Sign up for Weekday J and get the latest on what's happening in the Jewish Bay Area.

Vaera

Exodus 6:2-9:35

Ezekiel 28:25-29:21

What would you think if you received a box containing a mouse, frog, bird and five arrows? That is what the Scythians sent Darius I, king of Persia, when they learned he planned to invade Scythia.

Darius understood these items to mean that his victory over the Scythians was assured. The arrows prophesied the laying down of the enemy's arms; the mouse signified the surrender of the land; the frog presaged the yielding of their waterways; the bird symbolized the flight of the Scythians from Darius.

The Scythians sent an intentionally vague message in the hope it would create uncertainty and indecision. Darius' advisers, already skeptical about the possibility of achieving victory, suggested that the Scythians were warning Darius that he had better fly away like a bird, hide in water like a frog, burrow into the ground like a mouse, or he would be slain by Scythian archers. As a result, Darius thought better of his optimistic outlook, retreated and prevented defeat.

This week's Torah portion, Vaera, suggests in the catalogue of calamities recited every year at Passover an even earlier example of psychological warfare. These cleverly chosen plagues had a psychological impact on the Egyptians by magnifying their anxieties.

The Torah is quite direct in describing the purpose of the plagues: "I will mete out punishments to all the gods of Egypt, I the Lord" (Exodus 12:12) and "The Lord executed judgment on their gods" (Numbers 33:4). Thus, the intent of the plagues was to assail intrinsic features of the Egyptian gods by making a mockery of them and rendering them powerless.

For successful agriculture, Egypt depended on the annual deposits of silt left by the Nile's receding floodwaters. Two plagues, blood and frogs, were chosen to mock Hapi, the Egyptian Nile god, and Osiris, the Egyptian god who dispensed fertility though the annual inundation.

Transformed to blood, a symbol for death, the dependable Nile could not be called upon for its important agricultural task. The hieroglyphic symbol of a frog represents the number 100,000 and abundant blessings. The frog goddess Heqt, a woman with a frog's head, was responsible for fecundity and recognized for her assistance to women in labor. In the plague of frogs, she was portrayed as uncontrollable, not dependable.

Moses was commanded to use every psychological advantage to gain freedom for the Israelites: "Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is coming out to the water, and station yourself before him at the edge of the Nile" (Exodus 7:15).

Speaking in God's name, the Torah continues: "By this you shall know that I am the Lord. See, I shall strike the water in the Nile with the rod that is in my hand and it will be turned into blood; and the fish in the Nile will die. The Nile will stink so that the Egyptians will find it impossible to drink the water of the Nile" (Exodus 7:17-18).

Now the tables would be turned as the Nile River that once received the drowned Hebrew children would become a place of death for the Egyptians.

The plague of darkness was also an assault against the Egyptian pantheon. The sun god Re or Amon-Re, the chief Egyptian divinity and progenitor of cosmic order, was pre-eminent because this god was the source of heat, light and creativity. Thus, the plague of darkness humiliated the Egyptians. The Egyptian deity Apophis is portrayed as a monstrous serpent that symbolized darkness and all that is terrible. Darkness indicated that Apophis and its demonic powers of chaos had prevailed in the daily struggle between light and darkness.

The striking down of the firstborn was the ultimate weapon in Moses' psychological arsenal. In the royal palace, Pharaoh was viewed as the incarnation of god on earth. The slaying of the firstborn sealed the fate of Pharaoh's son, the next incarnation of the god. This act of deicide, the ultimate act of killing their god, drove a stake into the heart of Egyptian cosmology and Egyptian life. The ultimate lesson for Pharaoh was that God's power supersedes that of the impotent Egyptian gods.

Battles like Moses', fought in every age, are won not only with God's help, but also by understanding an enemy's psychological mindset.