Vayomer HaShem el Moshe: Bo el Pharaoh, ki Ani hichbadti et libo… — “HaShem said to Moshe: Come to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart…” [Shemot 10:1]
Why bo — come — rather than lech, go? The Zohar places a tremor here, and it is not poetic license: “Why is it written here, ‘Come (bo) unto Pharaoh’? Ought it not rather to have said ‘go’ (lekh)?” [Zohar, Bo 3:36]. Bo el Pharaoh means: enter into the confrontation in a way you cannot do from the outside. It is a descent into the inner rooms of the resistance itself, into the soul-structure that Pharaoh embodies, until you touch the “celestial representative” of Egypt as a spiritual force, the root-pattern that animates the earthly throne. The Zohar’s language is sharp and concrete: HaShem “guided Moses through a labyrinth right into the abode of a certain supernal mighty dragon” [Zohar, Bo 3:36] — and the Zohar continues that Moshe “was afraid,” circling only the “rivers” and “levels” of that power, until HaShem leads him deeper [Zohar, Bo 3:37–38], the same prophetic image later spoken of Pharaoh himself as ha-tannin ha-gadol ha-rovetz be-tokh ye’orav — “the great crocodile that lies down in the midst of its rivers” [Yechezkel 29:3]. The “come” is thus also a revealed hint of companionship: not only that Moshe must enter, but that he enters only because HaShem is “already there,” preceding him into the very chamber of the kelipah’s crown, the way Shekhinah precedes Israel into exile and is found there, not as exile’s endorsement but as its inner undoing [Megillah 29a]. Bo, because HaShem is already there — not outside the constriction, but within the place where the constriction is being held in existence at every instant.
And on the level of peshat, the grammar itself hints at the same inner-motion: several Rishonim and Baalei HaTosafot note that the Torah often says lech when Moshe is to meet Pharaoh outside, by the Nile, but says bo when Moshe is to enter Pharaoh’s house or inner chamber — bo as “come in,” “enter,” a movement into the place of power rather than a warning shouted from its edges, and the narrative itself repeats the same doorway-wording earlier in the plagues: “Bo el Pharaoh” again at the onset of Dever [Shemot 9:1]. Rabbeinu Bahya makes this explicit in his own way, reading the phrasing as part of the audacity and friction of confronting Pharaoh “in his own palace,” where the warning is no longer a distant summons but an invasion of the throne-room’s assumed sovereignty [Rabbeinu Bahya to Shemot 10:1], and Rashi’s own gloss on our verse is terse in the same direction: “Come to Pharaoh — and warn him” [Rashi to Shemot 10:1].
Ki Ani hichbadti — “for I have hardened his heart” [Shemot 10:1] — has to be read together with the verse’s stated purpose: “so that I may set these My signs in his midst” [Shemot 10:1]. The hardening is not a random cruelty, but a forced disclosure: when the outer layers refuse to bend, the inner mechanism is exposed. Pharaoh is no longer just a king — he is Sod HaLev haKasheh, the collective embodiment of da’at hijacked into kelipah, a consciousness that will not yield because yielding would mean admitting that reality is not owned by the self. Ani, here, is not merely “I” as a grammatical subject; it is HaShem asserting direct authorship over what Pharaoh imagines is his own autonomous inner weather, so the deepest lie can be cornered: that the heart belongs to itself, and Tanakh itself already articulates this axis precisely in the language of kings: Palgei mayim lev melekh b’yad Adonai, al kol asher yachpotz yatenu — “The king’s heart is in the hand of HaShem, like channels of water; He turns it wherever He wills” [Mishlei 21:1]. Yet even this “authorship” is not a denial of the created human domain of choice in the simple sense, for Hazal set as a foundation that “everything is in the hands of Heaven except fear of Heaven” [Berakhot 33b], and the classical commentaries struggle precisely to locate Pharaoh’s hardening somewhere inside that boundary-line, whether as consequence, as exposure, or as the bitter “help” that makes a person’s inner will speak clearly when external pressure would otherwise blur it, and the Torah’s own story already signals this braid by describing Pharaoh hardening himself again and again before the hardening becomes explicitly attributed to Heaven [Shemot 8:15; Shemot 9:34].
And Hazal already hold the tension being described: Rambam writes of Pharaoh that “repentance was withheld from him,” a hardening that becomes consequence — not arbitrary, but earned through the repeated choice to crush life [Mishneh Torah, Teshuvah 6:3]. Yet others explain the hardening as the opposite kind of intervention: not removing choice, but restoring it under overwhelming pressure, so Pharaoh’s “yes” or “no” would still be truly his; Sforno frames the matter in precisely this direction, insisting that without such strengthening Pharaoh would have relented from suffering rather than from any turning of the heart, and the Torah wants the refusal (and therefore the eventual collapse) to reveal who Pharaoh truly is [Sforno to Shemot 7:3]. Ramban, too, lays out multiple dimensions of the hardening across the narrative, including the possibility of punishment after repeated self-hardening, and the way the later “hardening” functions as a judicial sealing of a path the person has insisted on walking [Ramban to Shemot 7:3; Ramban to Shemot 9:12]. Either way, the Torah’s own sentence braids the metaphysic into the mission: “in order that I may set these My signs in his midst” [Shemot 10:1] — revelation is being carved into the very place that insists on concealment.
