The Exodus is a success story with a dramatic plot – a weakling slave nation that goes up against the most powerful nation of that ancient age and wins its freedom. Some might claim that the theme of the underdog overcoming a cruel, powerful master is a stale cliché, but that would be like complaining that Shakespeare is trite. The point is that the Bible, like Shakespeare, is the source and not the imitation. The Exodus story is very vividly drawn and sparkling with special effects. It features seemingly humorous elements, like the plague of frogs, alongside ones that inspire terror – the Nile waters turning into blood, the pitch dark, etc. And then, when it seems as though all the special effects have been exhausted, we have the ultimate set piece – the Splitting of the Sea.

The setting also informs the sense of enchantment – not some backwater, but a land of magic and mystery, the Egypt of pharaohs and mummies, wizards and pyramids. The combination of setting, plot, and special effects fires the imagination. It is no wonder, then, that the movies made about the Exodus – from Cecil B. Demille’s Ten Commandments to Dreamworks’ Prince of Egypt – have been blockbusters.

That would seem to be a happy chance, considering that the Exodus was a foundational event in the history of the Jewish people, imparted and studied for more than three thousand years. We are enjoined to remember it daily, and to retell it as a story at the Passover Seder, so it is a good thing that we find it so agreeable to the imagination. Yet, it turns out that it is deliberate: when God tells Moses, in the beginning of our parasha, how the Jewish people’s most formative experience – an event of patent historical significance – will play out, we learn that He will harden the heart of Pharaoh, who will refuse to free the Israelites despite the plagues that will afflict his people. Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart?

When I was a child, I thought the purpose is to punish Egypt, but the biblical text offers an entirely different reason: “And that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son’s son, what I have wrought upon........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)