Surf The Site
Exodus: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13a 13b 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30a 30b 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38a 38b 39 40
9:1 VA YOMER YHVH EL MOSHEH BO EL PAR'OH VE DIBARTA ELAV KOH AMAR YHVH ELOHEY HA IVRIM SHALACH ET AMI VE YA'AVDUNI
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה בֹּא אֶל פַּרְעֹה וְדִבַּרְתָּ אֵלָיו כֹּה אָמַר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי הָעִבְרִים שַׁלַּח אֶת עַמִּי וְיַעַבְדֻנִי
KJ (King James translation): Then the LORD said unto Moses, Go in unto Pharaoh, and tell him, Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.
BN (BibleNet translation): Then YHVH said to Mosheh: "Go in to Pharaoh, and tell him: Thus says YHVH, the god of the Ivrim: "Let my people go, that they may worship me...
Generally, when YHVH talks to Mosheh about his people, they are always Beney Yisra-El; when he has Mosheh or Aharon speak about them to Pharaoh, they are always Ivrim, which would presumably have been Habiru in the original. The Yehudim never refer to themselves as "Hebrews". Though verse 4 will provide a half-exception.
9:2 KI IM MA'EN ATAH LESHAL'E'ACH VE ODCHA MACHAZIK BAM
כִּי אִם מָאֵן אַתָּה לְשַׁלֵּחַ וְעוֹדְךָ מַחֲזִיק בָּם
KJ: For if thou refuse to let them go, and wilt hold them still,
BN: "But if you refuse to let them go, if you insist on keeping them...
The Moslems call it "jihad", the notion that nothing of any signficicance is ever achieved without a period of struggle. Ya'akov wrestling with the"angel" at Penu-El conveys much the same message, though he only managed a draw on that occasion.
9:3 HINEH YAD YHVH HOYAH BE MIKNECHA ASHER BA SADEH BA SUSIM BA CHAMORIM BA GEMALIM BA BAKAR U VA TSON DEVER KAVED ME'OD
הִנֵּה יַד יְהוָה הוֹיָה בְּמִקְנְךָ אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׂדֶה בַּסּוּסִים בַּחֲמֹרִים בַּגְּמַלִּים בַּבָּקָר וּבַצֹּאן דֶּבֶר כָּבֵד מְאֹד
KJ: Behold, the hand of the LORD is upon thy cattle which is in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the oxen, and upon the sheep: there shall be a very grievous murrain.
BN (incomplete translation): "Behold, the hand of YHVH will be on your cattle which are in the field, upon the horses, upon the asses, upon the camels, upon the herds, and upon the flocks; there shall be a very grievous [last word untranslated for the moment]...
YAD: Only the finger in the last chapter (Exodus 8:15); but now the full hand.
YHVH HOYAH: Both words from the same root, HAYAH = "to be".
MIKNECHA: And did we predict that, after the creepy-crawlies and the flying insects, the next item of Creation would be the mammals?
DEVER (דבר): Fascinating word, which we have explored several times before, usually because it is one of the words for "plague", and specifically the plague that is about to descend; but this time it is the word's much larger dimension that requires exploring. Because the root is DAVAR, and any "word" or "action" by the deity is a DAVAR YHVH. Let us explore this:
Mosheh wants to go into the desert to pray; desert in Yehudit is MIDBAR (מדבר), from the same root, constructed as MI DEVAR - a place that was created by the word and actions of the deity.
YHVH speaks to Mosheh and sometimes it is VA YOMER (ויטמר), and sometimes, in fact usually, it is VA YEDABER (וידבר); the root of VA YEDABER being the same as the root of DEVER and of MIDBAR.
The cattle are described as being BA SADEH (בשדה), but normally SADEH = "field" refers to crop-land, whereas pastureland is DOVER (דובר) - this may also be part of the explanation for MIDBAR as "desert", because scrub-desert, unlike sand-desert, provides good grazing land.
The bee-goddess of the Kena'anim and the Beney Chet, as we learned in Genesis 35:8, was known as Devorah, from the same root.
The innermost recess of the holy place is the DEVIR (דביר), the niche where the deity dwells.
And now DEVER, translated here as "murrain", which is not a bad choice, in English; the root word in this usage can mean any form of destruction, and murrain means precisely that; from the Latin "mori" = "to die".
However "murrain" does not tell us what the cattle and other BEHEMOT will die of. The goddess Hat-Hor was depicted with the head of a cow, and we have seen that Le'ah, the elder daughter of Lavan (Laban), also means "cow". Hat-Hor was believed to own a herd of sacred cattle, and she was connected to Hor through her name: Hat-Hor (this is a different link) means "House of Hor", and should be spelled in this way, hyphenated. Hat-Hor personifies love, beauty, music, motherhood and joy, and especially fertility. The Greeks identified her with Aphrodite, and the Romans with Venus. In some traditions she is related to Ra, not Hor: a function of changing theologies over several milennia.
Usually Hor is regarded as the son of Eshet (Isis) and Osher (Osiris), but in some traditions Hat-Hor is regarded as his mother and sometimes as his wife; exactly the same pattern we have seen with Av-Raham and Sarah, and with Yitschak and Rivkah: the reason being that the sun and moon both have calendric phases and are depicted differently at each phase; and the phases do not coincide. Hor served many functions in the Egyptian pantheon, most notably as god of the Sky, War and Protection. Hor was generally depicted as a falcon; he spent much of his life in battle with his uncle Set, who had killed his father Osher.
So we know which deity this day of Creation was associated with, and we can deduce which phase of Creation too: having brought forth reptiles and insects, mammals are due next; and here they are, in all their pastoral forms: sheep, horses, asses and cows. Only the camel is anachronistic; camels were not introduced into Egypt before the 7th century BCE.
As to the bull, which will reappear as the Golden Calf later on: great cemeteries of embalmed cattle have been excavated throughout upper Egypt. The symbol of the bull was the symbol of Pharaoh himself. In the "Hymn to Amun," for example, it is difficult to distinguish the Pharaoh from the bull (the same is true in "The Tale of the Two Brothers"). The title is: "Adoration of Amun-Re (Amun-Ra), Bull of Heliopolis, chiefest of all gods, the good god, the beloved, who gives life to all that is warm, and to every good herd." Heliopolis was the Greek name for On, and it was Yoseph's city, as well as being the shrine of the sun-disc at the time of Akhenaten. Have no doubt that, in the epoch of Taurus, it would have been a Paschal heiffer, not a Paschal boar or a Paschal lamb.
Which leaves us still needing to translate the final phrase of this verse.
BN (still incomplete but alternative translation, attempting to recover the Egyptian mythology): "Behold, the creating hand of the deity will bring into existence your cattle which are in the field, and the horses, the asses, the camels, the herds, the flocks; never before will there have been so weighty an act of Creation...
9:4 VE HIPHLAH YHVH BEYN MIKNEH YISRA-EL U VEYN MIKNEH MITSRAYIM VE LO YAMUT MI KOL LIVNEY YISRA-EL DAVAR
וְהִפְלָה יְהוָה בֵּין מִקְנֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל וּבֵין מִקְנֵה מִצְרָיִם וְלֹא יָמוּת מִכָּל לִבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל דָּבָר
KJ: And the LORD shall sever between the cattle of Israel and the cattle of Egypt: and there shall nothing die of all that is the children's of Israel.
BN: "And YHVH will make a separation between the cattle of Yisra-El and the cattle of Mitsrayim; and of all that belongs to the children of Yisra-El there shall die nothing."
LO YAMUT: Almost as though Pharaoh had a dream last night, in which seven healthy cattle found themselves eaten up by seven less healthy cattle, and Mosheh has come in a sort of Prime Ministerial role to interpret the dream. I seem to recall that also took place when Pharaoh was standing by the river. See Genesis 41. I wonder if we will start getting corn in this tale too, at some point? Or at least the stuff they make corn from, bread, or, at this time of year, matzah.
