Avadim hayinu le'pharaoh bi'mitzraim

Avadim hayinu le'pharaoh bi'mitzraim

There is a great deal of extra detail,  redundancy , here.  It would have been enough to say that we were slaves.  Specifying  Egypt  would have sufficed to identify the ruler as Pharaoh.   What do the extra words convey?  A couple of thoughts.

 My father was a literal slave to the Nazi  taskmasters in  Treblinka.   That was a very literal enactment of the phrase.  Remembering my parents' seder reminds me that they believed that  Hakodesh Baruch hu  personally liberated and rescued them from  the horror.  

Drashically, we can see  the  personal liberation in these words.  The key is Pharaoh.  This word appears,  as an adjective  in other parts of the Torah.  It describes the people when they insisted on making the golden calf.   It most commonly describes unruly hair.   Perhaps that  is a good translation : out of control.  The phrase now comes to mean: we were slaves to our random, diverse  desires.  

At the same time,  we were in Mitzrayim, we were in a narrow place, constrained, limited.  We could not satisfy the desires to which we were enslaved.  We were like drug addicts. The quest to fulfill the desire  consumes all of our energy.  Liberation is too remote a concept. We dealt with desire and constraint.  

The mitzvoth taught limitations to desire. The new, self imposed  constraints  liberated us so we could confront the problem of subjugation,  and proceed to liberation.   This is the story of Malcolm X,  Buddha,  etc. One cannot deal with liberation until her mind is liberated from distracting, diverse passions.  This is one way in which Hakodesh Baruch hu liberated us, and all future generations by giving mitzvoth that generate freedom  from a self imposed slavery that prevents liberation.

There is not contradiction in liberty and serving Hashem .  The Divine service requires the liberation  of the rules.