Shabbat Parashat Bo - 5781

Shabbat Parashat Bo - 5781

Rabbi Hal Miller

"And so that you may relate in the ears of your son and your son's son that I have

amused Myself with Egypt and My signs that I placed among them, that you may

know that I am God." [Shemot 10:2]

Could God really have "amused" Himself with Egypt? That sounds almost malicious

and certainly seems incongruous with what we do know of Him. The word involved

is hitalalti. The grammatical form is first person singular, past tense, such as "I did".

It also appears to be reflexive. What does it mean?

First, to establish context, the verse before it, beginning a chapter and topic, is,

"God said to Moshe, 'Come to Pharaoh for I have made his heart and the heart of

his servants stubborn so that I shall place these signs of Mine in his midst." [10:1]

Our verse is a continuation of the one preceding it, so we tie hitalalti to God's making

Pharaoh's heart hard. This concept is one of the most confusing and heavily

commented-upon in the Torah, how could God effectively remove Pharaoh's ability

to do teshuvah? But we will not go down that route today.

Instead of whether He might have removed Pharaoh's option for teshuvah, we are

looking here at specifically the purpose He did so. Why did God do what He did to

Pharaoh and his people that resulted in their hardening their hearts to refuse to let

Israel go so that God would then perform miracles?

Onkelos translates our verse, "and so that you may recount before your son and

your son's sons the miracles that I performed in Egypt and My signs that I placed

among them, so that you will know that I am God. " He avoids our question by

rendering hitalalti as "I performed", referring to the miracles that will free Israel.

This is difficult, as hitalalti implies something already done, and although some of

the plagues have already struck at this point, the biggest are yet to come.

Ibn Ezra says the word means I took revenge, but again, the slaying of the

firstborn is yet to come. Ramban and Rashi write that God mocked Pharaoh,

which seems to fit better. This episode was a battle between Pharaoh and God,

where Pharaoh's actions were completely incapable of doing him any good against

the Creator. Rashi further points out that the word could not mean that God was

toying with Pharaoh as a cat does with a mouse, as that would have required the

Torah to write olalti, that He did something to Pharaoh, rather than hitalalti, which

refers back to Him as though He did something to Himself.

Rav Hirsch defines hitalal as "revealing oneself in a progressive series of actions

upon somebody, to treat them as material by which one reveals one's power."

He says that "even if Egypt got nothing out of it (His actions), He did these things

for the benefit of Israel, to lay the foundation of their knowledge of God."

Based on Rashi and Rav Hirsch, we can understand hitalalti as God setting up

the teaching to Israel of God's power, a prelude to Mt. Sinai. The purpose was

not to mock Pharaoh, not to amuse God, nor to take revenge on Pharaoh, rather

to use Pharaoh in His lessons to Israel, as it says at the end of the verse, "that

you may know that I am God."