The wicked child, what does he say? The wicked child is criticized for excluding himself from the community by saying “What does this service mean to YOU (not to me)?” Yet the wise child seems to do the same thing when he says, “Which the Lord our God commanded YOU.” Why do we criticize the wicked child for using exclusionary language but not the wise child? When the wise child asks, “What is the meaning of these laws…which the Lord commanded you,” he does not exclude himself from the community. Rather, as one who was born in after the events at Sinai, he did not experience the Revelation first hand. God did not directly command him to observe the commandments but he wants to know what God told his elders to do so that he can faithfully observe them. The Wicked child, on the other hand, witnesses the celebration of Passover (“What is this service to you?”) Rather than joining in, he says, “What does this mean to you,” excluding himself from the celebration. The wise child’s question is a response to hearing the commandment and wanting to understand it while the wicked child’s question is a response to witnessing the act and stepping away from participation.

Once again, why does the Haggadah choose to answer this child’s question in a way that is different from the Torah’s answer to the question? The Torah does not answer the wicked child directly. Following his question in Exodus 12:26, the Torah goes on to say, “And you shall SAY, “It is a Passover sacrifice to the Lord…” It does not say, “And you shall say “TO HIM” The Torah has the respondent acknowledge the significance of the offering to himself and not to the questioner because the questioner who is wicked is not really looking for an answer. His question begins, “When your children say to you….” It does not say, “When your children question you,” as we find in the case of the question which is posed by the simple child and the wise child. The Haggadah, then, formulates its own caustic answer to this child’s rhetorical question. In effect it says, “He is not really asking you a question so you don’t have to answer him either.” The answer that the Haggadah gives meant to be sarcastic. It isn’t even addressed directly to the wicked child; the answer is “God did this for me, not for HIM” (instead of saying not for YOU.)

Why does the verse that is quoted (Exodus 13:8) in the answer to the wicked child say, “It is because of this that God did for me when I went forth from Egypt”? God did not command the individual but the entire community at the time of the Exodus. It should have said, “That WE went forth from Egypt” since the entire people of Israel were commanded to observe the Mitzvot as a result of the Exodus. The key expression in this verse is “What the Lord did for me.” The Hebrew word for “did,” Asah has an implication of acquiring or taking possession of something. It also has a connotation of transformation, as in the case of Genesis, 12:5, “All the souls that they made (Asu) in Haran.” This phrase is understood as implying that Abraham and Sarah made souls by bringing them to a belief in one God. When our verse says, “Which the Lord did for me,” it means that God gave us the commandments in order to transform us into a covenanted nation when he took us out of Egypt. It is written in the first person singular because each person was personally transformed by God’s act of redemption.

The Maggid concludes, “Had he been there, he would not have been redeemed.” Yet based on the verse just quoted, the statement should have been, “Had he been there, he would not have been taken out of Egypt.” Why does the Maggid choose to change the language of the verse in his response to the wicked child? Didn’t God take all the Israelites out of Egypt, even the wicked ones like Dathan and Abiram? God took all the people of Israel out of Egypt, both wicked and righteous alike. Yet he did not necessarily redeem all the people. Redemption, we saw earlier, has a connotation of becoming a possession of God. In this sense of the word, the wicked person may have left Egypt, but he does not live in this unique relationship with God even after leaving Egypt.