בְּיָד חֲזָקָהb’yad hazakah “With a mighty hand” (Deut. 26:8) Since the Torah states “With a mighty hand,” after stating, “And Adonai took them out of Egypt,” “mighty hand” must be referring to the last plague. This is to teach us that in the final plague, the Egyptians were stricken with, “pestilence,” “ sword,” “with great awe,” with “staff” and with “blood.¹³⁴ ” We have a principle, that “anything that is included in a generalization or is learned from a generalization, applies not only to that one thing but to the entire generalization. Because of this principle, all of the plagues which struck the Egyptians were included with one another so that the ten plagues were really like one hundred plagues. As stated in the following parable:¹³⁵ 14:5. With slight differences from Rabbi Foa’s version of the parable. It also appears in the Mekhilta D’Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai 14:5 and in Rabbeinu Bachya 12:33. One of the main differences is that the master gives three choices - the first and second are the same - the third involves paying 100 maneh (instead of 1000 zuz) . Note the original context in which the Parable appears: “In the past, Pharaoh's servants said to him (Ex. 10:7) "How long will this one be a stumbling block to us?" and now (Ibid. 14:5) "What is this that we did in sending Israel away from serving us?" They said to him: If we were smitten and we had not sent him away, that would have been enough for us. Or if we were smitten and had sent him away and he had not taken our wealth from us, that would have been enough for us. But we have been smitten, and we have sent him away, and he has taken our wealth from us!” A person said to his servant, “Go buy me a fish in the marketplace.” The servant went and bought him a spoiled (stinking) fish. The master became angry and said to the servant. He said, “I will punish you in one of three ways: either eat the spoiled fish, or accept one hundred lashes or pay me a thousand zuz.” The servant said: “I’ll eat the spoiled fish!” When he ate half of it, he became nauseated and wanted to throw it up. He said to his master, “I can’t eat it! I’ll accept a hundred lashes.” When he had received fifty lashes, he thought he would die from the pain. He said, “I will pay a thousand zuz!” In the end, he ate, was whipped and he paid! So to with Pharaoh: he ate, he was whipped and he paid. (U’techilah) First, we have several questions about this parable. Why does the parable mention that the master sent his servant to buy a fish rather than meat? Further, in the parable, the servant is Pharaoh; where do we find that he ate fish? Also, the master in the parable is upright and righteous; how could he make the servant pay a thousand zuz? If that was the cost of the fish then he should have told him to pay for the fish. If this was more than the cost of the fish, why punish him in this way? It makes sense to punish him with lashes or to make him eat the fish. This would appear to be a more appropriate judgment for one who was not careful in performing the task the master had assigned him. But let the master charge him as much as the fish cost and not a thousand times the amount! (Omnam) We have already commented that God sent Israel to Egypt to be purified and refined through the suffering of subjugation. We also know that as long as a person is not ‘whole’ he is like a fish, asHabakuk states, “You have made mankind like the fish of the sea…” (Hab. 1:14) This is referring to the wicked who were caught in a great snare, which was Nebuchadnezzar. In his wisdom King Solomon wrote, “A man cannot even know his time as fishes are enmeshed in a fatal net…” (Ecc. 9:12) Rashi explains, “Like large fish that are caught in an inferior and weak net, and our Rabbis explained: “This is a fishhook, which is no more than a type of needle, by which a large fish is caught,” so it is with human beings on the day that evil is visited on them with something simple.¹³⁶ That is why the wicked are compared to fish. God sent Israel beneath the hand of Pharaoh in order to refine them as has been said. It was as if he said to (Pharaoh) “Buy one fish for me.”For Israel is one of five possessions of the Holy One, as is said in *Avot.