Day: 2nd February 2025

After we read last week about the first 7 plagues—blood, frogs, lice, swarms of insects, pestilence, boils, hail—Parsahat Bo that we read this week continues with the final 3 plagues—locusts, darkness and the killing of the firstborn. The drama and the suspense have been building throughout, and they reach their climax when God tells Moses before the last plague, “I will bring but one more plague upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; after that he shall let you go from here… ” Thus, the stage has been set and the people are now waiting with great anticipation for God to deal the final blow to the Egyptians and then lead them out of Egypt and toward the Promised Land. Just when the drama is at its peak, however, God puts everything on hold…

The Ten Plagues about which we begin reading this week have always bothered me. If God’s intention was to redeem the Israelite people from Egyptian slavery then He could have just taken them out without inflicting any plagues on the Egyptian people. Even if God deemed it necessary to punish the Egyptians for enslaving the Israelites for so long then perhaps a few plagues would have been sufficient. But why ten? Furthermore, in inflicting so many plagues, it almost seemed as though God was being unnecessarily harsh, almost vindictive. But then came October 7 and it all suddenly began to make sense.