ויאמר ה׳ ..עוד נגע אחד, G'd said to Moses: "one more plague, etc." This chapter tells us about matters G'd had already mentioned to Moses earlier while Moses was still in Midian. At that time (3,19) G'd had informed Moses that Pharaoh would not let the Israelites depart even after He applied a strong hand against him. In 4,22-23 G'd had already warned Pharaoh of the consequences of not letting the Israelites depart. You will observe that the end of the cycle of nine plagues left Pharaoh exactly as obstinate as he had been at the beginning. He had started out by not even considering the demands of G'd, and though he appeared to have softened his stance, making progressively greater concessions, he was now back to square one having ruled out the departure of any of the Israelites. In 7,4 G'd had told Moses that the sign that the plague of the killing of the firstborn was about to occur would be Pharaoh's refusal to listen. As soon as Moses heard that he was not to appear again at court he knew that the time had come for the last plague after which the Exodus would begin. Moses knew that this plague would be the most severe because G'd asked him to instruct the people to "borrow" as many silver and golden trinkets as they could. The word עוד then does not mean an additional plague as much as it means "the plague I have already spoken to you about once before, I am mentioning again." This explains why Moses did not wait after verse four until G'd described the plague to him, though G'd had done so every other time when Moses was told to warn Pharaoh. Moses proceeded to inform Pharaoh on the spot. Whereas it is true that we do not find that G'd had previously told Moses that the plague of the killing of the firstborn would occur at midnight, we may assume that G'd had told Moses that detail also at that time, but that the Torah did not record it there as it had not yet become relevant. This is why it is not difficult to understand that G'd repeated here what He had told Moses originally, i.e. that the Jews would take with them the silver and gold trinkets borrowed from the Egyptians as well as their garments and that they would "empty" Egypt (Exodus 3,22).

כחצות הלילה, "at around midnight, etc." The Talmud Berachot 4 already discusses that the reason that Moses did not give the precise time but only an approximation was so that in the event the Egyptian astronomers were inaccurate in their calculations they should not be able to accuse Moses of having lied. Possibly the reason is related to what Bereshit Rabbah 43,3 has to say about Genesis 14,15 where Abraham is described as defeating the four kings. That event occurred on the night of the 15th of Nissan. In that case the letter כ before the word חצות does not describe an approximation but refers to a previous event which took place on that date at that time. Our sages in Shemot Rabbah 42 tell us that the night in which Abraham defeated the four mightiest kings of the world (Genesis 14,15) caused many people to re-evaluate the beliefs they had held up to that time. The Torah therefore mentioned the time when this miracle had occurred. In our paragraph too, the people who survived this event must have done some serious soul-searching as to the validity of their religious beliefs. The letter כ then refers to such re-evaluations as a result of what would occur at midnight.

אני יוצא. "I will go out, etc." G'd stressed the "I" as if to say that although He has many agents who could perform this task at His behest, He would do so personally and would descend right into the midst of Egypt. G'd had two reasons for doing this personally. 1) As an expression of His fondness for His people whom He wanted to liberate personally. 2) Angels are not capable of distinguishing which human being was formed from the first drop of semen of his father so that he deserved the description בכור, firstborn. Even if such a fetus would emerge as the second or third of a multiple birth it would still deserve to be considered the firstborn. No one but G'd Himself is able to make these distinctions.

ומת כל בכור, and every firstborn will die, etc. G'd did not say: "I will kill him." The reason, as we have pointed out on previous occasions is, that evil does not originate with G'd. He is the Creator of all that is good. Anything in the nature of evil is initiated by one of the agents He has designated. G'd Himself indicated who was the firstborn, His agents carried out the death sentence. This is why the mention of "destroyers" at the time the Israelites put the blood on their door-posts and the fact that G'd Himself orchestrated the plague are not contradictory.