TheBibleNet translation is offered this way intentionally, keeping the word DAVAR where the Yehudit has it, pointedly at the end of the sentence. For there is that word DAVAR yet again, in still another of its meanings - though today we would probably say SHUM DAVAR, to make the meaning clear. And here, is it a mere pun? Possibly. DAVAR is a significant word used in many significant circumstances. At the reading of the Law: "U DAVAR YHVH MI YERU-SHALA'IM"; the "word" of YHVH comes "out of Jerusalem", his city. It was with the word that YHVH enacted Creation. And here, by standard translation and interpretation anyway, Death through disease - DEVER. The Redactor has misplaced it at the end of the sentence, and it feels deliberate, as though introduced with excessive fastidiousness, superimposing it on whatever was the original text, to insist upon an allusion that again affirms YHVH as Creator over this Egyptian version. Probably, in the original, there was no murrain, only, perhaps, a calling for sacrifice of the yearlings of these animals: this is the spring after all, when Hat-Hor's power is seen in the new-borns.
And yet again the divisions and separations that are reflective of the Genesis version of Creation (see Exodus 8:18-19).
9:5 VA YASEM YHVH MO'ED LEMOR MACHAR YA'ASEH YHVH HA DAVAR HA ZEH BA ARETS
וַיָּשֶׂם יְהוָה מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר מָחָר יַעֲשֶׂה יְהוָה הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה בָּאָרֶץ
KJ: And the LORD appointed a set time, saying, To morrow the LORD shall do this thing in the land.
BN: And YHVH appointed a set time, saying: "Tomorrow YHVH shall do this thing in the land."
And then, yet again, in yet another of its uses, that word DAVAR = "thing"; the thing being the DOVER. Note also, as has been pointed out repeatedly, that everything thus far has depended on the appointed time which has not yet arrived; and now here it is, being set, so that it may arrive.
MO'ED: Cf Genesis 1:14, which also uses MO'ED for "appointed time": "And Elohim said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to distinguish the day from the night; and let them serve as symbols, and for anniversaries [MO'ADIM], and for days and years."
MACHAR: Spanish translators have a cultural difficulty with this verse, becausethe logical word in their language should be "mañana", but mañana culturally is an unspecified future that never actually arrives. This is not the intention of the MO'ED here, as confirmed by the very next verse.
9:6 VA YA'AS YHVH ET HA DAVAR HA ZEH MI MACHARAT VA YAMAT KOL MIKNEH MITSRAYIM U MI MIKNEY VENEY YISRA-EL LO MET ECHAD
וַיַּעַשׂ יְהוָה אֶת הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה מִמָּחֳרָת וַיָּמָת כֹּל מִקְנֵה מִצְרָיִם וּמִמִּקְנֵה בְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא מֵת אֶחָד
KJ: And the LORD did that thing on the morrow, and all the cattle of Egypt died: but of the cattle of the children of Israel died not one.
BN: And YHVH did that thing the very next day, and all the cattle of Mitsrayim died; but of the cattle of the children of Yisra-El not a single one.
The original distinction was probably between the sacred cattle of Hat-Hor and the regular cattle of Egypt. Where Genesis was a seven-day week, based on the planetary deities, this Creation story is following the sun through the twelve constellatory months of the year (which is why there have to have been twelve and not ten plagues). This part reflects an equivalent of Herakles' tenth labour, which concerned the sacred cattle of Geryon; in the earlier Greek version of that myth, to make things difficult for Herakles, Hera, the equivalent of Hat-Hor, sent a gadfly to scatter the cows; and it just happens that the gadfly occupied the fifth of the "plagues" in this story (Exodus 8:17).
9:7 VA YISHLACH PAR'OH VE HINEH LO MET MI MIKNEH YISRA-EL AD ECHAD VA YICHBAD LEV PAR'OH VE LO SHILACH ET HA AM
וַיִּשְׁלַח פַּרְעֹה וְהִנֵּה לֹא מֵת מִמִּקְנֵה יִשְׂרָאֵל עַד אֶחָד וַיִּכְבַּד לֵב פַּרְעֹה וְלֹא שִׁלַּח אֶת הָעָם
KJ: And Pharaoh sent, and, behold, there was not one of the cattle of the Israelites dead. And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people go.
BN: And Pharaoh sent [his servants out to find out what had happened], and, behold, not so much as a single one of the cattle of the Beney Yisra-El had died. But the heart of Pharaoh was stubborn, and he did not let the people go.
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pey break
9:8 VA YOMER YHVH EL MOSHEH VE EL AHARON KECHU LACHEM MELO CHAPHNEYCHEM PIYACH KIVSHAN U ZERAKO MOSHEH HA SHAMAYEMAH LE EYNEY PHAR'OH
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה וְאֶל אַהֲרֹן קְחוּ לָכֶם מְלֹא חָפְנֵיכֶם פִּיחַ כִּבְשָׁן וּזְרָקוֹ מֹשֶׁה הַשָּׁמַיְמָה לְעֵינֵי פַרְעֹה
KJ: And the LORD said unto Moses and unto Aaron, Take to you handfuls of ashes of the furnace, and let Moses sprinkle it toward the heaven in the sight of Pharaoh.
BN: Then YHVH said to Mosheh and to Aharon: "Gather up handfuls of debris from the altar , and let Mosheh throw it skywards in the presence of Pharaoh...
KECHU...KIVSHAN: Which now allows us to draw the conclusion that was missing in the verse above, but too early to present there, for lack of evidence: the death of these animals is by sacrifice; there is no plague. The act which Mosheh and Aharon are called on to perform has nothing to do with "soot from a furnace"; it is the charcoal and ashes left over on the altar, and the act of throwing it heavenwards is part of the ceremony; an act of scattering in imitation of the scattering of seeds: a fertility rite; quite possibly an early form of Tashlich. In precisely the same way, the duties of the Leviyim in the Temple will include the Ma'ariv ceremonies of cleaning, and the Kohanim, in performing the sacrificial slaughter of any animals, will be required to sprinkle the blood on the four corners of the altar - all part of the ceremony.
It also demonstrates, which we have begun to intimate, that each act of Creation in some way leads on to, or affects, the one that follows.
LE EYNEY PHAROH: In his sight, or in his PRESENCE? "in his sight" suggests making him witness this by default, unintentionally, where "in his presence" includes him formally in the ceremony.
Note again my comment about Yoseph's interpreting of the Pharaonic dream (verse 4). The seven heads of cattle in the dream were followed by seven ears of corn; and in the same way the burning of these head of cattle will be followed by the burning of the corn, when it comes time for chamets; but wait for the latter verses of this chapter for that.
9:9 VE HAYAH LE AVAK AL KOL ERETS MITSRAYIM VE HAYAH AL HA ADAM VE AL HA BEHEMAH LISH'CHIN POR'E'ACH AVA'BU'OT BE CHOL ERETS MITSRAYIM
וְהָיָה לְאָבָק עַל כָּל אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם וְהָיָה עַל הָאָדָם וְעַל הַבְּהֵמָה לִשְׁחִין פֹּרֵחַ אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת בְּכָל אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
KJ: And it shall become small dust in all the land of Egypt, and shall be a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast, throughout all the land of Egypt.
We need to read this verse in parallel with Mosheh putting his hand into his bosom and it coming out white, in Exodus 4:6, and with Mir-Yam doused in white dust in Numbers 12:10, both of which events involve volcanic ash, both of which are interpreted as leprosy, though clearly neither was anything of the sort. Here the ash is not volcanic, but the reading of it as "plague" is consistent. So what was this really? Bear with me.
AL HA ADAM VE AL HA BEHEMAH enables us to see the continuation of the process of Creation, though actually Man has not been created yet - that will only happen on the final day with the first-born. Some commentators read this as being a general description of disease, and infer that the goddess of this day was therefore Eshet (Isis), who is identified with healing and medicine; previous verses offer the yin-yang contrast, so there is every reason to accept it here as well. But Eshet is only identified with healing as a sub-function or minor quality. Im-Hotep would later become the god of healing, an Egyptian equivalent of Aesculapius (worth following this link for more information on his variant of the Caduceus Pole, the rod, the sceptre, the staff, which both Mosheh and Aharon are also using as their sacred wand and with which every Egyptian deity is invariably depicted), some time later than this period; at the time, it was the goddess Sekhmet who was known for her healing ability.
"Before the universe came into being, there was an infinite ocean of inert water which constituted the primeval being named Nun. Out of Nun emerged a lotus flower, together with a single mound of dry land. The lotus blossoms opened, and out stepped the self-created sun god, Atum, as a child."
