In Parshat Vaera the great confrontation takes shape. Moshe or more realistically Hashem verses Pharaoh. Hashem sends Moshe and his brother Aaron to confront Pharaoh in a first meeting and after they are thrown out, the drama of the ten plagues begins. However this first encounter is a little enigmatic, what was Hashem’s strategy – start small and see what happens?
Hashem tells Moshe and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you “produce your marvel,” say to Aaron – “throw down your staff before Pharaoh” and it will turn into a serpent. Sure enough that was what happened, but Pharaoh was not too impressed and he called in his own magic circle who did the same. The Midrash gives a more graphic description “Pharaoh began to tease them and clucked at them like a chicken and said – is that what your G-d does? People usually show us something new, they do not bring fish to Acre (a fishing village, similar to coals to Newcastle), magic is my forte and he brought children from school and his wife who did the same trick.” Pharaoh is not too impressed, but then comes the David Copperfield style masterpiece and Aaron’s serpent swallows up the magicians’ serpents and shows who is in charge.
The opening gambit compared with the mighty plagues that follow seem a fairly mild approach to Hashem’s show of strength, and perhaps there is a deeper significance to this event. Rashi gives a clue, that there is something deeper and notes that the text tells us that Aaron’s staff swallowed their staffs and Ibn Ezra adds that Aaron’s staff remain as thin as before (just like the seven thin cows) and demonstrated to Pharaoh that they were in a different league, and as the Talmud Shabbat tells us that this was a miracle within a miracle.
The Ba’al Turim interprets this as Hashem’s message to Pharaoh that although he compared himself to a powerful serpent he would end up as a dry lifeless stick. More strikingly Ezekiel proclaims in this week’s Haftara – “So says Hashem, I am going to deal with you Pharaoh, King of Egypt. The great serpent that lies in the river who said – The river is mine and I own it – I will put hooks in your mouth and make the fish cling to your scales.” The message here is that the serpent (crocodile) which was the emblem of Egypt looks strong but can be easily trapped by those who are skilled and this is what will happen to Pharaoh and Egypt.
Reading on in the Parsha, perhaps the most powerful plague in terms of Hashem’s message to Egypt is the plague of Hail (Barad), where Hashem turns nature upside down and sends hail mixed with fire from the heavens. It is worth a careful read and here Hashem even warns the Egyptians in his mercy to stay indoors otherwise they will perish. Here Rashi notes that this is a miracle within a miracle and Pharaoh finally admits the power of Hashem over the world.
Rav S R Hirsch brings a powerful almost foreboding message “Everywhere in the Tanach we find magicians in the employ of ancient rulers to help them hold on to power. In the modern world we need to learn to harness the natural sciences for the good of mankind not to destroy the world with our power over nature, as was seemingly the power of the ancient magicians.” Our modern world has made scientific advances but look how our power over nature seems to bring us so many changes in climate and natural disaster after disaster.
Another small point of interest, is that here, as opposed to Bereshit, Hashem makes sure that there is a double act, Moshe and Aaron. Notice how this a feature of today’s Radio or TV where often there are two hosts interacting and how in Torah learning we have for generations had the “chavruta” learning in pairs. This was their first outing together and they made a great team, in the words of Kohelet “two are better than one.”