A Heavy Heart Leads to Glorious Freedom

Last week’s Torah portion began the account of the plagues G!d sent against Pharaoh and Egypt; this week’s parsha recounts the rest of the plagues. The section opens with G!d’s reason for bringing plagues against the Egyptians rather than bringing his people out another way:

“Then the L!rd said to Moses, ‘Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants, that I may perform these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son, and of your grandson, how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, that you may know that I am the L!rd.'”

The word that is translated as “made a mockery” carries a sense of taking a severe action against someone. Scholars have connected each of the plagues with an Egyptian deity whose territory was being threatened and power weakened by G!d’s choice of actions against the land. Fertility, health of land, animals, and people, and water supply are a few examples of areas belonging to specific Egyptian deities.

The author also repeats that G!d hardened Pharaoh’s heart and the hearts of those around him. The verb here is often translated “to make heavy,” and also is the word used (as a noun) for glory. This makes me think of someone who becomes so set on something that they unmovable – such as if they were weighed down in a certain spot. Interestingly, this is a competition between glorious figures – Pharaoh and the other Egyptian deities and G!d.

The beginning of Parashat Bo, coupled with the narration of the plagues from last week’s parsha, foreshadow the most severe plague: Death of the Firstborn. This plague was not only terrible for the Egyptians, but has come to be celebrated as a pinnacle festival by our people. Only in the suffering of our oppressors were we able to find freedom – and this presents a question which many have struggled to answer through centuries of studying scripture. Was Pharaoh’s heart really hardened by G!d? By the king himself? Or by some immortally understandable combination of the two?

The answers to these questions are no more apparent today, but these several chapters do hold an answer for me. G!d chose to use Pharaoh and the Egyptians to show himself the most powerful. The warnings and the mount of time that seemingly went into each request for Pharaoh to let the Egyptians go make me believe that Moses’ and Aaron’s warnings did not fall on deaf ears. I see in this text, and in the unanswered questions, that G!d can be trusted to save his people, and that he offers many opportunities to obey and do right.

This parsha offers a perfect conundrum: balancing an undeniably important and people-building holiday of remembrance and questions about our supreme deity/ruler. These questions open the door for trust, but also for constant study and questioning of our text. I hope in a couple months, these are the questions we ask around the Passover table.