There may also be another meaning, similar to what we are told in Shabbat 34 where Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai put his eye on a sinner and that sinner died as a result. At first glance, how are we to understand that a pious person of the calibre of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai would summarily "execute" someone by giving him "the eye?" The same Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai had castigated people of the evil eye as possessing a very negative virtue (Zohar 3, page 211). Actually, the exact wording in the Talmud was יהבי עיניה, "he looked at him with his eye" (singular). We would have expected the Talmud to say that "he looked at him with his eyes (pl)." We have to remember that inasmuch as "evil" and "death" are synonymous how is it that evil exists at all? This is because there are no absolutes; just as the attribute of Mercy contains a small part of the attribute of Justice, so every good virtue contains a small element of evil, and vice versa. In the case of evil, death occurs when that small part of "good" or "life" which kept it alive is withdrawn. Keeping this in mind, we can understand the peculiar statement in Sukkah 52 according to which G'd will slaughter the evil urge at an appropriate time in the future in the presence of the righteous. How are to understand this? How can one slaughter an angel (disembodied spirit)? Considering what we have just said we can understand the statement in the Talmud very easily. G'd will remove the part of the evil urge which makes it a viable i.e. active force.

We also need to appreciate the natural tendency of identical or basically similar virtues to coalesce with each other. The good attracts the good, the evil tends to attract more evil to itself. This is the secret of how the souls of the Israelites which had their origin in the positive emanations could "draw" to themselves the "lost" souls which we described as being particularly prevalent in Egypt. [The author has repeatedly described these souls as having been captured by the negative side of the emanations as a result of Adam eating from the tree of knowledge (compare his comments on Genesis 49,9). Ed.] G'd had given outstanding Torah scholars the ability to attract to themselves the "good" part of any sinner. When Rabbi Shimon looked at the sinner in question he extracted the good part of that sinner, thus leaving no viable element within that person. As a result the sinner died. When G'd passed through Egypt on that night, He extracted the good that was within any of these firstborn; as a result such a firstborn simply dropped dead. It was as if Rabbi Shimon had put his eye on such an individual.

The meaning of ומת כל בכור is not simply that the soul of that person would die leaving the body as it had been, but the element which had made that person different from others because he was a firstborn would die with him. In other words there would never again be Egyptians (or even other Gentiles) whose characteristics would include elements of what had been known as the "firstborn" of the people beholden to the powers of the קליפה, the forces of negative virtues. Perhaps this is why no exile ever again assumed the dimensions of the exile in Egypt. G'd had weakened the powers of the קליפה permanently.

I have tried to find a reason why the dying of the firstborn was a necessary prerequisite for the Exodus, as well as why even non-Egyptian firstborn (compare 12,29) had to die if they happened to be in Egypt on that fateful night. The reason is connected to G'd having described Israel as "My firstborn son" (4,22). We have a tradition (Zohar 2, page 263) that whenever G'd created some phenomenon which is clearly recognisable as something good, He also created its counterpart, i.e. something potentially evil at the same time. Every sacred phenomenon in our world is matched by a parallel phenomenon under the control of Satan, or what is known in Kabbalistic parlance "the forces of the קליפה." The latter make every effort to gain dominance over the former. We must therefore understand the forces of the קליפה which represented their firstborn as exerting every effort to frustrate the emigration of the Jewish people from Egypt. These efforts did not cease until G'd had "killed" the firstborn of the powers of the קליפה which opposed His will. What G'd had to do was to eliminate the concept of the firstborn being special, otherwise the relief as a result of the death of the Egyptian firstborn would have been only temporary. When the Torah (12,29) stresses that: "the firstborn of the captive, the firstborn of the maidservant and the firstborn of the animals died," this is in contrast to the firstborn of the Israelites who were subsequently sanctified (Numbers 8,17). The reason this sanctification of the Jewish firstborn became necessary is that G'd had done away with the concept of the firstborn being somebody special at the time He eliminated the firstborn on the night of the 15th of Nissan. Had this not been the case we would not understand why the firstborn of the animals had to die also. In Numbers 8,17 G'd declared that henceforth the firstborn of the Jews would be sacred to Him, i.e. there should no longer be a firstborn associated with the powers of the קליפה. If we find that the Egyptians still engaged in hot pursuit of the Israelites even after the death of the firstborn, this was because they had not yet realised that their former power had vanished. As a result, not a single one of them survived the debacle at the Sea of Reeds.