A slightly different version of the story originated in Khmunu (Hermopolis) - click here. In that version, the sun god, who formed himself from the chaos of Nu (also known as Nun), emerged from the lotus petals as Ra. This echoes the Hindu version of Creation, where the utterance of the first word,"Om" brought forth the first "golden lotus", which is the seat of Brahma (the creator); the stalk provided Vishnu's (the preserver's) navel, which served as the umbilical cord of the universe. Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, who is the Hindu equivalent of Asherah, and Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and equivalent of Greek Sophia or Beney Yisra-El (or probably, being a much later construct, Jewish) Chochma, are also seated on lotuses. The lotus also provided the Egyptians with parts of their numerical system. The number 1,000 was symbolized by a picture of a lotus flower, the number 2,000 by two lotus flowers growing out of a bush.
This reading is potentially flawed however by one word: LISH'CHIN (לשחין), a verb only used in this one instance in the Tanach, and therefore difficult to explain. Beney Yisra-Eli tradition having turned this Creation liturgy into the "Ten Plagues", and superimposed the meanings it wanted for ideological reasons, SHECHIN has come to mean "an ulcer" and the verb "to ulcerate". The root, SHACHAN (שחן), goes with several others used above, and means "to be hot", and an ulcer may indeed be seen as a kind of burning of the skin; but the process of swelling up and bursting forth as it becomes hot is also a description of the morning transformation of the lotus, at the very point where Egyptian mythology conceived it as the ultimate metaphor of Creation. The reading therefore holds; and from it, we can see this day of Creation as the one in which the grasses and trees and flowers were created. The Egyptian goddess of the flowers, incidentally, was Mertseger; and perhaps not surprisingly, she was always shown with the head of a snake.
BN (Egyptian mythology translation): "And the dust will blow it across the entire land of Mitsrayim, and out of the dust grass and flowers will burst forth, and the pollen will settle on men and on animals, throughout all the land of Mitsrayim."
9:10 VA YIKCHU ET PIYACH HA KISHVAN VA YA'AMDU LIPHNEY PHAROH VA YIZROK OTO MOSHEH HA SHAMAYEMAH VA YEHI SHECHIN AVA'BU'OT POR'E'ACH BA ADAM U VA BEHEMAH
וַיִּקְחוּ אֶת פִּיחַ הַכִּבְשָׁן וַיַּעַמְדוּ לִפְנֵי פַרְעֹה וַיִּזְרֹק אֹתוֹ מֹשֶׁה הַשָּׁמָיְמָה וַיְהִי שְׁחִין אֲבַעְבֻּעֹת פֹּרֵחַ בָּאָדָם וּבַבְּהֵמָה
KJ: And they took ashes of the furnace, and stood before Pharaoh; and Moses sprinkled it up toward heaven; and it became a boil breaking forth with blains upon man, and upon beast.
BN (Bible-as-literature translation): So they took the still-burning ashes from the sacrificial altar, and stood before Pharaoh; and Mosheh scattered the ashes skywards; and they produced a kind of boil that broke out wherever they came to rest, a kind of chilblain that erupted, upon man and upon beast.
Not for the first time I have wilfully overtranslated the text, in order to bring out what I believe to be the full meaning - in the Yehudit version; and the same for the next verse. But this is again the need for these to be plagues, superimposed by the Redactor. The Egyptian mythology version should be self-evident from the previous verse.
Not for the first time I have wilfully overtranslated the text, in order to bring out what I believe to be the full meaning - in the Yehudit version; and the same for the next verse. But this is again the need for these to be plagues, superimposed by the Redactor. The Egyptian mythology version should be self-evident from the previous verse.
9:11 VE LO YACHLU HA CHARTUMIM LA'AMOD LIPHNEY MOSHEH MIPNEY HA SHECHIN KI HAYAH HA SHECHIN BA CHARTUMIM U VE CHOL MITSRAYIM
וְלֹא יָכְלוּ הַחַרְטֻמִּים לַעֲמֹד לִפְנֵי מֹשֶׁה מִפְּנֵי הַשְּׁחִין כִּי הָיָה הַשְּׁחִין בַּחַרְטֻמִּם וּבְכָל מִצְרָיִם
KJ: And the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils; for the boil was upon the magicians, and upon all the Egyptians.
BN: And the shamen could not stand before Mosheh because of the abrasions on their skin; for the abrasions had affected the shamen, just as they had affected all the Mitsrim.
If these really were just boils, why could they not stand before Mosheh? Embarrassment? That they could not stand before Pharaoh would make sense, because the boils would render them unclean with impurities; this would only apply to Mosheh if they acknowledged him as one of their own priests (see Leviticus: 21:18-20), or even, which would take us back to his coronation in chapter 3, to his actually now being the High Priest.
Not that they had been noted as standing before either of them for the last several verses!
9:12 VA YECHAZEK YHVH ET LEV PAR'OH VE LO SHAMA AL'EHEM KA ASHER DIBER YHVH EL MOSHEH
וַיְחַזֵּק יְהוָה אֶת לֵב פַּרְעֹה וְלֹא שָׁמַע אֲלֵהֶם כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה
KJ: And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses.
BN: And YHVH hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he would not heed them; just as YHVH had forewarned Mosheh.
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9:13 VA YOMER YHVH EL MOSHEH HASHKEM BA BOKER VE HITYATSEV LIPHNEY PHAR'OH VE AMARTAH ELAV KOH AMAR YHVH ELOHEY HA IVRIM SHALACH ET AMI VA YA'AVDUNI
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה הַשְׁכֵּם בַּבֹּקֶר וְהִתְיַצֵּב לִפְנֵי פַרְעֹה וְאָמַרְתָּ אֵלָיו כֹּה אָמַר יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי הָעִבְרִים שַׁלַּח אֶת עַמִּי וְיַעַבְדֻנִי
KJ: And the LORD said unto Moses, Rise up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say unto him, Thus saith the LORD God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, that they may serve me.
BN: Then YHVH said to Mosheh: "Get up early in the morning, and stand before Pharaoh, and say to him: Thus says YHVH, the god of the Ivrim: Let my people go, that they may worship me...
And it was evening, and then morning, one more day of making the same request; and each "plague" lasts but a single day: as though each plague were the denotion of a specific sin!
9:14 KI BA PA'AM HA ZOT ANI SHOL'E'ACH ET KOL MAGEPHOTAI EL LIBCHA U VA AVADEYCHA U VE AMECHA BA'AVUR TEDA KI EYN KAMONI BE CHOL HA ARETS
כִּי בַּפַּעַם הַזֹּאת אֲנִי שֹׁלֵחַ אֶת כָּל מַגֵּפֹתַי אֶל לִבְּךָ וּבַעֲבָדֶיךָ וּבְעַמֶּךָ בַּעֲבוּר תֵּדַע כִּי אֵין כָּמֹנִי בְּכָל הָאָרֶץ
KJ: For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people; that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth.
BN: "For this time I will send all my plagues upon your person, and upon your servants, and upon your people, that you may know that there is none like me in all the Earth...
If these are indeed plagues, then the sentence is self-conflicting, because what actually comes next is just another single plague, and not "all my plagues" - no Flood, no earthquake, no cholera, no famine, no military dictatorship, no banning of books, none of the hundreds of plagues he could have included. So either they are not plagues, or this is not all of them; and if the latter, then it is not going to convince anyone of his almightyness.
BN: "For now I shall put out my hand, and devastate you and your people with a pestilence, and you will be ostracised in your own land...
TIKACHED: First, see my note at Exodus 8:18, which separates, or at least makes a distinction, or perhaps only distinguishes between PALAH and BADAL as two forms of separation - TIKACHED here is now presenting a third variant, and we have to assume that the vocabulary is being chosen deliberately, the nuances and ambivalences implicit. How then should we translate TIKACHED?
Start as always with the root, which is KACHAD (כָּחַד), and really has the sense of things being "covered up" or "hidden", which is indeed a form of separation, the visible from the invisible. This is how it is used in Joshua7:19, 1Samuel 3:17 et al, and how I would expect it to translate here, as I shall explain in a moment. However, KJ and other Christian translations have "cut off", and this will be found again at Exodus23:23 and Zechariah11:8, with no doubt on either occasion that this is the intended meaning.