*¹³⁷ It was as if God said to Pharaoh, refine them so that they will be worthy to sit at My table. The servant went and bought a spoiled fish; that is, he turned the refining upside down by not allowing them to study Torah or to fulfill the commandments as was written above regarding the verse, “The Egyptians made us look bad…” (Deut. 26:6) The verse doesn’t say “They dealt harshly with us.” ¹³⁸ The Holy One said to Pharaoh: “I shall place one of three punishments upon you: either you must eat the fish,” so that you acknowledge that I am God and all powerful. From this the Israelites shall reason, ‘If Pharaoh admits that God is God, how much more so should we acknowledge that the Holy One is God!’ and then the stink will depart from it. Pharaoh began to say, “I do not know Adonai, nor will I let Israel go.” (Ex.5:2) In other words (he meant), ‘Even if I knew Adonai, I would not free the Israelites, because I don’t want to release them from my corruption, which is the realm of impurity!’ He then commanded that their labor should be more severe, making men’s work harder so that they were not free to purify and refine themselves. When he began to eat the fish which were the plagues of blood and frogs, he became nauseated and he began to vomit because there were frogs in their innards, causing the Egyptians to throw up. Pharaoh then said to Moses and Aaron, “Entreat your God and ask Him to remove the frogs from me and my people and I will send you out. When he didn’t keep his word, it was as if he invited lashes upon himself. Then when they had completed their lashes, each man asked his male neighbor and each woman her female neighbor silver and gold utensils and the Egyptians emptied out everything. When the Egyptians wanted to pursue the Israelites the people said to Pharaoh, “We don’t have our fine jewelry to adorn ourselves!” Pharaoh opened his treasury to them and gave them what they wanted; this became the booty that they collected at the sea which was even greater than what they took in the land of Egypt. It seems that all of the collection was from Pharaoh’s pocket. In answer to the question, why did he punish the servant with a thousand zuz, it is to teach an essential lesson. A person should never say, “I want this punishment, for my sin.” Rather he should say, “ God should do whatever is fit in God’s eyes.” A person cannot know what is good for him and what is bad.Do we not see this when the Holy One asked King David what punishment he desired: either to turn him over to his enemies for three months, or that his children should die. David chose to be turned over to his enemies for three months.¹³⁹ In the end, it was necessary for him to change his mind and Avishai helped him by praying for him. Here too, the master decreed all of these judgments against his servant for bringing him a spoiled fish, and what the servant thought was the worst was the easiest for it was the one he could bear.. Therefore a person should be careful not to say anything because God in heaven judges justly, and all of a person's words come before Him. When a person chooses his own judgment, it can never be taken back except with great and mighty merit. Rather it is better for one to say that he has fallen before God (and accepts his decree) because God’s mercy is great. (Nachzor) We will now return to,עׇנְיֵ֛נוּ, “our plight.”(Deut. 26:7) Each plague included all the others so that together they were equal to 100 lashes which are mentioned in the Midrash. Rabbi Akiva said that each plague had five (derivatives), that were aspects of the plague itself, as we shall explain. According to our approach, each plague included the other plagues, when the Torah states that the plagues came about with a “mighty hand” meaning with pestilence, it means that there were deaths from each of them. In the case of blood, there were deaths for those who drank the blood since not everyone could suffer its quality and its heat. In the case of the plague of frogs, some of them were so big that they swallowed the Egyptians. The lice were so large they were the size of a chicken egg as we have mentioned; it is not far from common sense that they would cause death to those who were delicate. During the plague of darkness people died of hunger and so on with wild animals.¹⁴⁰ pestilence implies that people died as a result of each of the plagues. This is what the Torah means when it says God freed us with a mighty hand - pestilence. Each plague caused some type of death to the Egyptians.

footnotes: ¹³⁴ All the associations made in the rest of the Midrash on this verse. ¹³⁵ Mekhilta D’Rebbe Yishmael ¹³⁶ See Rashi ad locum, ¹³⁷ Mishnah Avot 6:10 ¹³⁸ See the commentary on this verse above. ¹³⁹ See 2 Samuel 24. I assume this is the story to which Rabbi Foa is referring, though the version he talks about here is different. ¹⁴⁰ The word dever,