Ulema’an tesaper b’oznei bincha… — “In order that you recount in the ears of your son…” [Shemot 10:2]. The inner unfolding is not only for Egypt’s collapse — it is so that Sod d’HaGeulah will echo generationally, through transmission. Tesaper is sipur, narrative, but it is also the work of turning brute events into da’at: the plague is not the point; the knowing is the point — “and you shall know that I am HaShem” [Shemot 10:2]. If a redemption cannot be spoken into the ears of children as living da’at, it has not yet fully become geulah inside the soul; and this is why the Torah later legislates the pedagogy of questions and answers around Pesach itself, shaping memory into avodah rather than nostalgia [Shemot 13:8; Pesachim 116a].
Now, the final plagues intensify — but not as vengeance. These are ruptures that dismantle a false cosmology from its top-down architecture, each blow targeting a different idolized structure of control, until the entire system is forced to admit what it denied from the beginning: that HaShem is not one power among powers, but the One whose will sustains all powers.
Plague Eight: Arbeh — Locusts. Arbeh — numerical value 208 — the same as Yitzchak (יצחק), din in its root before it becomes cruelty, force before it becomes abuse. The locust-swarm is gevurah unleashed as appetite without measure, hunger without a vessel, consuming what is left of Pharaoh’s illusion of permanence. The land that was worshipped as stable becomes a mouth that cannot stop eating, and Egypt tastes what it means when appetite becomes law.
Plague Nine: Choshech — Darkness. Not absence of light, but a shutting-down of orientation — “a darkness that can be felt” [Shemot 10:21], until “they did not see one another, and no man rose from his place” [Shemot 10:23]. It is paralysis of soul, the collapse of inner compass. And Rashi, bringing the Midrashic edge into the verse, describes a darkness “doubled and redoubled… until it became tangible,” reading veyamesh as a thickness with “substance,” a darkness with mamash, with actuality that presses on the body and therefore on the psyche [Rashi to Shemot 10:21]. Rashi continues that the plague unfolded as six days — three of obscuring darkness, and three of a darkness “mukpal,” doubled upon itself, so that a person could not rise from where he was, and he also names why this concealment had to be so total: so that Israelites who did not wish to leave could die and be buried unseen, and so that Israel could search and know where the vessels of Egypt lay before later asking and receiving them [Rashi to Shemot 10:22]. Only for Bnei Yisrael, “there was light in their dwelling places” [Shemot 10:23] — because the point is not simply illumination, but where the light can be received. A people trained in slavery can still build vessels for presence, and a kingdom trained in self-deification can be left with nothing but felt-void when the false lamps go out.
Plague Ten: Makkat Bechorot — Death of the Firstborn. The final shattering: “At midnight HaShem struck every firstborn” [Shemot 12:29]. Bechor is reshit, the first assertion of strength, the beginning-point of identity that declares, “I am the source,” and the Torah has already framed the entire struggle in the language of bechor itself: Beni bekhori Yisrael — “Israel is My firstborn son” [Shemot 4:22]. This plague dismantles the keter of the kelipah, the crown-illusion at the top of Egypt’s spiritual infrastructure. The Torah itself emphasizes directness: “I will pass through the land of Egypt… and I will strike every firstborn… I am HaShem” [Shemot 12:12], and the same verse makes explicit that the blow is also a collapse of Egypt’s pantheon: u’vechol elohei Mitzrayim e’eseh shefatim — “and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments” [Shemot 12:12], which Hazal concretize as judgment that reaches even the material idols themselves, “the one made of wood will rot, and the one made of metal will melt” [Rashi to Shemot 12:12]. This is not delegated reality; it is HaShem’s own passage, the Root Will confronting root distortion at the point where distortion pretends to be origin. And the language Hazal place in our mouths each year sharpens exactly this directness — “I and not an angel… I and not a seraph… I and not a messenger” — not as a denial that HaShem has mal’akhim, but as a declaration that the core turning-point of geulah is His kavod Himself pressing into the place that claimed no Master [Haggadah Shel Pesach], Ani ve-lo mal’akh… Ani ve-lo saraf… Ani ve-lo ha-shaliach — “I and not an angel… I and not a seraph… I and not a messenger” [Pesach Haggadah, Magid, Arami oved avi 19].
