2021/5781
One of the highlights of Maggid is the Ten Plagues. We read through all of them, and then do some fancy arithmetic to increase the number. We start with 10, then 60, then 240, then 300. This leads to the impression that all the Makkot are just indistinguishable numbers, but that is not true. The impact of Dam, where large parts of Egypt’s water supply turned to blood for a week, was not nearly as large as that of Makkat Bechorot, where a big chunk of Egypt’s population dropped dead.
Another example of Makkot that aren’t quite the same are Barad and Arbeh. Barad brought a hailstorm, while Arbeh brought a plague of locusts. Unlike Dam and Makkat Bechorot, these are fairly similar. Both destroy large chunks of Pharaoh’s crop supply and both terrify him enough to call Moshe back to remove the plague, but they have significant differences.
Barad is the terror of the unknown. Egypt is a very dry country, so any kind of rain is exceedingly rare, and lightning even rarer. It is also a very hot land. A giant, nation-sized lightning-filled hailstorm is completely unprecedented. As if to make things even more extreme, Barad is also one of the more supernatural plagues, with fire inside the hail. The first thing that Hashem has Moshe tell Pharaoh about the plague is that nothing like it has happened from the day Egypt was founded until now (and Egypt is about 3000 years old at this point). When Pharaoh asks Moshe to remove the plague, he says, “VeRav MiHiyot Kolot Elokim UBarad,” “that there may be an end of God’s thunder and of hail” (Shemot 9:28). This divine lightning and hail are too much for him, terrifying him. He never mentions the destruction they caused, only the fear.
If Barad is the fear of the unknown, Arbeh is the fear of the well-known danger. Egypt was no stranger to locusts. The first evidence of locusts comes from there, so Pharaoh would know the danger well. Whenever a swarm appears, it immediately starts eating everything green it can get to, multiplying like crazy. Whenever it eats everything in an area, it flies away to wherever the winds will take it. Plagues of locusts (as the largest groups are called) can devastate entire countries, and can get so thick that they block out the sun. Compared to Barad, Arbeh is a much more natural plague: it involves a plague of locusts riding to Egypt on the wind, eating everything in sight. The only difference between this one and a normal one is size: the Makkah covers the entire nation at once. While Moshe does tell Pharaoh that the plague is nothing like anything seen before in Egypt, he says so at the very end of his description, not at the beginning like with Barad.
Pharaoh’s reaction to Arbeh contains much less fear. He merely requests that Moshe remove “HaMavet HaZeh,” “this death” (Shemot 10:17). He knows locusts, so he isn’t afraid of them, merely acknowledging that if the plague isn’t stopped, all of Egypt will die from famine. But more than that, there is an intense reaction before the plague. Regarding Barad, Pharaoh received the warning, and some of his more God-fearing servants removed their slaves and animals from the fields. They cannot really understand what this plague is, so if they believe in Hashem, they will take precautions, and if they don’t, they won’t. But every Egyptian knows the death brought by a plague of locusts. So Pharaoh’s advisors immediately turn on Pharaoh and demand that he let the Jews go: “HaTerem Teida Ki Avedah Mitzrayim?” “Do you not yet know that Egypt is lost?” (Shemot 10:7). Half of Egypt’s food supply has already been destroyed. Pharaoh in the end does not let us go, when he realizes that the Jews have no intentions of returning. But this is the closest he has come so far.
When we read through the plagues in the Haggadah, they might seem pretty similar, but they aren’t. They each operate in a totally different way. Even Barad and Arbeh, which have identical results - destroying half of Egypt’s food supply - are different. Barad brings the terror of the unknown, Arbeh brings the destruction of the known. We can’t lose sight of the individual plagues from the list.