Va’Erah: Nature

 

The Pharaoh, the most powerful person on earth, is confronted with a demand  to allow the enslaved Israelites leave Egypt on a three day journey to demonstrate their loyalty to a greater force.  The Pharaoh ultimately promises to do more,

וַאֲשַׁלְּחָ֣ה אֶתְכֶ֔ם וְלֹ֥א תֹסִפ֖וּן לַעֲמֹֽד׃

I will let you go; you need stay no longer.”

But this pledge remains unfulfilled, just like the previous promises.  Pharaoh repeatedly says he will let the people go to their ritual, starting after the second plague of frogs. He just never gets around to it. This is the great paradigm of delayed liberation, the unfulfilled promise of freedom that dances with  an evolving definition of liberty.

Before Moshe confronts Pharaoh with a demonstration of vastly superior powers, Moshe himself is confronted by Gd. Gd informs Moshe of previous appearances to the patriarchs and the intention of resettlement on the land of milk and honey. The goals are limited, although they seem nearly impossible to the overpowered. There is also an indication of the rarity of Gd’s overt appearance. It has been more than 200 years since Gd has appeared to one of Moshe’s ancestors. Subsequent Gd sightings have been quite (perhaps disappointingly)  rare.

 

The plagues are a contest of power.  Even before the plagues, Moshe demonstrates the superiority of his forces. Gd instructed that the staff be cast down and it will turn into a serpent. We know that this trick is in the repertoire of the Egyptian masters of augmented reality. The demonstration of power comes when the Israelite stick/serpent consumes the Egyptian magicals ( and, perhaps incorporates their magic?).  At this point the superiority of the Gd, Moshe, Aaron system has been established. Resistance will only cause pain and loss. Pharaoh is courageous, he has heart; he stands up to the clearly superior force.  But his cause is immoral and wrong; his bravery in the service of authoritarianism is abominable.

 

Pharaoh knows that his powers are limited.  Nature: the rivers, the animals, the insects, disease, the weather, etc. are beyond his control. The plagues demonstrate an unanticipated entity that can control  these forces with precision. They can be turned on and off on a schedule; they can affect one place and not its neighbor, one kind of person and not another. In the plague of frogs, Moses gives Pharoah an opportunity to share credit for the termination of the infestation.

 

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה לְפַרְעֹה֮ הִתְפָּאֵ֣ר עָלַי֒ לְמָתַ֣י ׀ אַעְתִּ֣יר לְךָ֗ וְלַעֲבָדֶ֙יךָ֙ וּֽלְעַמְּךָ֔ לְהַכְרִית֙ הַֽצְפַרְדְּעִ֔ים מִמְּךָ֖ וּמִבָּתֶּ֑יךָ רַ֥ק בַּיְאֹ֖ר תִּשָּׁאַֽרְנָה׃

And Moses said to Pharaoh, “You may have this triumph over me: for what time shall I plead in behalf of you and your courtiers and your people, that the frogs be cut off from you and your houses, to remain only in the Nile?”

וַיֹּ֖אמֶר לְמָחָ֑ר וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ כִּדְבָ֣רְךָ֔ לְמַ֣עַן תֵּדַ֔ע כִּי־אֵ֖ין כַּ

For tomorrow,” he replied. And [Moses] said, “As you say—that you may know that there is none like the LRD our Gd;

An entity that controls nature is very impressive. Not impressive enough to move Pharaoh to act with immediacy.

The power of this Gd, that is greater than nature, has been the aspiration of a dominant element of humanity. Egypt had canal that controlled the course of the river’s waters to increase the crop yield of the land.  Their art of mummification wrested the power of death to cause decay of the flesh.

 

The sequence of some of the plagues can be understood in a causal framework.  The text tells us that making the river flow blood caused the fish to die and putrefy:

 

וְהַדָּגָ֨ה אֲשֶׁר־בַּיְאֹ֥ר מֵ֙תָה֙ וַיִּבְאַ֣שׁ הַיְאֹ֔ר

and the fish in the Nile died. The Nile stank.

It is easy to think that the altered ecology of the Nile caused the frogs to emerge.

And when the dead frogs were heaped up, they could have been breeding grounds for lice.  The poisoned river could have caused the animals to  roam more widely and intermingled resulting in the generation and spread of new diseases that killed animals and caused a disease of boils in humans.

 

We now deal with an awareness of some of these chains of events. Burning the fuel that was generated from the plants and animals that died millennia ago warms the planet and generates a sequence of self-reinforcing changes.  In the absence of a cataclysm or a technological fix, the earth will continue to warm, at least to a point of undesirable change: with extinctions, droughts, and famines.  This fate was sealed with the control of fire. The issue is how long can we drag it out.

 

Where is Gd in all this? Only Gd can protect us from the nature Gd created.