ולכל בני ישראל לא יחרץ כלב לשונו, "not a single dog will whet his tongue against any Israelite, etc." Why was this so important? If the meaning of the line is that not a single Israelite would die as a result of a bite by a dog, why did the Torah not spell this out?

Perhaps we should understand this as an allusion to a well known proverb quoted in Baba Kama 60 that when one hears the dogs bark it is a sign that the angel of death is in town. The Torah wanted to tell us that the angel of death did not cause the death of a single Israelite during that night. The Torah added the detail about the dogs not whetting their tongue against Israel as evidence that they did not even attack a Jew. The reason was "so that you shall know that G'd will make a miraculous distinction between Egypt and between Israel."

The word ולכל may also mean that only where the Jews congregated did the dogs not whet their tongues against them because this would prove that no stranger was amongst them. Wherever Jews and Egyptians would mingle the dogs would most certainly bark as proof that the משחית, the angel of death, was active in that environment. What the Torah revealed then is that no trick would save the Egyptian firstborn. If they decided to hide amongst the Israelites the barking of the dogs would reveal their presence (compare Shemot Rabbah 18,2).

וירדו כל עבדיך, "and all your servants will come down, etc." This was a promise by G'd that the servants referred to would all survive this plague. Perhaps this was because none of them were firstborns and Moses knew this through his prophetic vision. Alternatively, even though some of these servants may have been firstborns, Moses exempted them from the effects of this plague. This was not because of their righteousness but so that they would get their deserts for having been present and silent when Pharaoh used abusive language against Moses and Aaron. The principle of the punishment fitting the crime demanded that these servants would themselves be demeaned when they would beg Moses and Aaron to leave the land in order that not all the Egyptians would die. They would have to ask public forgiveness for their previous conduct. We know that Moses had felt insulted by their behaviour since the Torah told us at the end of this verse that Moses left the palace in a very angry frame of mind. Actually, Moses included Pharaoh himself in his warning that all his servants would get up at night, etc.; he only maintained a degree of respect for Royalty and that is why he did not refer to Pharaoh by name.

והשתחוו לי לאמור, "they will bow down to me saying, etc." The reason that Moses said לאמור instead of ויאמרו לי, was that he implied that the mere fact they would prostrate themselves would convey their intent to beg Moses to leave the country with his people. Inasmuch as Moses was superior to them why would he need their permission to leave altogether?

In addition the Torah tells us that the servants treated Moses like a king. Just as it is not customary for a citizen to approach the king and begin to speak without having received permission, Pharaoh's servants prostrated themselves as a sign that they asked for permission to speak. The Torah makes this plain by quoting Moses as saying: "they will bow down to me to say, etc;" the bowing was a form of asking permission to speak. While it is true that the Torah does not report these details as having occurred when the events of that night are described in chapter twelve, the fact that the Torah does report that Pharaoh himself arose during that night is sufficient proof that whatever Moses had predicted did in fact occur.

ויאמר ה׳ אל משה לא ישמע אליכם פרעה, G'd said: "Pharaoh will not listen to you, etc." Perhaps G'd answered a privately held belief by Moses that after Pharaoh would experience this dreadful plague he would not only free the Israelites but not pursue them even when he became aware that they had no intention of returning. This would also explain the use of the future tense by G'd. The reason that Pharaoh would remain obstinate was to give G'd an opportunity to perform still more miracles in the land of Egypt. Compare Mechilta 14 which explains why the word ארץ was needed and it was not enough to speak about מצרים.

G'd may also have told Moses that Pharaoh had not yet understood the impact of Moses' prediction, namely, that as of the moment that he and his servants would urge Israel to leave they would be subject to Moses' authority and not to his. G'd did not want him to understand this yet so as to bring more plagues upon Egypt.

ומשה ואהרון עשו…ויחזק ה׳ את לב פרעה, Moses and Aaron performed all these miracles in Pharaoh's presence….but G'd hardened the heart of Pharaoh, etc. This verse tells us that in spite of all the miracles Moses had performed, Pharaoh was still not willing to let the Israelites leave, not even conditionally, such as had been proposed in 5,3.