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A: Dear Walter:
Your question touches on a great debate within the rabbinic Bible
commentators: Why did God have to bring ten plagues onto Egypt?
Couldn't a God who is master over time and space simply remove
the Hebrews from slavery without causing such devastation and
dislocation among the Egyptians, among whom there must have been
at least some who were entirely innocent?
As you correctly noted in your question, the Torah text itself
says that God brought the plagues so that humans- both the Israelites
and the Egyptians- would know God's power. Consider for example
the opening verses of Parshat Bo:
"God said to Moshe: Come to Pharoah, for I have made his heart
and the heart of his servants stubborn so that I can put these
signs of Mine in his midst, and so that you may relate in the
ears of your child and your child's child that I made a mockery
of Egypt and also [about] My signs that I placed among them- that
you may know that I am God.
These are very troubling verses, implying that God would cause
human suffering for the sake of good PR. It's even more troubling
if it was God who prevented Pharoah from coming to his senses-
throughout the narrative, God is portrayed as "hardening" Pharoah's
heart. Now it make even less sense- if Pharoah didn't have free
will, how could God punish him for not obeying the command to
let the Hebrews go? Furthermore, if God hardened Pharoah's heart,
it makes it even more cruel that God would bring plagues upon
the people for the stubbornness of their leader.
Various suggestions have been made to solve this dilemma, which
I will only touch on briefly. One possibility is that God knew
in advance (see last week's Reb on the Web) that Pharoah wouldn't
let the people go, so God used Pharoah's stubbornness against
him, in order to show the Egyptians, who thought that Pharoah
was a living deity, who the True God was. Another possibility
is that Pharoah had the free choice in the beginning to choose
the right actions, but refused, so his punishment, as it were,
was having his free choice taken away from him- but this doesn't
solve our problem of innocents suffering along with the guilty.
The explanation I like best among traditional Torah commentators
is that God had to "harden" Pharoah's heart in order to preserve his free will, not to take it away from him, because the plagues
and miracles were so awe-inspiring that Pharoah was not really
choosing to repent and let the people go, but was being forced
into it through fear. Thus, God gave Pharoah a tough and stubborn
heart, so that Pharoah could get through the plagues and freely
choose whether to let the people go or not. He didn't, and brought
disaster down on his whole country.
Now, at this point we may seem far afield from our original question:
how do we know what is a genuine disaster and what is actually
part of God's didactic plan? What I hope to have illustrated through
some of this commentary on Pharoah and the plagues is: we don't
know exactly why things happen, and if that's true for the past,
it's even more true for events as they happen. Furthermore, to
say that God causes certain events (like plagues on our enemies)
means that we'd probably have to say that God decides on all disasters
(like the recent earthquakes in Turkey), which is leads us back
to the God who is willing to kill innocents for the sake of good
PR- and mostly, it's bad PR that God is getting in these cases!
I'd rather say that there are certain laws of nature, and sometimes
disasters happen, and it doesn't mean that God specifically caused
them.
The reason I brought up the verses about Pharoah, rather than
the other places in the Bible which could lead to a discussion
about God's role in history (i.e., Noah and the Flood, the Tower
of Bavel, Job, the destruction of the Temple, or the promise of
a future redemption, to name a few), is that I think the commentators
are leading us in the right direction for a conversation: to the
reaction of the individuals involved, rather than to the exact
theological nature of the external circumstances. One of the points
of the showdown between Moshe and Pharoah is to show us the folly
of stubbornness, of unwillingness to learn and admit one's errors,
and the disastrous consequences of believing in one's own invincibility.
Pharoah had choices, at least in the beginning, and chose badly,
with horrible consequences for himself and everyone around him.
This, to me, is the only thing we can really talk about, because
to try to second-guess God in history is too complex and potentially
problematic for me. We can, however, think about how people react
to life's inevitable difficulties and disasters- do we react as
Pharoah, thinking of ourselves as the center of the world even
as the walls crumble around us, or do we try to humble ourselves,
reacting with more generosity and love and faith? That's the only
way I can make sense of these Biblical passages, and it's challenge
enough!
For further discussion of this complex topic, please also refer
to the archived Reb columns, especially the column "Why Do Some People Suffer?"
NJL |
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