CrashCourse3

Aish HaTorah:
THE BIBLE AS HISTORY

By Rabbi Ken Spiro

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Crash Course in Jewish History -- Part 10

TEN PLAGUES

By Rabbi Ken Spiro

Most miracles are natural phenomena with awesomely good timing. The
Ten Plagues are a notable exception. Here the laws of nature are turned
upside down to help free the Jews.

Once the plagues hit Egypt -- blood, lice, frogs, etc. -- the devastation
continues for over a year. Each plague is an open miracle, because each
one represents a fantastic manipulation of nature. The laws of nature are
turned upside down to help the Jews.

Open miracles are a very important part of early Jewish history. After the
destruction of the First Temple they’re going to cease, although arguably
the Jews couldn’t have survived this long without continual hidden miracles.

The obvious question we must ask when we examine The Plagues is why?
Why did God choose to set the Jewish people free through this very long,
drawn-out process? If He wanted, God, the all-powerful being that He is,
could have made all the Egyptians drop dead on the first encounter with
Moses, or He could have frozen them in place, and all the Jews could have
packed up and left in five minutes.

To explain why the Ten Plagues had to be, we need to first explain the
Jewish view of miracles in general.

Judaism holds that nature does not act independently of God, but, at the
same time, God created the laws of nature and does not interfere with
them. God is certainly capable of doing whatever He likes, but He doesn’t
play around with the physical world and its workings. Therefore, most
miracles are natural phenomena with awesomely good timing.

But to this rule, the Ten Plagues are a notable exception.

A TOTAL EXCEPTION

Unlike the Ten Plagues, the splitting of the Red Sea or Reed Sea -- Yam
Suf -- could be explained as a natural event with great timing.

Several years ago two oceanographers documented that every 2,500 years
or so the right combination of winds and tide will cause the ocean to split
over the area of the Red Sea today. Unlike the movie version, where the
Red Sea splits in a matter of minutes, the Bible story relates a lengthy
process -- just as documented -- of the wind blowing all night and by the
morning there’s a dry place to walk through.

Napoleon, 200 years ago, witnessed a similar phenomenon.

Can you imagine if that happened to you? Right at the time you needed to
cross a body of water it splits for you overnight. If an event that occurs
statistically once every 2,500 years happened for you, just when you
needed it, you wouldn’t say, “Ah, that’s a good, interesting combination of
winds and tides.” You’d say, “Oh my God, a miracle!” That’s what’s
happening in most cases of miracles in the Bible.

However, there is no natural explanation for the Ten Plagues. The Ten
Plagues are a clear example of God flipping the laws of nature on its end.

We have hail -- which should be frozen -- that is on fire; we have darkness
so dense that no one can see or move; things that happened to Egyptians
not happening to Jews. All supernatural stuff. Why? Here is the reason:

The whole essence of idolatry is the belief that every force in nature has a
god that controls it. In Egypt they worshipped the Nile god, the sun god,
the cat god, the sheep god, etc. The Ten Plagues were designed by God
to flip all the laws of nature on end to demonstrate -- not just for the
Jewish
people but for all of humanity, for all of history -- that He alone controls
all
of nature, all of the physical world, and that there is nothing outside of
His
control.

If we examine the plagues carefully we can readily see that each one was
designed to show God’s control of all forces in nature: water and earth,
fire
and ice, insects, reptiles and mammals, light and darkness, and finally,
life
and death.

ARCHEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE

Do we have evidence for the Ten Plagues in archeological records?

As noted in the last installment in this series there is recorded a ten-year
period in Egyptian history (right around this time) when chaos reigned.
There are other oblique references, the most famous being the Ipuwer
Papyrus. This is actually a series of papyri, which describe various
cataclysmic events in Egypt -- blood everywhere, people dying etc.

Immanuel Velikovsky uses the Ipuwer Papyrus as the basis for his book,
Worlds in Collision, in which he argues that the whole Exodus story is
true, but that the plagues happened because a comet came close to the
earth. He says the dust from the comet turned the water red, and the pull
of the comet’s gravitational field split the sea, etc.

However, if you read the Bible, you see that with the plague of blood, it’s
not just water turning a “dusty red.” The Midrash also tells us that
Egyptians perish from this bloody water but not the Jews.

Despite that, there is an amazing amount of resistance on the part of the
Egyptians -- not just the Pharaoh, but the whole of Egypt -- to let the Jews
leave. It is classic anti-Semitism, “I don’t care if I take my whole
country
down as long as I can take the Jews with me.”

This actually is a very common historical pattern. You’ll see this certainly
when we get to Hitler -- they needed the trains to supply the Eastern Front,
but they diverted them to ship Jews to Auschwitz. They were losing the
war, but their main energy still went, not to win, not to even save
themselves, but to kill the Jews.

Finally, finally, after the death of the first-born, the Pharaoh says, “Go!”

The Jews leave, the sea splits, the Egyptians follow and they drown. That’s
the final great event until … Mount Sinai.

NEXT: MOUNT SINAI
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