שמות ט:ו,ז - "וימת כל מקנה מצרים, וממקנה ישראל לא מת אחד. וישלח פרעה והנה לא מת ממקנה ישראל עד אחד ויכבד לב פרעה ולא שלח את העם."
The declaration that all the mikneh of the Egyptian died during the fifth plague is puzzling since the Torah records the continued existence of Egyptian animals on several occasions after the fifth plague. One example is that 9:9,10 record that the sixth plague, boils, affected the Egyptian behamot. Many people understand that behamot are a subset of mikneh, and then it is surprising how there could be Egyptian behamot during the sixth plague. Similarly, 9:22,25 record that the hail landed on the behamot that were left in the field. Also, 11:5, 12:29 and 13:15 record that the first born Egyptian behamot were killed during the tenth plague. However, really behamot are ungulates, is a more general term than mikneh, and includes animals that were not livestock, see our discussion on Vayikra 11:2, "The definition of the words behamot and hayyot in the Torah." Thus, all these verse referring to behamot could be referring to deer or even pigs.
A more difficult reference is that 9:19 records that Moshe warned the Egyptians that they should move their mikneh inside to protect them from the seventh plague, hail, and 9:20,21 record that the G-d fearing Egyptians did so but the non-G-d fearing Egyptians left their mikneh in the fields. How did the Egyptians have any mikneh, livestock, after the fifth plague?
Another reference to Egyptian animals is that 14:6,7,23 record that the chariots of Egypt, which were pulled by horses (15:1), chased the Jewish people at Yam Suf, and horses are part of the category of animals called mikneh, as 9:3 refers to horses.
Various explanations have been suggested to explain the existence of Egyptian animals after the plague of pestilence. Rashi (on 9:10) suggests that the pestilence only killed the animals that were in the field, and thus the G-d fearing Egyptians would have brought them inside and they would not have died. One would then interpret 9:6 which records that all the Egyptian animals died, to mean that all the Egyptian animals that were in the field died.
This solution is difficult for at least two reasons. One problem with Rashi's solution is that, as the Bekhor Shor (on 9:6) points out, even according to Rashi, all the animals of the non-G-d fearing Egyptians died in the fifth plague, then how could 9:21 record that the non-G-d fearing Egyptians left their animals in the fields during the seventh plague? Bekhor Shor answers that maybe by chance the non-G-d fearing Egyptians had some animals indoors during the fifth plague. Secondly, this distinction between the G-d fearing and the non-G-d fearing Egyptians is only by the seventh plague, 9:20,21, and not by the fifth plague. If it occurred by the fifth plague, why did the Torah not mention this information as it does by the seventh plague? Rather, more likely, as noted by the Ramban (on 9:3) the fact that 9:3 refers to the animals in the field is because this is the usual place where these types of animals were located, but even if there were animals indoors they were also killed by the pestilence, as stated in 9:6.
A second approach to explain the continued existence of the Egyptian animals after the fifth plague is that the word all in 9:6 should not be understood literally but rather that most of the Egyptian animals died (see Ibn Ezra on 9:6, Rabbenu Bachya on 9:19, and Cassuto, 1967, p. 111). I doubt this approach since one of the points of the fifth plague was to distinguish between the Egyptian animals and the Jewish animals, and if not all of the Egyptian animals died, then this distinction would have been diminished.
A third approach is that some of the Egyptian animals were saved by the Jews. Shemot Rabbah (11:4) writes that any beast on which a Jew had the slightest claim was saved even if it was in the hands of an Egyptian, and animals that were jointly owned by Egyptians and Jews were not killed. The Netziv (on 9:7) suggests that the Egyptian had rented out their animals to the Jews and these animals survived the fifth plague. These possibilities presuppose a relatively high level of economic integration between the Egyptian and Jews, but this is doubtful since the Jews were slaves.
A fourth possibility is that the Egyptian acquired new animals after the fifth plague. Rabbenu Bachya (on 9:19) and Abravanel (1997, on 9:10, p.131) write that the Egyptians could have purchased animals from neighboring countries. Yet, most likely there was no international trade between Egypt and other countries during the period of the plagues, as who would travel to Egypt during the plagues? Another possibility raised by the Abravanel is that the Egyptians bought animals from the Jewish people. This is a possible explanation since this was feasible and from that fact that Pharaoh sent people to check that the Jewish animals did not die during the fifth plague, 9:7, we know that the Egyptians were aware of the Jewish animals. Yet, would the Egyptians really buy animals from slaves?
I would vary the Abravanel's approach that while maybe some Egyptians (G-d fearing ones?) bought animals from the Jews, most took them by force. (Note this would not mean that the Jews lost all of their animals because it is unknown how many animals the Jewish people had and how many were stolen.) This answer could then explain all the later references to the Egyptian animals, mikneh or behamot, except by the horses that led the chariots, since it is very unlikely that the Jews had horses. However, most likely the Egyptian soldiers on chariots who chased the Jews at Yam Suf were stationed at Egyptian forts that were located in the Sinai desert, and they and their horses were not affected by the plagues.
If the Egyptians stole animals from the Jewish people after the end of the fifth plague, then this offers a new perspective on three other questions concerning the fifth and sixth plagues in addition to the explanation for how the Egyptians could have mikneh after the fifth plague. One, 9:7 records that Pharaoh hardened his heart in conjunction with the fact that no Jewish owned animals died, but this information should have had the opposite effect. The answer could be that since no Jewish owned animals died, then Pharaoh knew that he had a source to acquire (by stealing) animals to replace his animals that were killed. Two, the Egyptian magicians appear in the first three plagues and then they disappear except for the sixth plague, as 9:11 records that they were particularly harmed by the boils. Maybe this mention and their suffering are because they advised Pharaoh to steal the animals from the Jewish people. Three, the plagues are usually in ascending order in terms of severity except for the sixth plague, the boils, which appear to be harsher than the seventh, eighth and ninth plagues. Maybe the sixth plague was relatively more severe, boils, since it was a punishment for the theft of the Jewish owned animals after the fifth plague. (For more on this question, see our discussion on 7:14-10:23, “The nine plagues: Their order and maybe their reason.”)
I was talking about this idea to a friend Eric Sherby and he questioned me why then did the Torah not record that Pharoah stole the Jewish animals. My answer is that Torah gives a hint to Pharaoh’s action since 9:7 records that Pharaoh sent out, but the Torah does not explain who and why he sent out people. I believe that many people assume that he sent out people to inquire what happened during the plague (see for example, Fox, 1995, p. 303), but the word inquire is not in the Torah. Furthermore, by two other plagues, frogs and hail, the Torah records that Pharoah saw that the plague had ended, 8:11 and 9:34, but by pestilence, the Torah does not record that Pharoah saw the effects of the plague. Instead, the word sent out in 9:7 is hinting that this sending was not some innocent action, but the Egyptians who were sent out were to steal animals from the Jewish people. Why did the Torah only hint to this action? My thought is that the Torah did not want to minimize the much more horrible actions that the Egyptians did to the Jewish people such as making the people slaves and killing the male children, by adding on “and they also stole from them some animals.”
Bibliography:
Abravanel (1437-1508), 1997, Commentary on Shemot. Jerusalem: Horev.
Fox, Everett, 1995, The Five Books of Moses: A new translation, New York: Schocken Books.
No comments:
Post a Comment