to be Italian to question when the plagues begin and end.¹ Recognizing that the Ten Plagues are, in some sense, an artificial construct provides us with an opportunity to reevaluate the entire story of our Exodus.

Rather than dividing the Exodus into three sections – what we might call “Pre-Plagues,” the Ten Plagues, and “Post-Plagues” – reevaluating when the plagues truly begin and end changes our understanding of the story.

Here, I want to restrict myself to analyzing the end of the story. By paying closer attention to how the splitting of sea flows² from the final plagues, a better appreciation of the wider narrative can be found.

II. God’s endgame

There is a third glaring problem with the notion of the Ten Plagues: It assumes that they are a set, even if some are more intense than others.

But a closer look at the narrative of the Exodus reveals something very different. And here, I’d argue that the division of the Torah into the parshiyot that we read helps us recognize the differences within the plagues. For the plagues of Parashat Va’era – blood, frogs, lice, wild animals, pestilence, boils, and hail – are quintessentially different from the plagues of Parashat Bo: locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the firstborn.

The plagues of Va’era seem to have a simple purpose. While it’s clear that there is hope that the Jewish people will be freed as a result of them, these plagues seem to be visited upon Egypt to primarily reflect God’s power while inconveniencing Egypt.

While some of these are obviously more destructive than disruptive, none of them – in truth, even all of them combined – seem to bring Egypt to its knees, as seen in Pharaoh’s stubbornness in the concluding verses of Parashat Va’era. Even after experiencing all seven plagues, he has no qualms refusing to free the Jewish people:

But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he became stubborn and reverted to his guilty ways, as did his courtiers. So Pharaoh’s heart stiffened and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the LORD had foretold through Moses. (Ex. 9:34–35)

The moment the hail ends, Pharaoh realizes that life can go on as normal, and he has no reason to let the Jewish people go.

To frame all this slightly differently, the “results” of the first seven plagues are short-term: It doesn’t take much for Egypt to recover after each plague. Not so, however, when it comes to the plagues of Bo. To best see this, let’s compare three different plagues – two from Va’era and one from Bo – that all share a target: Egypt’s source of sustenance, its food and water.

When the Nile is turned to blood, the Egyptian’s ability to drink water is inconvenienced, but it is not crippled. As the Torah tells us, “And all the Egyptians had to dig round about the Nile for drinking water, because they could not drink the water of the Nile” (Ex. 7:24). The Egyptian’s still have plenty of access to drinking water, it’s now just hard for them.

Similarly, though the plague of hail destroys some of Egypt’s crops, they still have what to subsist on – a point stressed by the Torah in a couple of verses we would otherwise assume are a completely unnecessary aside: “Now the flax and barley were ruined, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud; but the wheat and the emmer were not hurt, for they ripen late” (Ex. 9:31–32). Here, the Torah highlights that, despite the destruction, food still exists.

Not so once the locusts arrive. Between the plagues of hail and locusts (that is, between the end of Va’era and the beginning of Bo), a shift has happened. Now, rather than inconveniencing Egypt, Egypt is brought to its knees: “They hid all the land from view, and the land was darkened; and they ate up all the grasses of the field and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left, so that nothing green was left, of tree or grass of the field, in all the land of Egypt” (Ex. 10:15) – now there’s no food left. Ostensibly, Egypt is now experiencing a famine.

What the plagues of Bo represent, then, are God’s “endgame.” Now His purpose has changed: To destroy Egypt.

And I realized something key about God’s declaration at the beginning of Bo, that He has hardened Pharaoh’s heart in order to ensure God will bring about His final plagues (Ex. 10:1–2). Here, God is tacitly recognizing that the horror of His endgame will ensure Pharaoh wants the Jewish people to leave, lest Egypt be destroyed.

But because God’s goal is now the total destruction of Egypt, He no longer sees the Jewish people leaving as the condition upon which He will stop bringing forth His plagues. The Jewish people will go free, regardless, but the true goal of the endgame is the end of Egypt. Which is why He makes sure that Pharaoh will stay stubborn, so that God can visit his endgame upon Egypt.

This is also why it makes no sense to consider the Ten Plagues as a set. We must divide them, instead, into two groups: The first seven with their own goals and the final three, which represent God’s endgame.

But given the entire notion of Ten Plagues is somewhat artificial, there’s a better way to put this. Everything up until the end of Parashat Va’era represents some aspect(s) of our Exodus – something I’ve not scrutinized enough to be able to say anything substantial about. Once Parashat Bo begins, we are in God’s endgame.

But crucially, God’s endgame is not over until Parashat Beshallaḥ.

III. Recognizing that God is the Lord

The most obvious indication that God’s endgame is not over until after the splitting of the sea is found in asking what the goals of God’s endgame are. While, as I said above, it’s clear that He wants to destroy Egypt (given what happens during the endgame), God explicitly declares two goals of His endgame at the very beginning of Parashat Bo:

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your child and of your child’s child how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them – in order that you may know that I am the Lord.” (Ex. 10:1–2)

The first, which I’m not interested in exploring here, is for the memory of our Exodus to endure through the generations. The second, however, is key: For the Jewish people to know that God is their Lord (that is, the deity to Whom they must worship).

In other words, God intends His endgame to result in, not just the Jewish people being freed, but in theological revolution: The Jewish people must embrace God as their Lord. Until now, while they have been the descendants of those who worshipped God, they’ve spent so many years in slavery that it’s likely that some of their fealty to God has weakened in the face of the pagan Egyptian cult.

