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Va'era

by Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon

This week we continue with the truly greatest story ever told, the great Exodus narrative of slavery and plagues and liberation.  As this week’s portion of Va’era begins, the Israelites are in Egyptian slavery, and the mysterious figure of Moses has returned to try free them from bondage.  In Va’era, God brings about a series of plagues that traumatize the Egyptians, and bedevil the Pharaoh, king of Egypt, himself: blood, frogs, lice, wild beasts, boils, and cattle disease serially afflict the land and its inhabitants, or at least the non-Israelite inhabitants.  In next week’s portion of Bo, four more plagues will come—hail, locusts, and darkness—all leading up to the climactic death scene and the ultimate Exodus, the great moment in which our ancestors are freed from slavery, the model for most narratives of deliverance and emancipation ever after. 

But these plagues are interesting in and of themselves.  There are three sets of three plagues each, increasing in severity and complexity, every one designed to prove the power of the true God and the impotence of the pagan gods of Egypt.  The Nile River was a principle deity of Egypt, as well as the source of its life and livelihood—and so, for the first plague, God simply turns it to blood.  There are frog gods in the Egyptian pantheon, and they are next turned into pests that infest homes and fields.  The scarab is a sacred beetle to Egyptians, a symbol of the pharaoh’s power, and insects are then used to torment the inhabitants.  And so it goes: sacred cows get diseases, the fertility of the sacred land of Egypt itself is destroyed.  Finally even the great Ra, the solar disc of the sun itself, is blotted out for days. 

The plagues are a statement of theology: there is only one God, and those who adhere to other gods, and use their own power to enslave others, will be overthrown with power and majesty.  The arrogant will be overcome.  Freedom will be guaranteed. And justice, through the true God, will triumph.

It’s a message that still has resonance today…

Whenever we come to believe that evil is destined to reign, that those who enslave others will rule, that those who use their control for malign purposes are destined to flourish, we should re-read this plagues narrative in Exodus.  For, at heart, this is a universe created by God for good.  When we increase justice we are simply doing the work for which we were made.