Prediction Of The Tenth Plague
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Exodus 11:4-10
4 So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, 5 and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. 6 There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again. 7 But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast, that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.’ 8 And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Get out, you and all the people who follow you.’ And after that I will go out.” And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. 9 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.”
10 Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.
Finally, Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness—which has brought destruction upon Pharaoh’s nation—will now bring destruction into his own house.
Pharaoh’s willfulness is finally not animated by a public-spirited concern for his nation and its people. Indeed, he willingly abandons his country to ruin precisely in order to show his own godly supremacy; in defending this ruling principle of the Egyptian regime, Pharaoh unintentionally reveals its catastrophic meaning. As each plague passes, so does his concern for the damage it has left behind. At no point does he attempt to heal the wounded or succor his people. At no point does he pray to any Egyptian deity; at every point he acts as if self-sufficient and all-important. After the ninth plague has left his country in frightful darkness for three days, Pharaoh is at his most defiantly godlike: he says to Moses, “Get away from me; take heed to yourself: never see my face again; for in the day you see my face you will die” (11:28). Nothing that affects the land or its people moves him; only with the tenth plague, which attacks the royal family itself, will he personally feel threatened and impulsively surrender. In sum, the contest of the plagues demonstrates the deep truth of Pharaonic politics: to be Pharaoh means being certain of your own wisdom, means being indifferent to your own people’s dignity and well-being, and ultimately to their very existence. Adhering to his own wisdom and seeking ultimate control—and immortality—for himself, the resolute and self-sufficing Pharaoh is in fact an angel of death, unleashed finally against himself and his own. –Leon Kass, Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus