There was a point in the Fall in which we had the pandemic, stifling heat, and thick smoke in Northern California. We did not experience these plagues serially, as they had in Egypt, but simultaneously. Under the circumstances, which includes a lack of prophecy, it was impossible to discern the message. But that's not how it was in Egypt. There was prophecy in Egypt, and, unlike events in mundane human history, there’s Rashi too.
Like the story of creation, the exodus story is told in 10s. This is not a coincidence. Commentators identify the 10 plagues with a reversal of the 10 statements with which the Creation came into being. This becomes clear quite quickly. If Creation began with light, an enveloping darkness must be aimed at extinguishing it.
But this reversal should not be seen as wanton destruction. The plagues are not a reboot like the Flood. Instead, by explicitly relating to the Creation, they offer an extended seminar in what the Creation is meant to be. This is what the first Chassidic rebbe from Gur meant when he said that “the 10 plagues converted the 10 statements of Creation into the 10 statements at Har Sinai.”
Although there is a great deal of suffering brought on by the plagues, they were not simply a series of punitive punishments. Even those which seem punitive were not. Many have noted that the plagues come in tercets -- in groups of three. [The final plague of the first born, as we will discuss (please G-d) next week, stands apart from the rest.] In each tercet, two come after a warning conveyed by Moshe and then another without a warning. We’ve mentioned many times that the Malbim wrote in the 19th century that each of the plagues that was delivered with a warning represents a “witness.” The Halacha requires a warning as part of any act of witnessing a violation of the Torah. Without a warning, the Torah says there can be no punishment. So there were two plagues with warnings and then a plague without a warning, which seems like a punishment.
But the Ramban notes a crucial distinction about the third plague in each tercet. Unlike the first two, it never involves death or destruction. Lice, boils and darkness were tortuous but they did not bring the destruction involved in the six plagues which carried explicit warnings. So what the Malbim calls a punishment in plagues three, six and nine, is strangely of less destructive power.
This points to something beyond a mere slap on the wrist. It means that these plagues together form a lesson that stands apart from the other lessons of the plagues. R’ Yitzchak Twersky points out that the plagues that make up the third of each threesome forms a “bridge” to the next level, either to the next tercet or to plague number 10. Lice, for example, was the first plague fully on land, and is followed by destruction of the animals on the land. That destruction in the “mixture” of wild beasts first affects a basic principle enunciated multiple times in Creation, that of speciation. Then the fifth plague, pestilence, destroys the animals themselves. The sixth plague, which is the first to affect humans, serves as a bridge to the plagues that will come from above, the region that affects humans most of all. The ninth plague will stifle all activity of man and render him immobile and feckless. All that will be left afterward will be death itself in the 10th plague.
But this points to a deeper lesson in these third plagues of lice, boils and darkness. All three of them are directed at a separate, crucial aspect of man. Chapter two of Bereisheet describes the creation of man as having two sides. There is a molding of the physical body from the ground and a blowing of the soul into his nostrils by Hashem. (The Ramban in Bereisheet explains the famous plural in the phrase “Let us make man” as a reference to exactly this duality. It means that Hashem summoned the ground to join forces in bringing about the body and soul that make up what it is to be human.)
Both sides of this creation equation are the targets of plagues three and six. The lice arise from the ground to afflict the body. The boils, however, afflict more than the body. The verse specifies that Paro’s sorcerers were unable to “stand” before Moshe because of the boils. The boils took away man’s upright posture. He has lost one of the crucial gifts that distinguish mankind from the animals. His soul has been emptied out. Indeed, the word “Pach,” or blowing air, only appears in these two places in the Torah. Hashem blew -- Vyifach -- into man’s nostrils, and Moshe and Aharon created the boils by taking the soot of a furnace, which is called “Pi’ach” because of the way it is blown through the air. The two sides of man in the creation story, the physical side from the ground and the spiritual side in his breath, are attacked by plagues three and six.
The darkness in plague nine obliterates the final dimension of man, his social character. “One man could not see another,” the verse says, as each had to retreat into their separate silos. (Many people have commented on the effects of Shelter in Place and its similarity to the darkness in Egypt as it separates us from each other.)
One can see in the plagues that Hashem was rolling back the Creation. What was left? The Jewish people could now emerge, schooled in the lessons of the plagues. They were ready to represent the species of man as it was meant to be, free of the disfigurement of Egypt. They are now ready to march toward the 10 statements at Har Sinai.