Just as the 7 days of Creation in Genesis 1 all reflect a day of the week belonging to a specific deity, so in this Egyptian version; and just as there, if the order of Creation does not quite match up to our evolutionary expectations (Light on the first day, sun and moon on the fourth, for example), so here, each deity is given the creation that belongs to him or her. Hail clearly comes from the sky, which was the provenance of Nut, the mother of the sun-god Ra, "whom she swallowed in the evening and gave birth to again in the morning", rather like the lotus which blossomed into the sun. Nut too originates in On (Heliopolis), where she was first of all the night-sky goddesses; her symbol a ladder that extended from the Earth to the heavens, on which Osher (Osiris) would climb when he rose from the dead and went to sit at the right hand of his father, the sun; cf Ya'akov at Beit-El (Genesis 28)! Sometimes depicted as a cow, sometimes as a pig suckling its young (a representation of the moon and stars). Tefnut, the personification of moisture, mated with Shu (Air) and then gave birth to Sky as the goddess Nut, who mated with her brother Earth, as Geb. From the union of Geb (see my note to Exodus 8:12) and Nut came, among others, Eshet (Isis), the mother of Horus, whose story is central to that of her brother-husband, the resurrection god Osher (Osiris). Much of this myth can, once again, be identified in the Genesis 1 Creation story. Nut is also a variation of Hat-Hor. Her sacred tree was the sycamore, or SHIKMAH (שִׁקמָה) in Yehudit, a tree which makes no overt appearance at all in the Tanach (the fig-tree in Micah 4:4 is not the sycamore-fig, but the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden may well have been), though it does appear (Luke 19:4) in the Christian Bible.
KJ: And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.
BN: "And indeed, for this reason I have raised you up, to show you my power, and in order that my might may be declared throughout all the Earth...
VE ULAM BA AVUR ZOT: The construction is most unusual. An ULAM is a vestibule or a portico, but here it is apparently being used as a preposition, meaning "but", or "indeed", or something of that order. The Chabad-with-Rashi translates this as: "But, for this [reason] I have allowed you to stand, in order to show you My strength and in order to declare My name all over the earth", which I like, except that it fails to translate KOCHI in its fullness as "might" and not just the reputation of "name".
But what this verse really does is to confirm that the [Ezraic] purpose behind all this is a religious coup; the journey to the desert a covenant renewal ceremony and then the restoration of the pre-Hyksos religion.
From a literary perspective, the power of this verse is extraordinary. This is reminiscent of Melville's Ahab, when the lightning struck the Pequod and the ship was being blown in a typhoon, when Stubb and Starbuck urged the sailors to turn the ship around and Ahab, wielding his razor-edged harpoon, declaiming "Maneh Maneh Tekel Upharsin" - Melville alas gets the Yehudit very slightly wrong; it should be Meneh Meneh Tekel Upharsin; מְנֵא מְנֵא, תְּקֵל וּפַרְסִין; the words of Ba'al Zevuv written on Daniel's mirror (Daniel 5:25) - shouted his defiance and dragged the men on in search of the white whale. Every ounce - every meneh indeed - of that storm, that lightning, that typhoon, is audible in YHVH's words here - as if to confirm for us who YHVH really was: the Midyanite volcano-god of Chorev who will eventually - bythe time of the writing down of these tales - be associated with the sun-god himself. YHVH has promised to show his power through DAVAR, through action driven by word, and so he does: not the DAVAR that has been mistranslated "plague" or "pestilence", but the DAVAR YHVH, "the word of God". Magnificent! The god speaking from behind the DEVIR.
BN: "So you will see, tomorrow at about this time I will cause torrential hail to storm, such as has not been in Mitsrayim from the day it was founded until now...
KA-ET MACHAR: How vague! Does the god not plan to precise moments? And of course, if this is an annual event, and it's based, like today's Moslem and Jewish festivals, on the lunar rather than the solar calendar, then the day can be given precisely, but never the time, which shifts through the calendar, and through geography. And, if that reading is correct, then the Yehudit pointing should make this KA OT MACHAR, "Behold, as per the festival, tomorrow I shall..."?
KJ: Send therefore now, and gather thy cattle, and all that thou hast in the field; for upon every man and beast which shall be found in the field, and shall not be brought home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die.
This translation, which is standard, does not really work. Does the EZ in SHELACH HA EZ ET MIKNECHA belong with the SHELACH or with the MIKNECHA? It could as easily be translated as "send the strong ones of your cattle". EZ, or radically OZ = "strength" and nowhere else is it used as an adjunct to a verb: "send strongly" meaning "hurry". More interesting than this, however, is the significant change in the attitude of the deity, who appears to be feeling sorry for the Mitsrim, even expressing concern for them: I am going to show you my power, but I don't want anyone or anything to be hurt. Not this concern when the gad-flies were biting or the smouldering ashes were scalding flesh. Does this change our understanding of the death of the first-born, later on? Note that there are Midrashim, which I shall refer to at the time, which speak of the deity's profound regret that the liberating miracle of the Reed Sea was also the catastrophic devastation of the male population of Mitsrayim, including the death of its Pharaoh.
Interesting to note that it was servants and cattle together out there.
SAM LIBO: In modern Ivrit it would mean "pay attention", or "realise", both of which are considerably milder; this is because they reflect the shift from the LEV as the "naked, thinking heart" of John Donne, to a mere emotional pump, and the modern "belief" in objective thought stemming from the brain.
pey break
The methodology of this merits a comment. In the Genesis version, Elohim pronounces the word, and it becomes flesh, without an intermediary, though the magic wand is implied; here it requires the intermediary to wave the magic wand. Did the original Genesis myth do the same? And if so, was it Adam who waved the wand?
Note that it is now Mosheh, not Aharon, who is stretching out his hand to perform the miracle. A different text?
KJ: So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
BN: So there was hail, and lightning flashing amidst the hail, great forks and bolts, such as had not been seen in all the land of Mitsrayim since it first became a nation.
Since the beginning of time, indeed; since the very first day of Creation.
LE GOY: A slightly surprising variation on the way this was expressed above; see the link.
9:25 VA YACH HA BARAD BE CHOL ERETS MITSRAYIM ET KOL ASHER BA SADEH ME ADAM VE AD BEHEMAH VE ET KOL ESEV HA SADEH HIKAH HA BARAD VE ET KOL ETS HA SADEH SHIBER
And yes, we all hate the April showers, and the June rainstorms ruin Wimbledon and the Test Match every year, but tell me, if you can, how all this fertility is going to be of any use, if "No shrub of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for YHVH Elohim had not yet caused rain to fall on the earth, and there was no man to till the soil" (Genesis 2:5)?
ESEV: Another of the key words of the Genesis version that just happens to crop up here (pun intended). It is spring after all, the first day of the new year – what else should be marked in the liturgy but the creation, re-creation, of the world? The one remaining question then is: why are there only 10 plagues, and not 12? We have demonstrated that the Egyptian original had 12, but the Redactor reduced it to ten, possibly to make a parallel with the 10 Commandments, possibly in an attempt to Yehuditise by removing the remainders of the Egyptian.
9:26 RAK BE ERETS GOSHEN ASHER SHAM BENEY YISRA-EL LO HAYAH BARAD
CHATA'TI: If this were merely the Creation myth, we would wonder about some of the last few verses; but it isn't, it's also the Passover rites in preparation, and just as the Jewish Yom Kippur, ten days after the New Year, is led up to by a month of Selichot, in which prayers for penitence are delivered daily, so it seems in the Egyptian Passover New Year. If we decide to see these plagues as plagues, then we can say that each gives cause for penitence, and reckon that the level of penitence has increased with each one, now reaching this overt and open admission of sin by the Pharaoh himself (CHET is one of the lightest sins in the Yom Kippur list; he does not admit to either a PESHA or an AVON - for which see below from my book "The Day of Atonement", page 15). And of course the period between Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur is ten days, which may be another reason for reducing the plagues to ten (noting that New Year, and the earliest Azaz-El rites which accompanied it, took place at Passover until they were moved to the autumn later on).
KJ: And Moses said unto him, As soon as I am gone out of the city, I will spread abroad my hands unto the LORD; and the thunder shall cease, neither shall there be any more hail; that thou mayest know how that the earth is the LORD'S.
