The sages teach us in Berachot 32a that, “[based on Moses’ prayers,] Rabbi Simlai taught: One should always set forth praise of the Holy One, Blessed be He, and then pray for one’s own needs.” For this, we have the Pesukei D’Zimrah in the daily morning service. Here, 13 verses of praise enumerate various examples of G-d’s glory, leading upwards to the declaration “Yishtabach… may your Name be praised forever.” The Song at the Sea [Exodus 14:30 – 15:19] is the final and most emphatic of the 13 verses. The Song at the Sea also plays a prominent role in the Haggadah. As we celebrate Passover each year, the everyday recitation of The Song at the Sea intersects with the seder’s special enactment of its own song at the sea.
There are two informational threads running through the Haggadah, one of halacha – i.e., the laws of Passover – and one of aggadah – i.e., the philosophical, ethical, historical elements of the exodus. In the parts that provide halacha we discuss and perform the Pesach offering, eating the matzah, and eating the bitter herbs. In the aggadah we meet the key characters and learn the history of the exodus.
The main account of the key characters is in the Maggid section of the Haggadah. Maggid also follows two threads. In one, we meet Pharaoh and his clash with Moshe. In the other, we meet the Egyptians and Israel as separate and distinct nations. At the Seder the Haggadah history lesson begins immediately after the ‘four questions’ with the statement “we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt…” Thus, we begin with three of the four character arcs: the Hebrews as a nation, Pharaoh, and the Egyptians as a nation. We list them in this order because Pharaoh is placed literally and figuratively between the ordinary people of the two nations.
There is a crucial narrative bridge in the Maggid between the account of the Hebrews’ bondage and Israel’s emancipation. It begins with an increasingly condensed account of the plagues that befell Egypt as a nation, ending with Rabbi Yehudah’s abbreviated formula D’TZACH, ADASH, B’ACHAB. This is where we refill our wine cups and suddenly pivot from the past in Egypt to our journey to Israel. It is no accident that it is exactly at this point when we say the name of Pharaoh for the last time and refer to Moshe the first and only time.
Pharaoh is mentioned by name six times in the Maggid, the last time immediately after the recitation of the ten plagues. One sentence later, we are introduced to Moshe only indirectly, in a proof text that refers to Israel’s faith in G-d and His ‘servant’ Moshe. The commentators note that this disparity tells us something about Pharaoh’s enormous ego and lust for power over all people. By comparison, Moshe’s indirect single mention at this point tells us something about his modesty and humble service to his people. This is quantified by the accounts of Rabbi Yossi, Rabbi Eliezer, and Rabbi Akiva.
This brings us to Dayenu – the enumeration of the miracles of leaving Egypt and being brought into the land of Israel. It provides a perfectly condensed summary of the aggadah of Passover. This is where the events, the story elements, and character threads come together. The Song at the Sea plays a prominent role as the central part of Dayenu.
In the 14 lines of Dayenu we learn about the fates of the Egyptians and the Jews before, during, and after The Song at the Sea. In the first third we recall the ‘judgments’ against the Egyptians, their gods, their firstborn, etc. There is no mention of Pharaoh. In the middle of Dayenu The Song at the Sea is condensed down to four lines where “our oppressors” were drowned. “Our oppressors” only refers to the people of Egypt; there is no mention of Pharaoh, who we know was not drowned. The final third covers the remaining forty years in the wilderness and the repatriation of the Jews in the land of Israel. Here Pharaoh is completely out of the picture.
What about Pharaoh? The answer to this question is to be found in the Book of Exodus and in how the threads of Aggadah play out before and after the pivot in the Maggid around Dayenu.
When Moshe said ‘let my people go’ he was not asking Pharaoh to set free the Jewish people. All he specified was that they were to go into the wilderness to worship G-d. As part of the arrangement, he asked to borrow the Egyptians’ gold and silver for ceremonial purposes.
In hindsight, we know that Moshe was setting a trap – an insight provided by Rav Yaakov Medan. He knew that Pharaoh was not an honest dealer. With each plague, G-d “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” to the point that it was clear that Pharaoh never intended to let the Jews go. In the tenth plague, Pharaoh lost his son. That was his judgment as an Egyptian. His judgment as Pharaoh – the arrogant king over Egypt who believed that he was a god, and one greater than the G-d of Israel – was yet to come.
The tenth plague was G-d’s reciprocal justice for the Egyptians having participated in the drowning of the newborn Jewish males. This was a fulfillment of G-d’s promise in Shemot 4:22-23 when Moshe was instructed to “…say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says G-d: Israel is My first-born son… I have said to you, ‘Let My son go, that he may worship Me’, yet you refuse to let him go. Now I will slay your first-born son.’” However, the Egyptian firstborn did not die by the same method – i.e., drowning. The Egyptians were killed wherever they happened to be on the night of the plague, mostly in their homes.
At first, Pharaoh – the Egyptian father who had just lost his son – relented and told Moshe to take his people and leave Egypt. However, as soon as the Jews were gone, Pharaoh – the arrogant, heart-hardened, egomaniac king of Egypt – changed his mind. He led his army after the Jews to get his gold and silver back and return to captivity what he regarded as his human property – the Hebrew slaves.
It was at the sea where all the threads of the story – and of justice – finally came together as follows.
Had He given us their wealth
without splitting the sea for us,
that would have been enough for us.
Had He split the sea for us
but not brought us through it dry,
that would have been enough for us.
Had He brought us through [the sea] dry
without drowning our enemies in it,
that would have been enough for us.
Had He drowned our enemies in it
without providing for our needs
for forty years in the desert,
that would have been enough for us.
The narrative, its placement in the Haggadah, and the backstory tell us that Pharaoh’s punishment warranted a twofold judgment. Pharaoh’s decree had attempted to take from the Jews their most precious possessions – i.e., their children, their future. He had them drowned. When it came time for Pharaoh to pay the final and most emphatic price for that, G-d sent Moshe, a child who had escaped that fate through Divine intervention, to lure him into the wilderness and make Pharaoh watch as his most prized possessions – his power and his army – were drowned.
This is a powerful lesson about humility. Specifically, it emphasizes the need for humility in leadership. Universally, it teaches us that all human arrogance leads to a false assumption of a total ability to control outcomes, to trample on the rights of others. It is this very arrogance that the Torah wishes to obliterate; Moshe is the counterpoint to Pharaoh, he is the paradigm of humility, he assumes his own fallibility, he argues always for forgiveness, and his name appears only peripherally in the narrative itself. This is by design. And so it is that every day we each recite The Song at the Sea, and every year we gather together to revisit that pivotal moment in our history via these pivotal verses in our Haggadah.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,
Dr. Terry Neiman with Rabbi Rosenblatt
