Parshat Bo
In this week’s Parsha, we read two puzzling statements about the might and power of the Kodosh Barukh Hu in extending His plagues over Egypt. In reverse order -- “And I will pass through the Land of Egypt on this night, and I will smite every first-born in the Land of Egypt from man to animal, and I will enact judgments against all the gods of Egypt. I am G-d.” (12:12) Indeed, on that night, “there will be a great cry throughout all the Land of Egypt, the like of which never before has been and never again will be. [But] against the Children of Israel no dog shall sharpen its tongue, [not at] a man and [not at] an animal, so that you will know that G-d has individuated between Egypt and between Israel .” (11:6-7)
A first question that arises: But we thought that there is only one G-d in the world, only the Kodosh Barukh Hu. If there are no other gods beside Him – which also means that there are “no such thing” as gods of Egypt – how can Hashem say that He will enact judgment against those non-extant gods? And a second question: What’s with the dogs? Other than Devarim 23:19, which tells us that Hashem’s holy place is not the site for laundering ethically tainted or morally repugnant donations and gifts, it is difficult to find any other reference to canines in the Chumash.
We often speak of the universal message of the Torah, that the Kodosh Barukh Hu spoke from Sinai and again through the hand of Moshe to all generations. “And you who cleave to the L-rd your G-d all are alive today.” (Devarim 4:4) This affirmation typically is invoked to make a Torah message uttered thousands of years ago relevant today. Thus, as we read of a mitzvah like Parah Adumah (Bamidbar 19), we tell each other that the mitzvah is relevant, even now, for what it teaches us about the Kodosh Barukh Hu’s khukim, His mitzvot without discernible reasons.
Here, though – for this week’s Parsha and its two baffling references – perhaps we should reorient the usual way of limud – instead of trying to understand how an ancient image speaks to us today, why not assume, in a novel approach to reading a pasuk, that a Torah image davka had culturally relevant, current-event meaning to the Dor HaMidbar on the eve of y’tzi’at Mitzrayim? Let’s give it a look:
The god of all life in Egypt was the Nile River. As among the Ten Plagues, the Nile was smitten first. The god of childbirth in the Egyptian pantheon, the frog goddess Heqet, stood as a sign of fertility and protection of newborn infants. And then the frogs went wild. Other Egyptian gods were believed to protect the fertility of the land, the animals, the environment. Yet, one by one, all of the natural order “randomly” deconstructed before Egyptian eyes. Lice from the ground. Wild animals from out of nowhere. There were Egyptian gods whose images were comprised of multi-animal amalgams that sound like the strange wild animals of “Arov.” Setekh had a long snout, prick ears, greyhound’s body, and upright tail. Sounds exactly like the animals that appeared in “Arov.” There was a protector of cows, Hathor. Not after the fifth plague, he wasn’t. And so it went. Osiris, the vegetation god, could not protect the vegetables and fruit from the hail and the locusts.
One by one, every supposed Egyptian god and goddess was emasculated and emaciated, overwhelmed and eviscerated. And thus the judgments that the Kodosh Barukh Hu meted out against the gods of Egypt. They did not exist – and lucky for them!
Finally, the Darkness. Quoting from Encyclopedia Britannica: “Anubis of Kynopolis . . . was a dog- or jackel-god associated with the cult of the dead. Together with the other canine deities, Wepwawet . . .and Khenti-amentiu, he presided over the desert of the west, the necropolis land where wolves and jackals lurked, and all were regarded as tombs.” Meanwhile, the greater Egyptian pantheon’s central characters included the sun god, Re, who “was thought to sail the sky in his boat, and at night to traverse the underworld, battling as he went with the forces of darkness.”
Imagine living in Egypt at this time, as one-by-one each supposed god in the Egyptian pantheon was being desolated. Might there have remained one hope – the sun god Re? Maybe. Each morning, his success in battling the forces of darkness was confirmed with the rising sun. But not on the day of Khoshekh – the Plague of Darkness. Through those days of Darkness, Re also had been vanquished. But by whom?
Moshe Rabbeinu had told Par’o this all would come to pass by Hashem’s hand. But the stubborn non-believers of Egypt, typified by the pitiful sorcerers who tried competing with Hashem’s might until the boils sent them packing for cover ( 9:11), always sought an Egyptian-centric explanation. And, perhaps here, too, it might have been tempting to attribute Re’s defeat -- in this catastrophic world war of the gods – to the powers of darkness, the gods of the necropolis, who finally beat him one night. And with the following plague – mass death, pinpoint-delivered with stunning accuracy at only first-born males – it may have seemed that, indeed, the Dog-gods had taken over the world, vanquishing all other gods. It was their night of Death. The Night of the Dogs to demonstrate their awesome power, their control of everything .
Only one thing. The silence of the dogs. Not a dog whetted its tongue at a Jew.
Think about it.