Beshallach
Moses leads the people into the wilderness in our portion this week, but it is not long before Pharaoh and his horsemen follow in hot pursuit. The reason is not surprising, slaves are a valuable asset – particularly in the numbers that the Children of Israel represent. Pharaoh has just let his entire workforce disappear and it is clear they are not coming back.
That he did let them go was understandable given the pressure put on him and his people by the plagues. But equally understandable after these events - when the initial shock is over and reason kicks in - is the doubt. Is there really a connection between all these unusual natural phenomena and the exodus of a bunch of slaves? Was it really cause and effect or was Moses simply exploiting the situation for his own ends? Thus for Pharaoh to harden his heart, to change his mind in the circumstances is hardly surprising.
What is surprising, is that we are told repeatedly through this narrative, that is it not Pharaoh who hardens his heart, but God who does so for him. Why? Since Pharaoh is perfectly able to act on his own in this matter, why does God pitch in? It puts God in an invidious situation, creating a monster out of the man, who might just have shown compassion and let the people go; upping the body count as each plague becomes worse than the one before; leaving Egypt in ruins – all so that God can demonstrate to the children of Israel how powerful their Divine protector is. Moreover, if the reason is so that the people will believe in God – well it doesn’t work anyway. From the beginning of their journey in today’s portion, on through the whole of their forty years of wandering, the people complain, ‘We should have stayed in Egypt.’
‘Aren’t there graves enough in Egypt that you had to bring us here to the desert to die?’ They cry here,
‘Did we not tell you in Egypt to leave us alone to serve the Egyptians? Better to live as slaves in Egypt than die in the desert.’ (Exodus 13:11-12)
That it is God who hardens Pharaoh’s heart could be an attempt to answer an impossible theological conundrum. From where does evil come? If it is not God, then there must be some other force in the world that directs and dictates events. If it is not God, then the Israelites might think that it is the gods of the Egyptians that are responsible. They might see the plagues and Pharaoh’s refusal to give in as a battle between God of Israel and the gods of Egypt - a battle that from the vantage point of this part of the parashah, it looks like the Egyptians will win. If not the gods of the Egyptians, then perhaps it is some other force – a dark principle responsible for all that is ill with the world. Standing at the edge of the water, Israel is literally caught between the devil and the deep blue sea…
But the Bible and Judaism refuses to accept this idea. God is the Creator, there is nothing in this world or in any other world that is not from God.
‘I am the Eternal,’ declares the prophet Isaiah, ‘There is none else. There is no God beside me….
‘I form light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil.’ (Isaiah 45: 5,7)
God as the creator of evil? It is a chilling thought. So much so that when this passage was inserted into our morning prayers it was slightly changed so as to read
‘makes peaces and creates everything.’
If God is only responsible for the good, then indeed there must be another deity of some kind out there – one that would appear more ubiquitous, more in control - just look at the evil in the world today. That is how some forms of Christianity see the world. God and the Devil fighting it out – the Bastion of light against the Prince of darkness.
But Judaism fiercely refuses to give any possibility of anything but God. God created two desires in the soul of humanity, the Midrash tells us: a good desire, and an evil desire. That explains our tendency to do the wrong thing while knowing full well what is the right thing to do in any given circumstance.
But through the desire for evil left unchecked produces untrammelled violence and iniquity, it can be harnessed and used for good.
‘But for the evil desire,’ we are told, ‘no one would build a house, take a wife or have children. Thus said Solomon “I saw that all labour and every skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbour.” (Ecclesiastes 4:4)’
So God creates evil, but it is our responsibility to put it to a good use rather than use it to rampage through the earth. God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, but Pharaoh had also been given the will and the strength to overcome the desire had he so wished. We are told the story so that we, and the Egyptians of today as well as all other nations remember and know the consequences of oppressing the stranger, enslaving nations, committing genocide. This week, when Europe observes Holocaust Memorial Day, we need only substitute Hitler for Pharaoh to see how important that message still is.