EL LIBCHA: LEV has been translated as "heart" until now, but suddenly it has a different meaning = "person". This is simply bad work by the translators; and by the commentators, especially the early Jewish ones, whose efforts led to these translations. However and but - how do you send a plague upon a heart, if that is indeed the correct translation? In Yesha-Yahu's (Isaiah's) terms, if he is indeed the author, this would be easy to explain, for he regarded all plague as the consequence of sin, and all the actions of the deity in response to sin as judgement leading to righteousness; so that "sending all my plagues upon your heart" becomes a simple metaphor for guilt, and guilt is what we would expect, within the context of the Selichot prayers of Elul which are paralleled here in their earlier Egyptian mode.
HA ARETS: In every previous verse ARETS has been translated as "land", meaning Egypt; how come, in this verse and the next, it gets universalised?
9:15 KI ATAH SHALACHTI ET YADI VA ACH OT'CHA VE ET AMCHA BA DAVER VA TIKACHED MIN HA ARETS
כִּי עַתָּה שָׁלַחְתִּי אֶת יָדִי וָאַךְ אוֹתְךָ וְאֶת עַמְּךָ בַּדָּבֶר וַתִּכָּחֵד מִן הָאָרֶץ
KJ: For now I will stretch out my hand, that I may smite thee and thy people with pestilence; and thou shalt be cut off from the earth.
TIKACHED: First, see my note at Exodus 8:18, which separates, or at least makes a distinction, or perhaps only distinguishes between PALAH and BADAL as two forms of separation - TIKACHED here is now presenting a third variant, and we have to assume that the vocabulary is being chosen deliberately, the nuances and ambivalences implicit. How then should we translate TIKACHED?
Start as always with the root, which is KACHAD (כָּחַד), and really has the sense of things being "covered up" or "hidden", which is indeed a form of separation, the visible from the invisible. This is how it is used in Joshua7:19, 1Samuel 3:17 et al, and how I would expect it to translate here, as I shall explain in a moment. However, KJ and other Christian translations have "cut off", and this will be found again at Exodus23:23 and Zechariah11:8, with no doubt on either occasion that this is the intended meaning.
I think the distinction
lies in the fact that "cut off from the earth" means
"killed", where here there is no intention to kill them. However,
people who are infected with plague are likely to be quarantined, and what is
quarantine if not an act of "separation", of "cutting
off", at least from the other people of the land (ha arets), even if not
from the Earth (ha arets) itself. But this is actually stronger than
quarantine; as the shamen could not appear before the priest because of the
impurities of the previous plague, and so this will lead to forced quarantine,
to ostracism. Those who have lived through the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020
will understand the difference between "self-isolation",
"shielding", "lockdown", and "quarantine";
something of this order appears to be taking place here.
That, at least, is one interpretation, and it seems to make sense for the boils, or an equivalent. But this is not boils, or an equivalent; this is...
DAVER: Yes, again, DEVER. But last time the word occurred we were told that it meant "boils", where now (in verse 18 anyway) we are about to be told that it means "hailstones". DAVAR itself simply means "the word of the god", in the sense of an action initiated through the power of language: the god speaks, and it is done, as in Genesis 1.
Can we now firmly discount the boils as being boils, and the hail as being a pestilence, and the plagues as being plagues, and simply regard all these as Nature springing back to life in all its glory, and each of the constellatory deities needing to be honoured?
DAVER: Yes, again, DEVER. But last time the word occurred we were told that it meant "boils", where now (in verse 18 anyway) we are about to be told that it means "hailstones". DAVAR itself simply means "the word of the god", in the sense of an action initiated through the power of language: the god speaks, and it is done, as in Genesis 1.
Can we now firmly discount the boils as being boils, and the hail as being a pestilence, and the plagues as being plagues, and simply regard all these as Nature springing back to life in all its glory, and each of the constellatory deities needing to be honoured?
Just as the 7 days of Creation in Genesis 1 all reflect a day of the week belonging to a specific deity, so in this Egyptian version; and just as there, if the order of Creation does not quite match up to our evolutionary expectations (Light on the first day, sun and moon on the fourth, for example), so here, each deity is given the creation that belongs to him or her. Hail clearly comes from the sky, which was the provenance of Nut, the mother of the sun-god Ra, "whom she swallowed in the evening and gave birth to again in the morning", rather like the lotus which blossomed into the sun. Nut too originates in On (Heliopolis), where she was first of all the night-sky goddesses; her symbol a ladder that extended from the Earth to the heavens, on which Osher (Osiris) would climb when he rose from the dead and went to sit at the right hand of his father, the sun; cf Ya'akov at Beit-El (Genesis 28)! Sometimes depicted as a cow, sometimes as a pig suckling its young (a representation of the moon and stars). Tefnut, the personification of moisture, mated with Shu (Air) and then gave birth to Sky as the goddess Nut, who mated with her brother Earth, as Geb. From the union of Geb (see my note to Exodus 8:12) and Nut came, among others, Eshet (Isis), the mother of Horus, whose story is central to that of her brother-husband, the resurrection god Osher (Osiris). Much of this myth can, once again, be identified in the Genesis 1 Creation story. Nut is also a variation of Hat-Hor. Her sacred tree was the sycamore, or SHIKMAH (שִׁקמָה) in Yehudit, a tree which makes no overt appearance at all in the Tanach (the fig-tree in Micah 4:4 is not the sycamore-fig, but the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden may well have been), though it does appear (Luke 19:4) in the Christian Bible.
9:16 VE ULAM BA AVUR ZOT HE'EMADETIYCHA BA AVUR HAR'OT'CHA ET KOCHI U LEMA'AN SAPER SHEMI BE CHOL HA ARETS
וְאוּלָם בַּעֲבוּר זֹאת הֶעֱמַדְתִּיךָ בַּעֲבוּר הַרְאֹתְךָ אֶת כֹּחִי וּלְמַעַן סַפֵּר שְׁמִי בְּכָל הָאָרֶץ
KJ: And in very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to shew in thee my power; and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth.
BN: "And indeed, for this reason I have raised you up, to show you my power, and in order that my might may be declared throughout all the Earth...
VE ULAM BA AVUR ZOT: The construction is most unusual. An ULAM is a vestibule or a portico, but here it is apparently being used as a preposition, meaning "but", or "indeed", or something of that order. The Chabad-with-Rashi translates this as: "But, for this [reason] I have allowed you to stand, in order to show you My strength and in order to declare My name all over the earth", which I like, except that it fails to translate KOCHI in its fullness as "might" and not just the reputation of "name".
But what this verse really does is to confirm that the [Ezraic] purpose behind all this is a religious coup; the journey to the desert a covenant renewal ceremony and then the restoration of the pre-Hyksos religion.
From a literary perspective, the power of this verse is extraordinary. This is reminiscent of Melville's Ahab, when the lightning struck the Pequod and the ship was being blown in a typhoon, when Stubb and Starbuck urged the sailors to turn the ship around and Ahab, wielding his razor-edged harpoon, declaiming "Maneh Maneh Tekel Upharsin" - Melville alas gets the Yehudit very slightly wrong; it should be Meneh Meneh Tekel Upharsin; מְנֵא מְנֵא, תְּקֵל וּפַרְסִין; the words of Ba'al Zevuv written on Daniel's mirror (Daniel 5:25) - shouted his defiance and dragged the men on in search of the white whale. Every ounce - every meneh indeed - of that storm, that lightning, that typhoon, is audible in YHVH's words here - as if to confirm for us who YHVH really was: the Midyanite volcano-god of Chorev who will eventually - bythe time of the writing down of these tales - be associated with the sun-god himself. YHVH has promised to show his power through DAVAR, through action driven by word, and so he does: not the DAVAR that has been mistranslated "plague" or "pestilence", but the DAVAR YHVH, "the word of God". Magnificent! The god speaking from behind the DEVIR.
9:17 ODECHA MISTOLEL LE VILTI SHALCHAM
עוֹדְךָ מִסְתּוֹלֵל בְּעַמִּי לְבִלְתִּי שַׁלְּחָם
KJ: As yet exaltest thou thyself against my people, that thou wilt not let them go?
BN: "Do you still consider yourself so far superior to my people that you will not let them go?..
