NOTES for Exo 11:1-10

Of all the Egyptian plagues, the last--the death of the firstborn--seems the cruelest and most unjust. Of course, a situation in which everyone suffers because of one person's choice, even one endowed with unlimited power, does not look just from either a human or a divine point of view. The problem, however, is that the fallen world is not just at all. Nature knows no justice; neither does a society that lives by laws very much like the laws of nature, the laws of the herd or the pack. And a society made up of fallen people lives exactly that way. In the natural world it often happens that a leader's mistake destroys the herd; the same thing happens among people when the mistake of a ruler endowed with power, who does not know God, destroys an entire nation.

It would seem that God has the power to prevent such a course of events, and that God, who wants good for humanity, certainly should have done so. That is true, of course, but with one reservation: they could have been prevented only if Pharaoh had acknowledged God's authority over him. In this respect the last plague is no different from all the others. The point here is not God's revenge on those who reject Him, but that without such acknowledgment a person simply cannot make use of the salvation God can give him. It is impossible to grasp the hand stretched out to you and push it away at the same time.

Meanwhile Pharaoh finally decided to do exactly that: to push it away, and to push it away roughly and harshly, threatening Moses with death if he appeared before him again (Ex 10:28). Every relationship with Moses, both as a man and as God's prophet, was broken off, and Moses himself confirmed it (Ex 10:29). Now Pharaoh had to meet the power of God in all its fullness, while God's love and mercy were completely hidden from him. For God, this choice of Pharaoh meant enormous possibilities for Egypt, lost forever (v. 9). What they were, and what miracles God might have revealed in that country, one can only guess.

For Pharaoh, an encounter with God's power had to become truly terrible, all the more because its blow fell not only on him personally, but also on all his subjects. Yet given the position Pharaoh had taken toward Moses and toward the God of Israel, this was the only way to carry out God's plan. Now the situation would unfold so that practically nothing would depend on Pharaoh's choice anymore, and the Egyptians' only thought would be the desire to be rid of Moses himself, his people, and his God, whose mercy Pharaoh had rejected, making Him for himself a truly fearsome God.

When reading those chapters of Exodus devoted to the account of the plagues of Egypt, one cannot help asking: what, after all, was God's original intention regarding everything that was happening? God says to Moses: Pharaoh did not listen so that "wonders" might be multiplied in Egypt. In many other cases the sacred writer directly indicates that it was God who hardened Pharaoh's heart, in the sense that He made it hard, unyielding, and unbending. With such a heart, a person becomes stubborn, as Pharaoh proved to be in the story with Moses. Forced requests and appeals to the prophet do not count: sometimes external circumstances can break even a very stubborn person, but that still does not mean that he has been freed from his stubbornness.

In other cases, however, in the same chapters it is said that Pharaoh himself hardens his heart. So how do things really stand? The answer to this question is not simple; here we face an antinomy that always appears wherever the meeting of God's will and human freedom is involved. Everyone is free to decide for himself how hard his heart will be, since it is the person who determines the degree of his own stubbornness. God, of course, can always change the situation, for every human heart is accessible and open to Him.

Whether to change it or not is a question no one but God can answer. Moreover, even if God explained to us why in a particular case He intervenes or does not intervene, why He melts the hearts of some and does not touch others, we would still understand nothing. To understand such things, one would have to know about a particular human heart as much as God knows about it. Such knowledge cannot be available to any of us human beings by definition. One thing is clear: if God does not intervene, if He leaves the situation to the human will, then He has weighty reasons for doing so.

This, however, does not prevent Him from carrying out His plan without the participation of the one who does not want to take part in carrying it out. In that case the unwilling person ceases to be a subject of God's providence and becomes its object, and then God's wonders will be shown, so to speak, at his expense. The one who does not want to live as one should, as God leads, involuntarily and visibly demonstrates to the world how one should not live. The story of Pharaoh and the Exodus became just such a demonstration, but by Pharaoh's own will, not God's.

The confrontation is nearing its resolution. For the biblical author, the "finger of God" is perfectly clear in the death of the Egyptian firstborn and the rescue of the Israelites: the Lord Himself passes through Egypt, striking and saving. We are given the difficult task of somehow relating the catastrophe to God's intervention in history, knowing that He brings life, not death, and at the same time knowing that this is His voice, His address to human beings. It is no accident that we remember God precisely in situations of catastrophe and terror.

The God of Israel is a formidable and fearsome God: He leads His people to victory, striking and punishing their enemies, and when they are unfaithful His anger turns against the Israelites as well. To see in this God the God of love, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice is not simply a matter of "justifying the Bible," of making its ends meet, but the task of seeing in this frightening and beautiful world the simultaneous presence of God the Almighty and the God of freedom and love. This will require us to be able to accept paradoxical truth and therefore to possess our own inner wholeness.

God defines the celebration of Passover as an eternal ordinance. The covenant of Moses is also eternal, and in it the Sabbath commandment holds a special place. But Jesus shows that behind the law, behind the commandments, stands God's truly eternal care for the human person, and the human person is called to be guided not by a literal interpretation of the commandments, but by that same care, by mercy. The daily, moment-by-moment choice "according to mercy" connects this moment with eternity and makes us bearers of God's blessing.