The "Natural" Unnatural Plagues

“I will make Pharoah’s heart hard” (Exodus 4:21)

“I will harden his heart” Exodus (7:2)

“G-d’ strengthened his heart and he did not listen to them”. (Exodus, 7:13)

Of all the miracles that occurred that the Jews witnessed in Egypt, this must be one of the greatest. Man is created with capacity for free will, to choose his responses. This is one of the fundamentals of Torah. From his creation, man exerts free will, by first eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and then by Kain’s decision to kill his brother Abel. It elevates man from the animals. An animal cannot choose good over bad. It can only be as it was created to be. Taking his free choice away from him turns man into an animal. Therefore, it must be that when G-d strengthens or hardens Pharaoh’s heart, He is essentially removing his free will from Pharaoh, turning him into an automaton, allowing G-d to perform the wonders of the 10 plagues rather than letting them free.

Most commentaries including the Rambam, Ramban and Rashi all understand that Pharoh did lose his free will. After he had hardened his own heart in the first five plagues, G-d “hardens his heart”, not allowing him to repent, and essentially ensuring his demise, along with the rest of Egypt. If this is the case, G-d hardening Pharaoh’s heart is at least equal to the detail given to the 10 plagues. Yet the Torah places a spotlight upon each detail of the plagues and does not upon the miracle of Pharaoh himself. Not allowing Pharaoh to repent is denying him his essential humanity.

“The chain effects of blood”

Another route must be taken if one is to understand Pharaoh’s mindset, and what it means for his heart to be hardened. The Abarbanel provides a very bold interpretation which could solve this issue. He suggests that while the plagues were undoubted miracles, there was a very natural element to the vast majority of them.

Turning the water of the rivers and tributaries of Egypt to blood is a miracle which cannot be discounted, even by a rationalist like the Abarbanel. However, the second plague of frogs are a natural extension of the first plague. The blood killed all the fish in the Nile River. It was unbearable for the frogs and therefore they swarmed onto the dry land. There frogs died in massive numbers, to the extent that the land ‘stank’.

The noxious vapours and fumes from the decaying frogs began to affect the earth itself, resulting in lice afflicting the Egyptians.

The dust itself disintegrated, leaving behind dangerous scorpions and centipedes, spiders and snakes which then afflicted the Egyptians. This was the plague of ‘arov’ or wild animals.

When the ground itself became poisoned by these vapours, and then infected the plant life of Egypt. This was then eaten by Egyptian flocks. This resulted in the cattle dying within the plague of pestilence. This ‘poison’ then became airborne, causing the Egyptian people to become sick with boils.

The poison then evaporated into the atmosphere, unsettling the weather and raining down hail. After the hail, the cleaner winds pushed away all those noxious gasses, bringing with it the locusts. The winds which were brought were full of vapours which were so thick that they created very dense cloud cover, not allowing the Egyptians to see in the plague of darkness.

Modern readers might doubt that one plague scientifically caused the next—such as rotting crocodiles creating hail. However, the story focuses on a pre-scientific society; notably, Pharaoh consulted magicians rather than scientists. Because each plague could plausibly appear to trigger the next, the time gaps between them allowed Pharaoh to dismiss the events as natural occurrences rather than divine miracles. By giving Pharaoh the ability to dismiss the plagues as “natural”, Pharaoh is given the opportunity to harden his heart and as a result does not let the Jewish people go. He is always in full control, and he can always repent.

Minimizing the Miracle?

The Malbim in his commentary on the Torah, dismisses this view, saying that it minimises what in his opinion are absolute miracles. Why would the Abarbanel wish to take G-d’s miraculous plagues and minimise them into a chain reaction of events?

The answer to this question is two-fold. The first is that Pharaoh’s heart is not magically turned to stone. He always had the ability to let the Jewish people leave. He always could repent, and he always could relent. To say otherwise would be to contradict the simple reading of the verses. The second is that by making the plagues appear natural, G-d caused Pharaoh to believe that they were natural. He believed that what he was seeing was nothing more than a set of tragic calamities affecting his people, and this is what the verses mean when they refer to G-d hardening his heart.