NOTES for Exo 9:1-35

The plagues continue. Natural disasters fall on Egypt one after another. The Egyptian magicians have already acknowledged their powerlessness; they are already telling Pharaoh directly that this is God's matter, and therefore they can do nothing to help. Even the people are already beginning to listen to the words of the strange prophet from among the Hebrews: experience shows that not listening costs too much. If one listens, one can at least minimize the damage from the disaster. Only Pharaoh remains unyielding. Though not entirely.

At times it begins to look as if he is ready to let the people go. Usually this happens when the situation appears to him utterly catastrophic. But when it improves even for a while, through the prayers of that same Moses, Pharaoh again becomes his old self, harsh and unyielding. Why is this? What keeps him from seeing the obvious, from understanding what all his subjects already understand? Fear of losing face? Perhaps. A concession on his part could be interpreted by everyone, and first of all by the Semites living in the Delta, as weakness. People usually do not stand on ceremony with the weak: after the first concession they will demand a second, after the second a third... From the point of view of any authority, this is the road to the abyss.

Pharaoh could not take that path. There was also something else: the familiar way of life. Familiar models. A familiar worldview. If he now allowed one of the Semitic tribes to leave, it would mean a real upheaval, a change in all of life, in the whole sense of the world. When had it ever happened that some barbarians forced the pharaohs of Egypt to follow their lead, and in this way, without war, without invading Egypt as a wild horde, but simply by begging for concessions?

An unheard-of thing! Who would respect him, Pharaoh, after that? He would stop respecting himself after that. Besides, it was still not known whether everything taking place was a mystification; perhaps the disasters that had fallen on the country were not directly connected with the strange prophet. Perhaps this very disaster would already be the last one, and then everything would be as before again... But the disasters were repeated again and again, repeated so that Pharaoh would finally be convinced: he had to let the people go, otherwise there would be no end to the cataclysms.