“See I have made you as a god unto Pharaoh.” (Exodus 7:1)
“Pharaoh was one of four men mentioned in scripture who declared themselves gods, and thereby ended up emasculating themselves.” (Midrash Genesis Rabbah 5:2)
This week’s Torah reading begins the grand and devastating display of divine one-upmanship (or, perhaps more accurately, one-up-God-ship) that is the prelude to the exodus of Israel from Egypt. Again and again, in the narrative, Pharaoh must be taught that he has no ultimate control over the waters and the skies and the flocks and the herds and the crops of his land – and, ultimately, no ultimate power over life and death.
As the story of a tyrant’s education – or maybe our education, through his ill and recalcitrant example – the story of the ten punishments visited by God upon the Egyptians may have a cathartic aspect, a release of fury against those who would arrogate ultimate and divine prerogatives, to the harm of others, to our harm. But the triumph – if one can call it that – of the ten plagues is hardly a viable model for good interfaith relations, or for conviviality of any sort.
Reading the scriptures of this week, I find myself coming back to a sermon on "Sovreignty: Delights and Dangers" that I gave in Harvard’s Memorial Church when that community made what some in the Church feared might have been the faux pas of inviting me to speak on a date that turned out, in their liturgical calendar, to be Christ the King Sunday.
I am not saying the message would have worked in Pharaoh’s Egypt. I am not denying a place in the scheme of things for a rebuke of tyrants. But maybe, just maybe, when it comes to the good faith of others – and especially when we are in positions of comfort and power – something of the message of this week’s Torah reading may aptly be addressed to the aspect of Pharaoh within ourselves as well.