A.
Supernatural blows continue to rain down upon Egypt.
ויט מדה את מטהו על ארץ מצרים וגו': ויעל הארבה על כל ארץ מצרים וינח בכל גבול מצרים לפניו לא הי' ארבה כמהו ואחריו לא יהי' כן: (“And Moshe stretched forth his staff over the land of Egypt…. And the locust arose over the entire land of Egypt and rested on all the borders of Egypt; before it there had not been a locust like it, and after it there would not be such”; X, 12-14).
Rashi indicates that meaning of the last clause above was that this was a unique species of locust, which had never been in the world before and has not been seen since. The Ba‘al ha-Turim notes that the word va-yanach, “and (he) rested”, occurs exactly twice in the Biblical corpus, here and in Exodus XX, 11: וינח ביום השביעי, “and He rested on the seventh day”, whence he understands that this unique species of locust was Sabbath-observant.
Which begs the question: Why? The question appears particularly relevant, since none of the accounts of the other makkoth involving wild creatures, not tzfard‘im (“frogs”), nor kinnim (“lice”), nor ‘arov (the “mixture” of wild beasts) contain any similar language, or make similar allegations. What, then, was unique about arbeh, the plague of locusts, that made necessary the observation that they were shomér shabbath?
Whilst we are asking questions, if we take a look three verses later, we find Pharaoh beseeching Moshe and Aharon: והעתירו לד' אלקיכם ויסר מעלי רק את המות הזה (“…and beg Ha-Shem your G-d that He remove from upon me only [raq] this death”; ibid., 17.
It is starkly clear that, after the incredibly destructive ‘arov and dever (“plague”), which devastated their domestic animals, and the barad, the fiery hail which ruined much of their crops, that arbeh was indeed a sentence of death for the Egyptians. But what could Pharaoh mean by asking that “only this death,” i.e., arbeh, be removed? What is the significance of the word raq?
B.
Let us deal with the second question first.
The midrash asks: למה הביא הקב"ה עליהם מכת ארבה? מפני שעשאו ישראל לזורעי חטים ושעורים וכל מיני קטניות, לפיכך הביא עליהם ארבה וכלה להם כל מה שזרעו להם ישראל (“Why did the Holy One, Blessed is He, bring upon [the Egyptians] the plague of locusts? Because they had made Israel into sowers of wheat and barley and all sorts of legumes; therefore He brought upon them the plague of locusts and destroyed everything which Israel had sown for them”; תנא דבי אלי' פ"ז).
In other words, these were the only crops which had been left standing by the previous disasters, the only thing still remaining between the Egyptians and starvation, now rapidly disappearing down the maws of the locusts. A sentence of death indeed!
The Torah Tmima, in his first comment on our parasha, observes in the name of the midrash שעם כל המכות היתה מכת דבר ולפי"ז גם במכת ארבה היתה מכת דבר (“that with all the [subsequent] makkoth there was makkath dever, and accordingly also together with makkath arbeh there was makkath dever”; I have been unable to find the original source). This persistence or endurance of makkath dever together with all the subsequent blows probably explains the unique occurrence of the active durative participle hoya, “is actively present or existing,” in IX, 2: .הנה יד ד' הוי' במקנך ודו' (“Behold, the hand of Ha-Shem is actively present amongst your livestock….”).
With this in mind, he calls our attention to an incident recorded in the Talmud: בימי ר' שמואל בר נחמני הוה כפנא ומותנא אמרי היכי נעביד? מניבע רחמי אתרתי לא אפשר, אלא ליבעי רחמי אמותנא וכפנא נסבול. אמר ר' שמואל בר נחמני ניבע רחמי אכפמא דכי יהיב רחמנא שובעא לחיי הוא דיהיב, דכתיב "פותח את ידך ומשביע לכל חי רצון" (“In the days of Rabbi Shmu’el bar Nachmani there was a famine and a plague. [People] asked: 'What shall we do? To seek mercy is not possible, but if mercy is sought for the plague we shall [still] suffer from famine.' Said Rabbi Shmu’el bar Nachmani, 'We shall seek mercy for the famine, for when the Merciful One grants abundance, it is to the living that He grants it, as it is written: "[You] open Your hand and satisfy the will of every living thing"; Psalms CXLV,16;'" תענית ח:). The Talmud then goes on to cite the Scriptural justification for not seeking mercy for both disasters at once: ומנלן דלא מצלינן אתרתי? דכתיב: "ונצומה ונבקשה מאלקינו על זאת" (“And whence [do we learn] that we do not pray for both [simultaneously]? For it is written: ‘And we shall fast and seek [relief] from our G-d for this’; Ezra VIII, 23”). As Rashi points out, the singular “this” indicates that one pray about one thing at a time.
Since, as we have already seen, a plague of locusts was a guarantee of famine to Egypt at this point; if we apply what we have learnt to Pharaoh’s words, it become apparent that לכן אמר "ויסר מעלי רק את המות הזה", ר"ל רק מכת הארבה שהוא מכת הרעב, מכת דבר ממילא תסור, וכמבואר דכי יהיב רחמנא השובע לחיי הוא מה שיהיב משא"כ בשאר במכות (“therefore [Pharaoh] said, ‘that He remove only this death from upon me’, as if to say, only the plague of locusts which is the plague of famine; the makkath dever will automatically be removed as explained, that when the Merciful One grants abundance it is for the living that He grants it, which is not that case with the other makkoth.”
‘Ad kan the Torah Tmima. But consider what it meant for such an admission to be forced from Pharaoh’s lips. We see here his first truly heartfelt admission that it is indeed G-d Who runs the world, and that Pharaoh, too, is subject to His will like any other mortal creature. The arbeh had brought about a momentous change in the Egyptian ruler’s outlook.
C.
Now let us turn to our first question.
The Modzitzer Rebbe shlit”a, in his commentary on the Haggada shel Pesach, Alei Deshe, observes that the locusts were Sabbath-observant because they fell into the category of behemoth tzaddiq, an animal belonging to a tzaddiq, who would (of course) be Sabbath observant, in that these were uniquely Moshe’s locusts, and he goes on to cite the famous story from the midrash of a draft animal which formerly belonged to a pious Jew but was sold to a non-Jewish farmer, who subsequently complained that the animal refused to work on the Sabbath (עיי' פסיקתא רבתי פי"ד), והכי נמי הארבה בהמתו של משה ונהג כהאי גוונא (“and here, too, the locusts were Moshe’s creatures and behaved in the same way”).
Fine; but what made the arbeh Moshe’s more than the tzfard‘im, the kinnim, or the ‘arov? Can it be, perhaps, that they, more than any other creature, had accomplished the point of the exercise, by bringing Pharaoh to admit G-d’s sovereignty over the world? Perhaps by being identified more fully than any other with Moshe’s (and, of course, G-d’s) purpose in heaping blow after blow on the Egyptians, the locusts were, to that extent, more Moshe’s creatures than the others.
D.
So we see that from the inclusion of one small, apparently inconsequential word, raq, in a verse, and from the mere fact that a rare verb form occurs only here and in one other verse, we can deduce the precise point at which Pharaoh’s stubborn will was first broken.
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