MISTOLEL: Worth picking up the link above to the Chabad-with-Rashi and seeing what he says about this, using Targum Onkelos as his base. The difficulty lies in deducing the root, because four-letter roots are unusual, Samech and Tav side-by-side is even more so, and while this could be explained as a Hit'palel or reflexive, that would generally employ a Seen rather than a Samech to make the binyan - though there are examples of the Samech being used. To save you the trouble , what Rashi says is:
"If you still tread upon My people: Heb. מִסְתּוֹלֵל, as the Targum [Onkelos] renders: כְּבִישַׁתבֵּיהּ בְּעַמִי. This is an expression of a highway (מְסִלָה) (Num. 20:19), rendered by the Targum אֹרַח כְּבִישָׁא, a trodden road, and in Old French, calcher, to trample underfoot. I already explained at the end of [the section entitled] וַיְהִי מִקֵץ (Gen. 44:16) that in every word of which the first root letter is “sammech,” when used in the hithpa'el form, the 'tav of the prefix is placed in the middle of the root letters, such as here, and such as 'and the grasshopper will drag itself along (וְיִסְךְתַּבֵל)' (Eccl. 12:5) from the root סבל 'that you rule (תִשְךְתָּרֵר) over us' (Num. 16:13), an expression of a prince (שַֹר) and a ruler; 'I looked (מִסְךְתַּכַּל)' (Dan. 7:8). [Actually, the word is מִשְֹתַּכַּל, but the same rule applies for a 'sin' as for a 'sammech'.]"
The root, then, is regarded as SALAL (םלל), which at least gets us started; but then finding a precise meaning for it takes us down another stoney path: to exalt, to lift up, to gather, to throw things down in a heap, to make the road level by building up the pot-holes with stones and mud, to move to and fro, to waver - all these can be found at some point of the Tanach, with SOLELAH as the noun formed from the root, and meaning "a mound", and SALSELOT for "baskets", and quite probably SULAM for a ladder as well.
9:18 HINENI MAMTIR KA ET MACHAR BARAD KAVED ME'OD ASHER LO HAYAH CHAMOHU BE MITSRAYIM LE MIN HA YOM HIVASDAH VE AD ATAH
הִנְנִי מַמְטִיר כָּעֵת מָחָר בָּרָד כָּבֵד מְאֹד אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָיָה כָמֹהוּ בְּמִצְרַיִם לְמִן הַיּוֹם הִוָּסְדָה וְעַד עָתָּה
KJ: Behold, to morrow about this time I will cause it to rain a very grievous hail, such as hath not been in Egypt since the foundation thereof even until now.
And what could be more powerful than hailstones? Is the tone of this sentence different from all the rest, as that of each phase has been different from the rest? If so, is it because each god is speaking on his or her own day, in his or her own voice, and/or because each day is becoming more - yes, I think the word to use here is "ascendant"?
HIVASDAH: From the root YESOD meaning "foundation".
9:19 VE ATAH SHELACH HA EZ ET MIKNECHA VE ET KOL ASHER LECHA BA SADEH KOL HA ADAM VE HA BEHEMAH ASHER YIMATS'E VA SADEH VE LO YE'ASEPH HA BAYITAH VE YARAD AL'EHEM HA BARAD VA METU
וְעַתָּה שְׁלַח הָעֵז אֶת מִקְנְךָ וְאֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר לְךָ בַּשָּׂדֶה כָּל הָאָדָם וְהַבְּהֵמָה אֲשֶׁר יִמָּצֵא בַשָּׂדֶה וְלֹא יֵאָסֵף הַבַּיְתָה וְיָרַד עֲלֵהֶם הַבָּרָד וָמֵתוּ
BN: "Now therefore send, hurry to bring in your cattle and all that you have from the field; for every man and beast that shall be found in the field, and has not managed to get home, the hail shall come down upon them, and they shall die."
9:20 HA YAR'E ET DEVAR YHVH ME AVDEY PAR'OH HENIS ET AVADAV VE ET MIKNEHU EL HA BATIM
הַיָּרֵא אֶת דְּבַר יְהוָה מֵעַבְדֵי פַּרְעֹה הֵנִיס אֶת עֲבָדָיו וְאֶת מִקְנֵהוּ אֶל הַבָּתִּים
KJ: He that feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into the houses:
BN: So he who feared the Word of YHVH among the servants of Pharaoh made his servants and his cattle flee into their houses...
And there it is at last, the full use of the word that we have been waiting for: ET DEVAR YHVH, "the word of YHVH". We have seen his actions, we have heard him speak, but now it is the power of the Word itself that makes the difference - the people who believe are running, driving home their cattle, just from the threat, even the day before the hail comes. And liturgically: the slow build-up has reached its climax; Creation is on the verge of completion, and because it is spring the Nile is not about to flood, so how else can the gods show the power of fertility except in the most torrential storm?
9:21 VA ASHER LO SAM LIBO EL DEVAR YHVH VA YA'AZOV ET AVADAV VE ET MIKNEHU BA SADEH
וַאֲשֶׁר לֹא שָׂם לִבּוֹ אֶל דְּבַר יְהוָה וַיַּעֲזֹב אֶת עֲבָדָיו וְאֶת מִקְנֵהוּ בַּשָּׂדֶה
KJ: And he that regarded not the word of the LORD left his servants and his cattle in the field.
BN: But he who did not give credence to the Word of YHVH left his servants and his cattle in the field.
Interesting to note that it was servants and cattle together out there.
SAM LIBO: In modern Ivrit it would mean "pay attention", or "realise", both of which are considerably milder; this is because they reflect the shift from the LEV as the "naked, thinking heart" of John Donne, to a mere emotional pump, and the modern "belief" in objective thought stemming from the brain.
pey break
9:22 VA YOMER YHVH EL MOSHEH NETEH ET YADCHA AL HA SHAMAYIM VI YEHI VARAD BE CHOL ERETS MITSRAYIM AL HA ADAM VE AL HA BEHEMAH VE AL KOL ESEV HA SADEH BE ERETS MITSRAYIM
וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל מֹשֶׁה נְטֵה אֶת יָדְךָ עַל הַשָּׁמַיִם וִיהִי בָרָד בְּכָל אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם עַל הָאָדָם וְעַל הַבְּהֵמָה וְעַל כָּל עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה בְּאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
KJ: And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch forth thine hand toward heaven, that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, upon man, and upon beast, and upon every herb of the field, throughout the land of Egypt.
BN: Then YHVH said to Mosheh: "Stretch out your hand toward the skies, so that hail may fall across the whole land of Mitsrayim, on man, on beast, and on every blade of grass growing in the fields of the land of Mitsrayim."
AL HA SHAMAYIM: Surely the wrong preposition? AL means "on", but rightly the translation gives "towards". Most translations insist upon "Heaven" but I am insisting on "the skies", as throughout TheBibleNet. The god of the Beney Yisra-El may have been a sky-god, but on this side of the firmament, not the imaginary other, and his home was in the mountain of Chorev first, then for many centuries he camped out in the Mishkan before settling in a rather splendid hilltop mansion on Mount Tsi'on in Yeru-Shala'im. There is no Yisra-Eli concept of Heaven, in the sense of a Valhalla beyond the firmament, until Talmudic times, and even then it is doubtful.
AL KOL ASHER: On this occasion Goshen is not spared, or even differentiated; except that it is, according to verse 26. Textual error?
9:23 VA YET MOSHEH ET MAT'EHU AL HA SHAMAYIM VA YHVH NATAN KOLOT U BARAD VA TIHALACH ESH ARTSAH VA YAMTER YHVH BARAD AL ERETS MITSRAYIM
וַיֵּט מֹשֶׁה אֶת מַטֵּהוּ עַל הַשָּׁמַיִם וַיהוָה נָתַן קֹלֹת וּבָרָד וַתִּהֲלַךְ אֵשׁ אָרְצָה וַיַּמְטֵר יְהוָה בָּרָד עַל אֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם
KJ: And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven: and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran along upon the ground; and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt.
BN: And Mosheh stretched out his rod sceptre toward the skies; and YHVH sent thunder and hail, and forks of lighting fire speared the Earth; and YHVH caused it to hail on the land of Mitsrayim.
KOLOT: An important piece of sociology as well as theology, this. Thunder is the voice (one of the voices - cf 1 Kings 19:11-13) of the deity.
BARAD: just happens to be an anagram of DAVAR. But how does a hail-storm produce fires? Irresistible to translate VA TIHALACH ESH as "rained fire". But TIHALACH means "lightning".
No question now that this is Nut, the sky-goddess. And at her best. Thunder, lightning, hail - the full apocalypse. Wotan would have Loge do it for him, as YHVH does Mosheh, but this majestic goddess just loves to flaunt.
