Begging my readers’ pardon for not elaborating on the rest of my conversation with street-kids rescuer Rabbi Nahari as promised (I plan to continue his saga next week) allow me instead to share a chapter from my sefer Parshah V’likchah which happens to be quite on-topic. In our parshah this week HaKadosh Baruch Hu teaches us a lesson about the honor of a human being even a wicked human being like Pharaoh.
Moshe was furious and with good reason.
He stood facing a stubborn king who refused to listen to reason. And Moshe turned and stalked out of the royal palace “with burning anger” (Shemos 11:8).
What caused this “burning anger”? What kindled such rage in the humblest of hearts?
When the ninth plague the Plague of Darkness struck the land of the Nile — a darkness so thick and tangible that “they did not see one another and no one rose from his place for three days” — Pharaoh summoned Moshe urgently and said to him “Go and worship Hashem.”
Pharaoh had reached the end of his endurance yet he still found the strength to set limits on the permission he was granting Bnei Yisrael: “Only your flocks and your cattle shall be left here.”
Moshe was furious. Redemption is not subject to restrictions. Then Pharaoh seemingly forgot the destruction that had run rampant in his land for nearly a year and said scornfully to Moshe “Leave me! No more shall you see my face for the day you see my face you shall die!”
Pharaoh had thrown down the gauntlet and Moshe picked it up: “As you have said I shall no longer see your face.” And as a goodbye present he delivered Hashem’s promise of one more plague: the Plague of the Firstborn. Before stalking out of the palace he described the scream that would arise from all over Egypt at midnight when all their firstborn would die in a single moment. His parting shot was:
“And all these servants of yours will come down to me and prostrate themselves before me saying ‘Go out you and all your people that are at your feet ’ and after that I will go out. ”
But for some reason Moshe left out a central and important detail. The final chord of the Plague of the Firstborn was not as he described it to Pharaoh. Moshe said to Pharaoh “And all these servants of yours will come down to me and prostrate themselves before me ” whereas in fact when the plague came this is what actually happened:
“Pharaoh arose at night he and all his servants and all of Egypt and there was a great outcry in Egypt… and he called to Moshe and Aharon at night and said ‘Arise go out from among my people…’”
That is to say it was not only Pharaoh’s servants who came and pleaded with Moshe and Aharon to leave their stricken and humiliated land with the utmost haste. Pharaoh led the procession himself.
Why did Moshe omit this from his stinging prediction of things to come? Why did he only say that Pharaoh’s servants would prostrate and plead?
According to Rashi “He was showing due respect to royalty for in the end Pharaoh himself came down to him in the night.”
This is a surprising answer. This drawn-out standoff which still hadn’t worn down this stubborn and cruel king’s resistance now reached record heights. Moshe responds to Pharaoh’s threat with a fitting rejoinder but nevertheless he holds back from overstepping the bounds of due respect for royalty. He refrains from telling the king the whole humiliating truth that Pharaoh himself will come begging Moshe to take the Jewish People out of his land and instead couches it in more respectful terms.
But why? Why give such an evil king even that much respect?
Because this was part of Moshe’s mandate from the start. When Hashem first commanded Moshe to go with his brother Aharon to Pharaoh and launch the campaign to free the Hebrew slaves “He commanded them [i.e. Moshe and Aharon] concerning Pharaoh king of Egypt” (Shemos 6:13).
Rashi comments “Concerning Pharaoh king of Egypt — He enjoined him to speak to him with respect; this is the deeper meaning.”
In the context of the whole struggle between Moshe and Pharaoh this injunction seems peculiar. Wasn’t the entire campaign a rebellion against the king’s sovereignty and as such obviously an affront to his honor? This man who viewed himself and was viewed by his people as a god was humiliated and put to shame by Moshe through a series of ten plagues on his nation and his own person.
Take for example the Plague of Frogs:
“And in you and in your people and in all your servants frogs will come up.” Rashi says “In you and in your people — they will enter into their innards and croak.”
“Let us picture to ourselves how Pharaoh looked sitting on his throne with his crown on his head and his ministers around him with frogs croaking in his belly and in the bellies of his ministers. He would speak and instead of his voice only the croaking of the frogs would be heard! Is this the dignity befitting a king? And the same could be said of the Plague of Lice the Plague of Boils etc….” (Ohr Yahel on the Parshah)
The great Pharaoh whose helplessness was revealed for all to see could not deal with the plagues that rocked his kingdom and his throne. This was such a disgrace and such an undermining of Pharaoh’s authority that telling Moshe to be sure to treat the king with respect seems absurd. At this point what difference does it make even to Pharaoh if Moshe says “You will come and prostate yourself to me ” or “Your servants will come…”?
But the great teachers of mussar tell us that the Torah takes a different view:
“We see here how a punishment is meted out with extreme precision to a hairsbreadth no more and no less…. Pharaoh was deserving of these punishments [i.e. the Plagues] due to his many sins of rebellion. But to hear such words from Moshe as ‘You will come down to me ’ to disgrace him to that extent he did not deserve because he was a king and kings are to be treated with respect.” (Ohr Yahel)
And herein lies the Torah’s approach to the concept of punishment. The purpose of punishment is not to exact vengeance from the evildoer but to educate him — to attack the twisted thinking that has taken root in a person’s heart or a nation’s consciousness and to correct it. Pharaoh’s distorted self-concept as an all-powerful diety drove him to the worst kind of evil.
In recent times Hitler and Stalin suffered from this kind of megalomania and the results of their madness have left a deep scar on the human race. The Plagues of Egypt were meant to undermine this dangerous worldview. One by one the Plagues destroyed every part of the Pharaonic philosophy and corrected the self-concept of the Egyptian people and their king that indeed all men are equal and no one has the right to abuse his fellowman or subjugate him; and specifically that the Jewish People are are not subject to any mortal man.
However Pharaoh was king of Egypt by right. Even as he and his nation were stricken by terrible plagues he knew that his right to rule Egypt was not under attack; what was under attack was the megalomania that caused him to oppress the Jewish People and drove him to unspeakable cruelty.
This is why Moshe was cautioned from the very beginning to show Pharaoh that his honor as a human king was being preserved and even before his crushing downfall Moshe gave him a clear hint that Hashem’s words were not directed at his royal status.
From this the great mussar thinkers derived a lesson for themselves:
“From here we are to learn that one is to be very careful even when punishing someone who deserves punishment. In every case every word must be weighed and measured with awareness of what is permissible and what is not. Take this lesson from the parshah: if this applied to the wicked Pharaoh how much more to one of the Jewish People… How careful one must be in one’s speech to give him due respect for on the day of final judgment a man will be asked ‘Did you make your fellowman king over you with considerate behavior?’ ” —