Devar/5771/Bo
From RonWareWiki
< Devar | 5771
עברית
English
Else, if thou refuse to let My people go, behold, to-morrow will I bring locusts into thy border (Ex 10:4)
It is a bit difficult to understand why the Holy One, blessed is He, chose to strike Egypt with the plague of locusts. After all, He had at His disposal all the forces of nature, and any creature possible to imagine and even those impossible to imagine -- all of it lay at His beck and call, may He be blessed. But He chose to afflict the Egyptians with a kind of insect which is not only not exceptional and uncommon -- rather, it is very common and well known! It is doubtful that the Egyptians were particularly impressed by such a plague.
In continuation it says: and they shall cover the face of the earth, that one shall not be able to see the earth; and they shall eat the residue of that which is escaped, which remaineth unto you from the hail, and shall eat every tree which groweth for you out of the field (ibid 5). The hail which preceded the locusts was a "supernatural" thing -- it is impossible for fire and ice to naturally exist mixed in the same body. However, locusts are eminently natural and commonplace. The Holy One, blessed is He, gave the Egyptians a way to deceive themselves and say that just as the source of the locusts was not a supernatural one, so too the hail -- even though it was unusual -- was not outside the boundaries of the natural. He, may He be blessed, gave them the freedom to choose the self-deception which would permit them to continue in their evil ways -- or to transform their skewed world-view and return in repentance.
This is an important point: there is no coercion in our religion. God gives us the freedom to choose our path, despite His desire for our good (which is that we walk in His path). Most people tend to see whatever fits their preconceptions, and to practice self-deception; to say that reality is not what it seems, but rather what we imagine it to be. But reality is in fact what it is, and if our desire is to improve ourselves, we must open our eyes and our hearts to the truth and let it in.
| Top: Devar | Prev: Va'era | Next: Yitro |