9:24 VA YEHI VARAD VE ESH MITLAKACHAT BETOCH HA BARAD KAVED ME'OD ASHER LO HAYAH CHAMO'HU BE CHOL ERETS MITSRAYIM ME'AZ HAYETA LE GOY
וַיְהִי בָרָד וְאֵשׁ מִתְלַקַּחַת בְּתוֹךְ הַבָּרָד כָּבֵד מְאֹד אֲשֶׁר לֹא הָיָה כָמֹהוּ בְּכָל אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם מֵאָז הָיְתָה לְגוֹי
KJ: So there was hail, and fire mingled with the hail, very grievous, such as there was none like it in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
BN: So there was hail, and lightning flashing amidst the hail, great forks and bolts, such as had not been seen in all the land of Mitsrayim since it first became a nation.
Since the beginning of time, indeed; since the very first day of Creation.
LE GOY: A slightly surprising variation on the way this was expressed above; see the link.
9:25 VA YACH HA BARAD BE CHOL ERETS MITSRAYIM ET KOL ASHER BA SADEH ME ADAM VE AD BEHEMAH VE ET KOL ESEV HA SADEH HIKAH HA BARAD VE ET KOL ETS HA SADEH SHIBER
וַיַּךְ הַבָּרָד בְּכָל אֶרֶץ מִצְרַיִם אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׂדֶה מֵאָדָם וְעַד בְּהֵמָה וְאֵת כָּל עֵשֶׂב הַשָּׂדֶה הִכָּה הַבָּרָד וְאֶת כָּל עֵץ הַשָּׂדֶה שִׁבֵּר
KJ: And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and brake every tree of the field.
BN: And the hail battered the entire land of Mitsrayim, and everything that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail bent back every blade of grass in every field, and every tree in every field was splintered.
VA YACH: See my notes on this at 9:14.
ESEV: Another of the key words of the Genesis version that just happens to crop up here (pun intended). It is spring after all, the first day of the new year – what else should be marked in the liturgy but the creation, re-creation, of the world? The one remaining question then is: why are there only 10 plagues, and not 12? We have demonstrated that the Egyptian original had 12, but the Redactor reduced it to ten, possibly to make a parallel with the 10 Commandments, possibly in an attempt to Yehuditise by removing the remainders of the Egyptian.
SHIBER: Yet another form of bifurcation! So rich and complex are the language games throughout this text, we simply have to assume that they were intentional, the work of a highly gifted writer. The goal, after all, with all these Biblical writings, was to explain the workings of the universe, creating myths because they did not yethave the sophisticated language of Physics, Chemistry and Biology; and yet it is pecisely Physics, Chemistry and Biology, with some Botany and some Astronomy along the way, which are being explained. So the "image" and the "likeness" of the deity is demonstrated: forked lightning causes forked tree trunks, rain is necessary even if it does cause floods...
רַק בְּאֶרֶץ גֹּשֶׁן אֲשֶׁר שָׁם בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֹא הָיָה בָּרָד
KJ: Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail.
BN: Only in the land of Goshen, where the Beney Yisra-El were, was there no hail.
GOSHEN: There is no known Yehudit root to explain the name in that language (nor does there need to be; it is an Egyptian place-name); the nearest equivalent however just happens to be GESHEM = rain.
LO HAYAH BARAD: but verse 23 told us unequivocally that no part of the land was spared. Mind you, the Beney Yisra-El were shepherds, not corn-farmers, so they would have been happy to watch the stormclouds miles away and not feel a drop.
LO HAYAH BARAD: but verse 23 told us unequivocally that no part of the land was spared. Mind you, the Beney Yisra-El were shepherds, not corn-farmers, so they would have been happy to watch the stormclouds miles away and not feel a drop.
9:27 VA YISHLACH PAR'OH VA YIKRA LE MOSHEH U LE AHARON VA YOMER AL'EHEM CHATA'TI HA PA'AM YHVH HA TSADIK VE ANI VE AMI HA RESHA'IM
וַיִּשְׁלַח פַּרְעֹה וַיִּקְרָא לְמֹשֶׁה וּלְאַהֲרֹן וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵהֶם חָטָאתִי הַפָּעַם יְהוָה הַצַּדִּיק וַאֲנִי וְעַמִּי הָרְשָׁעִים
KJ: And Pharaoh sent, and called for Moses and Aaron, and said unto them, I have sinned this time: the LORD is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.
BN: Then Pharaoh sent, and summoned Mosheh and Aharon, and said to them: "I have sinned this time; YHVH is righteous, and I and my people are wicked...
"The triple concept of pesha, chata'ah and avon is crucial to the process of atonement; three entirely different types of sin, each with its own consequences. Biblical usage suggests that a pesha is stronger than a chet, where avon is full-scale iniquity, the deepest level of sin. A chet will incur a forfeit or a fine, but is expiable and may only be an error. A pesha has the sense of wilfulness, even of protest or rebellion against the Law and against God; it requires a sacrificial offering at the Temple. This is why the words for pardon are also varied - a selichah for the chet, a mechilah for the pesha. Selichah is forgiveness, mechilah the full pardon, relative strength to relative strength. Only on Yom Kippur itself do we ask for and receive the highest level, beyond selichah, beyond mechilah, the full kapara which gives the day its name, the complete obliteration of our sins from the record books, the nulling and voiding of the entire page, so that we may start again afresh, at-one."
If this is a genuine Egyptian Creation ritual, including the pilgrimage or Hajj to Chorev, then Mosheh and Aharon are Egyptian not Beney Yisra-Eli priests! We have seen plentiful evidence of this already.
9:28 HA'TIYRU EL YHVH VE RAV MI HEYOT KOLOT ELOHIM U VARAD VA ASHALCHAH ET'CHEM VE LO TOSIPHUN LA'AMOD
הַעְתִּירוּ אֶל יְהוָה וְרַב מִהְיֹת קֹלֹת אֱלֹהִים וּבָרָד וַאֲשַׁלְּחָה אֶתְכֶם וְלֹא תֹסִפוּן לַעֲמֹד
KJ: Intreat the LORD (for it is enough) that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go, and ye shall stay no longer.
BN: "Entreat YHVH, tell him we have had enough of the mighty voice of Elohim, and of his hail; and I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer."
TOSIPHUN: ancient grammar.
KOLOT ELOHIM: Two possible way of translating this, of which the King James is perfectly correct with its version, though I confess I prefer mine. The KOLOT ELOHIM are the voice(s) of the deity, and what are the voice(s) of the deity in this circumstance if not the almighty thunder?
9:29 VA YOMER ELAV MOSHEH KE TSE'TI ET HA IR EPHROS ET KAPAI EL YHVH HA KOLOT YECHDALUN VE HA BARAD LO YIHEYEH OD LEMA'AN TEDA KI LA YHVH HA ARETS
וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָיו מֹשֶׁה כְּצֵאתִי אֶת הָעִיר אֶפְרֹשׂ אֶת כַּפַּי אֶל יְהוָה הַקֹּלוֹת יֶחְדָּלוּן וְהַבָּרָד לֹא יִהְיֶה עוֹד לְמַעַן תֵּדַע כִּי לַיהוָה הָאָרֶץ
BN: And Mosheh said to him: "As soon as I have left the city, I will spread out my hands to YHVH and the thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail. Thus will you know that the Earth belongs to YHVH...
Political negotiation! "Look, Pharaoh, you've seen what YHVH can do; you keep asking me to switch off the tap, which I do, and then you change your mind. This time, the tap stays on until we are safely out of Egypt. No pursuit to the Reed Sea. No changes of mind. Get the women of Egypt to bring us all their gold and jewelery, and as soon as we've collected and crossed the sea, I will have the plague stopped." Simple. But still Pharaoh doesn't yield.
EPHROS: Normally he stretches out his rod, but here he will spread out his hands. Is there a significant difference? The root is PARAS (פָרַשׂ), which is yet another way of "separating" or "dividing", in this case not by making forked fragments but by breaking in pieces; cf Michah 3:3, Lamentations 4:4. And yet, and yet... I cannot help noting these linguistic acrobatics that keep leaping and bounding through the text like baa-lambs. PARAS with a Seen here, but unpointed, and PARASH with a Sheen is "dung" and "compost" and "manure" (Leviticus 4:11, 8:17), all of them essential elements in the planting of those shrubs that are not yet in the field.
