January 20, 2023 * Parshat Vaera

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Heavy Heart

I feel very strongly about my belief that God would not do anything to harm us. It is extremely painful to hear when people say that they believe God caused some sort of suffering in their life. And this week’s parsha has always been a struggle for me as well. In parshat Vaera, Moses and Aaron go to meet Pharoah to request leave of Israelites from Egypt. When Pharoah refuses, the language says כבד לב פרעה , that his heart was heavy. Each time God sends a new plague, Pharaoh's heart becomes heavy again and he refuses to let the people go. At the beginning of next week’s parsha, we will read that God will make Pharaoh's heart heavy. Is God holding the Israelites back from leaving?

It turns out, no. This is all part of the long game and has much greater significance than I thought. Remember, the purpose of the plagues wasn’t necessarily to torture Egyptians or even Pharoah. We see that Pharaoh has his own magicians who can try to stop the plagues. Magic was practiced in every segment of ancient Egyptian society and was even used by Pharaoh himself. In order to prove to Pharaoh that was more powerful, God had to really get into his head.

Each of the plagues had significance in Egyptian culture and religion meant to convince Pharaoh that the Hebrew God is superior to any other god.. A river of blood is a literary motif which appears in an Egyptian wisdom text representing chaos. Frogs were associated with fertility and birth in Egyptian religious thought. Kinim could mean lice or gnats or mosquitos and in order to eliminate them, they would shave their heads or cut their hair very short. However, because they liked the look of a head full of hair, they would make expensive wigs made with human hair. In order to rid these of lice, it would take hours of removing lice eggs by hand. They couldn’t remove the plague of lice from Egypt and in response the magicians told Pharaoh that it was the “finger of God”, viewing lice as a punishment by God’s hand.

Five times, we read that Pharaoh hardens his own heart or makes it heavy. From an ancient Egyptians perspective, the description of a heavy heart has clear connotations - evoking an important scene known as the weighing the heart depicted in many Egyptian papyri, coffins, and tomb decorations. In the scene we see the weighing of the heart ceremony which takes place after a person has died. In ancient Egypt, as in many other civilizations, the heart was considered the place of thoughts and feelings. Weighing the heart was the ultimate examination of a person’s character. Being slightly lighter than the feather of Maat (the idea of cosmic order that Pharaoh was supposed to uphold) meant the dead had conducted a righteous life and were worthy to move onto the next realm. If it was heavier, the dead person was considered a sinner. The ancient Egyptians believed his heart would be devoured by the monster who lurked and wanted under the scale.

The Torah’s description of Pharaoh's heart as heavy resonates with those familiar with this scene. A heavy heart was believed to bring destruction to its owner. Thus, from an Egyptian perspective, God’s control of Pharaoh's heart - to the point that He manipulates Pharoah - causes him to deviate from Maat. Essentially, God is making Pharaoh deviate from his own beliefs, making it so that Pharaoh would have to let the people go.

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