Which means that the conclusion of the endgame is the moment in which the Jewish people recognize God as their Lord. And though there’s what to say about the first shoots of the Jewish people’s embrace of God being found in their observance of the korban pesaḥ in Parashat Bo – “And the Israelites went and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did” (Ex. 12:28) – it’s not the full-fledged “knowledge” that God demands.

In fact, if you look through the whole of Parashat Bo, you’ll be hard pressed to find anything that represents the Jewish people’s acceptance that God is their Lord. But looking through Beshallaḥ is a very different experience. Because once the Jewish people cross the Yam Suf, they can’t stop embracing God as their Lord in a jubilant song:

This is my God and I will glorify Him; the God of my father and I will exalt Him. … Till Your people cross over, O Lord. … The Lord will reign for ever and ever! (Ex. 15:2, 16, 18).

While this, in and of itself, clearly suggests that the splitting of the sea is the conclusion of God’s endgame, there’s a lot more to suggest that we should view it as a plague and consider why the splitting of the sea must play such an essential role.

IV. The eleventh plague

The first clue that we are still in God’s endgame before the Jewish people have crossed the sea is that the motifs of God’s endgame are still present. What I mean by this is that everything we think characterizes Parashat Bo as the culmination of the Exodus is still found within the story of Parashat Beshallaḥ.

The most obvious example of this is God’s control over Pharaoh. He not only tells Moshe that He “will stiffen Pharaoh’s heart” so that Pharaoh will pursue the Jewish people – the same thing He was doing to bring about the plagues of Bo – but adds a new goal to this experience, one that very much mirrors the goal of the endgame: “that I may gain glory through Pharaoh and all his host; and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord” (Ex. 14:4).

Not only are the Jews to recognize God but the Egyptians, too – a point He repeats as the Jewish people stand on the banks of the Yam Suf (Ex. 14:18).

Similarly, the Torah’s description of the splitting of the sea mirrors that of the locusts – implying that the locusts and the splitting of the sea serve as bookends for God’s endgame.

Regarding locusts, the Torah tells us:

So Moses held out his rod over the land of Egypt, and the Lord drove an east wind over the land all that day and all night; and when morning came, the east wind had brought the locusts. (Ex. 10:13)

Regarding the splitting of the sea, the Torah tells us:

Then Moses held out his arm over the sea and the Lord drove back the sea with a strong east wind all that night, and turned the sea into dry ground. The waters were split. (Ex. 14:21)

Though the end of both plagues isn’t as explicitly parallel, the similarities are clear: The locusts are hurled in the Yam Suf by a strong west wind, where they drown (Ex. 10:19). Though the sea naturally reverts back, the Egyptians die the same way in which the locusts did – drowning in the Yam Suf (Ex. 14:27–28).

As much as this shows the splitting of the sea to parallel the plague of locusts, it also shares similarities with the other plagues of Bo, as Rabbi Yaakov Medan, a rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Har Etzion (Gush), explains.

Both the splitting of the sea and the plague of darkness begin with Moshe holding his arm out over the sky or sea: vayyēṭ Moshe et yado ‘al ha-shamayim/-yam (Ex. 10:22; 14:27). Both involve a mysterious darkness that renders the Egyptians unable to see while the Jewish people can (Ex. 10:23; 14:20).

Similarly, R. Medan notes an auditory similarity between the slaying of the firstborn – which centers around the word bekhor, “firstborn” – and the splitting of the sea, in which the word rekhev, “chariot,” is found ten times. While these words are unrelated, they possess a certain similarity in how they sound – with the phrase rekhev baḥur, “chosen chariots” (Ex. 14:7) helping to forge that link.

V. The purpose of the eleventh plague

It seems clear, then, that the splitting of the sea is not a different element in the story of the Exodus, but its final stage: the eleventh plague at the culmination of God’s endgame.

But observing that the splitting of the sea is the eleventh plague is one thing; understanding why is another thing entirely. Here, I’ll share a couple of thoughts.

While there is a major question concerning the “audience” of the plagues – whether their purpose is directed at the Egyptians or the Jews – I’m going to assume that here, the primary audience is the Jewish people.

For them, it’s not enough to have been redeemed from slavery in Egypt – if Egypt is still around, if the sense is that Egypt can still pursue them, there’s a chance they’ll never be free. What the splitting of the sea represents, then, is the worst fear of the Jewish people – pursuit by Egypt – coming to pass, with God taking care of things.

As Amos Ḥakham notes in his fantastic Da‘at Mikra commentary, this is the last we ever hear from Egypt. After dominating the stories of the Torah for so long, after the Jewish people crossed the Yam Suf, Egypt disappears – never to be heard of again in the Torah.

It’s clear that part of the experience of the eleventh plague is to provide this relief to the Jewish people. But at the same time, the Jewish people are temperamental – something we see already in Beshallaḥ. The moment they hit (an admittedly large) snag, they express their desire to go back to being slaves in Egypt, “It is better for us to serve the Egyptians than die in the wilderness” (Ex. 14:12).

While they don’t stop doing this throughout their travels, the other power of the eleventh plague is in abruptly barring the way back to Egypt. By only leaving Egypt through a miracle – a miracle that, after the people have crossed the Yam Suf, literally crashes down to prevent the way back – the Jewish people are “stuck” effectively on the other side of Egypt.

1. Even if I did wear a Juventus shirt when writing this to help channel the spirit of Italy.

2. Pun intended.