EPHROS: Normally he stretches out his rod, but here he will spread out his hands. Is there a significant difference? The root is PARAS (פָרַשׂ), which is yet another way of "separating" or "dividing", in this case not by making forked fragments but by breaking in pieces; cf Michah 3:3, Lamentations 4:4. And yet, and yet... I cannot help noting these linguistic acrobatics that keep leaping and bounding through the text like baa-lambs. PARAS with a Seen here, but unpointed, and PARASH with a Sheen is "dung" and "compost" and "manure" (Leviticus 4:11, 8:17), all of them essential elements in the planting of those shrubs that are not yet in the field.
YECHDALUN: The root of which is CHADAL, and I draw your attention to Isaiah 38:11, the only occasion insofar as I am aware when the root has this particular usage, but what an interesting usage it is.
9:30 VE ATAH VA AVADEYCHA YADA'TI KI TEREM TIYR'UN MIPNEY YHVH ELOHIM
וְאַתָּה וַעֲבָדֶיךָ יָדַעְתִּי כִּי טֶרֶם תִּירְאוּן מִפְּנֵי יְהוָה אֱלֹהִים
KJ: But as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the LORD God.
BN: "But as for you and your servants, I know that you are still not ready to fear YHVH Elohim."
A different version again? We have not heard the name YHVH Elohim before in this passage. But what Mosheh is saying is not really or specifically "you will not fear YHVH Elohim"; it is: "but I know that your penitence is not yet complete, that you have reached the first stage of chet, but have not yet reached pesha let alone avon; and therefore you are still not ready to worship the gods in the appointed manner. There will have to be more 'plagues' - more sins declared - so that you can go from selichah to mechilah and at last the full kapara." And all the more reason, then, to translate AVADIM as "worshippers" and not as "slaves".
9:31 VE HA PISHTAH VE HA SE'ORAH NUCHATAH KI HA SE'ORAH AVIV VE HA PISHTAH GIV'OL
וְהַפִּשְׁתָּה וְהַשְּׂעֹרָה נֻכָּתָה כִּי הַשְּׂעֹרָה אָבִיב וְהַפִּשְׁתָּה גִּבְעֹל
KJ: And the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was bolled.
BN: And the flax and the barley were battered; for the barley was in the ear, and the flax was in bloom.
Classic propitiation mentality of course. If you behave the way the gods require, they will bestow their favours on you, but if you sin you will get rain when you don't want it, and volcanic eruptions, and plagues, and sickness...
PISHTAH: And at last we have completed the evolutionary journey from the most algae like of creatures through the primordial emanations of the earth to the vegetation; so Pesach must be nigh. And just as we saw PARAS in EPHROS at verse 29, so with PISHTAH here, definitely flax, also used for cotton, but the root PASHAT, has the sense of things crumbling or falling away, yet another aspect of the separations and forkings and dividings etc of Nature; probably the flax and cotton got their name from the process of carding, without which you can't make cotton, any more than you can get sheep-fleece to be usable as wool - click here.
SE'ORAH: I mentioned the sheep's wool alongside the flax and cotton, because here is another oddity. The root is SA'AR, which has the sense of "shuddering" and "quivering" and became the word for "storm". But a second word, spelled exactly the same, gives us Mount Se'ir, densely inhabited by Se'irim and Se'irot, which are male and female goats, as well as the tribal name for the human residents. Sa'ar is also "hair", and I guess barley, when it's ripe, has a certain hairy-quality to it, where the flax and cotton, like the corn, tend to be more solid. Worth looking at my note at the link to Se'r for some equally odd connections, via the scapegoat, also known as the Azaz-El, to the Paschal lamb - in the age of Capricorn it would, of course, have been a Paschal goat.
NUCHATAH: We have seen this root several times (ser the notes at verse 15), but this the first time it has come up in the passive form.
AVIV: Of course means spring, though here it is translated as "in the ear"; a deliberate concealment again (that's a deliberate pun by me - see the note to TIKACHED at verse 15), though it doesn't take much thought to work out that it must be spring for the barley to be "in the ear".
GIV'OL: This is the word for the corolla of the flower, and confirms yet again that spring is sprung, and grass is riz - the only thing left to wonder is where the little birdie is. And that we can say without hesitation: the bird is not yet on the wing, because that cannot happen until the Pesach itself arrives, with the full moon, on the evening of the 14th of the month of Nisan. Very soon.
9:32 VE HA CHITAH VE HA KUSEMET LO NUCHU KI APHIYLOT HENAH
וְהַחִטָּה וְהַכֻּסֶּמֶת לֹא נֻכּוּ כִּי אֲפִילֹת הֵנָּה
KJ: But the wheat and the rie were not smitten: for they were not grown up.
BN: But the wheat and the rye were not battered; for they ripen late.
The flax and barley were affected, because they were now ripe, because it was spring, and these were ready for harvesting. Destruction of the flax was trying because it was used to wrap mummies and to make clothes, but it was not harvested for food, and Passover is about food-harvest, so it did not really matter. What mattered was the wheat, and the wheat was unaffected, because it literally bounced back. In fact, these torrential storms may well have helped the harvest, watering the fields and making the wheat easier to pull from the ground. Next year's wheat. Last year's wheat remains to be gotten rid of, in the great hunt for chamets and the use of unleavened bread in the interregnum.
9:33 VA YETSE MOSHEH ME IM PAR'OH ET HA IR VA YIPHROS KAPAV EL YHVH VA YACHDELU HA KOLOT VE HA BA BARAD U MATAR LO NITACH ARTSAH
וַיֵּצֵא מֹשֶׁה מֵעִם פַּרְעֹה אֶת הָעִיר וַיִּפְרֹשׂ כַּפָּיו אֶל יְהוָה וַיַּחְדְּלוּ הַקֹּלוֹת וְהַבָּרָד וּמָטָר לֹא נִתַּךְ אָרְצָה
KJ: And Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh, and spread abroad his hands unto the LORD: and the thunders and hail ceased, and the rain was not poured upon the earth.
BN: And Mosheh went out of the presence of Pharaoh, and out of the city, and stretched out his hands to YHVH; and the thunder and hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured down onto the Earth.
9:34 VA YAR PAR'OH KI CHADAL HA MATAR VE HA BARAD VE HA KOLOT VA YOSEPH LACHAT'O VA YACHBED LIBO HU VA AVADAV
וַיַּרְא פַּרְעֹה כִּי חָדַל הַמָּטָר וְהַבָּרָד וְהַקֹּלֹת וַיֹּסֶף לַחֲטֹא וַיַּכְבֵּד לִבּוֹ הוּא וַעֲבָדָיו
KJ: And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunders were ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants.
BN: And when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants.
SINNED YET MORE: At last the text states outright what I have been reading in its concealed parts: sin. But in what manner? We have seen the Elul and Rosh haShana elements, and the last verse hinted for the first time at an equivalent to Yom Kippur; now that hint is underlined. This begins - and the rain is therefore both literal and metaphorical - to become a rite of purgation, a cleaning and healing process, which the collecting of the chamets makes ceremonial, with the Egyptian precursor of Passover/Pesach functioning, as we have seen, as a precursor of Yom Kippur (and remember that, in the world of the Temple, Yom Kippur was merely the major annual culmination of the perpetual, daily ritual of atonement, by means of sacrifices, so its presence here in the spring should not be regarded as an issue).
9:35 VA YECHEZAK LEV PAROH VE LO SHILACH ET BENEY YISRA-EL KA ASHER DIBER YHVH BE YAD MOSHEH
וַיֶּחֱזַק לֵב פַּרְעֹה וְלֹא שִׁלַּח אֶת בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יְהוָה בְּיַד מֹשֶׁה
KJ: And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, neither would he let the children of Israel go; as the LORD had spoken by Moses.
BN: And the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the children of Yisra-El go; as YHVH had spoken through Mosheh.
BE YAD MOSHEH is an idiom that has not been used before, but will become mantra from now on. Note that it is his hand, not his voice, that is stated, though invariably it will be through his voice that whatever is instructed then takes place: once again, as with DAVAR, that interconnectedness of Word and Action.
Exodus: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13a 13b 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30a 30b 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38a 38b 39 40
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