Vayehi bachatzi halailah — at midnight [Shemot 12:29]. Midnight here is not only a clock-time; it is the knife-edge where the night is split, the deepest point of concealment pierced by a decree of disclosure, and Hazal notice that Moshe, when warning Pharaoh, says ka-chatzot halailah — “about midnight” [Shemot 11:4], while the fulfillment is bachatzi halailah — “at midnight” [Shemot 12:29], explaining that Moshe spoke with this careful phrasing so Pharaoh’s astrologers would not err in their calculations and then accuse Moshe of falsehood, while HaShem’s act lands with exactness [Berakhot 4a]. And the scream that rises from Egypt is not only grief — “there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was no house where there was not one dead” [Shemot 12:30] — it is the sound of a whole system realizing that its “firstness” was never first.
Then comes Pesach — but not yet in name, only in command. The lamb is to be slaughtered — seh tamim, an unblemished lamb [Shemot 12:5] — in full view of the Egyptian symbolism of power, and taken from the place where Egypt had invested religious meaning. Slaughtering it is not only defiance; it is the spiritual shechitah of a fantasy: that gevurah is divine when it is worshipped, rather than rectified when it is offered back to HaShem.
The blood on the doorposts — dam al mashkof u’shtei hamezuzot [Shemot 12:7] — is Sod HaPesach, the sealing of boundaries so that the destroyer does not enter [Shemot 12:23], and the Torah specifies the act with a concrete vessel of application: “u’lekachtem agudat ezov” — “and you shall take a bundle of hyssop” [Shemot 12:22]. HaShem says, “I will see the blood, and I will pass over you” [Shemot 12:13]. The sign is not for HaShem’s knowledge, but for Israel’s consciousness: a home becomes a defined vessel, a space marked as belonging to covenant rather than to panic. Here your line is already the language of Hazal: “and the blood shall be unto you for a sign” — “for you… and not for others,” says Rashi in the name of the Mekhilta, insisting that the marking is about Israel becoming a people who can recognize their own boundary of faith [Rashi to Shemot 12:13], and he adds that “for you and not for others” is precisely why the blood was placed only mi-bifnim, on the inside [Rashi to Shemot 12:13]. The night itself is filled with dinim; the doorway becomes the interface where din is met with obedience that builds protection.
Ve’atem lo tetze’u ish mi’petach beito ad boker — “None of you shall go out of the door of his house until morning” [Shemot 12:22]. In that night, the judgments rage in the streets — not because HaShem is absent, but because the outer world is being dismantled and the inner world must be held steady. Rashi adds the severe spiritual psychology of that command: once reshut is given to the mashchit to strike, it does not distinguish between righteous and wicked, so the avodah of that night is not heroics in the street but disciplined containment within the covenantal boundary [Rashi to Shemot 12:22; Bava Kamma 60a]. Morning is not just daylight; it is rachamim returning to the revealed order of life, the moment when a people can step out without being swallowed by the collapsing shell.
And then — Vayikra Pharaoh leMoshe… Pharaoh calls Moshe in the night [Shemot 12:31]. He, the root of resistance, now bends. “Rise up, go out from among my people” [Shemot 12:31], and then the strange sentence that exposes the inner truth Pharaoh tried to bury: “and bless me also” [Shemot 12:32]. Even kelipah, when it breaks, reaches for light, because beneath the distortion is still a creature yearning for source.
But redemption is not a jailbreak — it is a birth. Bnei Yisrael go forth with silver, gold, garments [Shemot 12:35], not as mere spoils, but as the extraction of value from the place where value was enslaved, the Torah’s own fulfillment of the earlier covenantal promise: Ve’acharei khen yetze’u birkhush gadol — “And afterward they shall go out with great wealth” [Bereishit 15:14]. The Torah says HaShem gave the people favor and they emptied Egypt [Shemot 12:36]; a people that was treated as nothing now walks out carrying vessels, because geulah must also repair the inner accounting of worth.
And the people leave — not “beshlosh me’ot shanah,” but “at the end of four hundred and thirty years” [Shemot 12:40–41]. The Torah’s language is exact, and Rashi sharpens the count: the “four hundred” is reckoned from the birth of Yitzchak, when “ki ger yihyeh zar’akha” begins to be fulfilled, and the additional “thirty” from the decree of Brit Bein HaBetarim until Yitzchak’s birth, so that the actual dwelling in Egypt emerges as two hundred and ten years [Rashi to Shemot 12:40]. “And it came to pass… on that very day, all the hosts of HaShem went out from the land of Egypt” [Shemot 12:41]. Not only people — tzivot, spiritual configurations, a nation emerging as an ordered host under a Name, and Hazal press the punctuality of “be’etzem hayom hazeh” as HaShem not delaying even “keheref ayin,” and tie the “that very day” to the fifteenth of Nisan as a thread running through the covenantal promise itself [Rashi to Shemot 12:41].
And the Torah calls this night: leil shimurim — “a night of watchfulness” [Shemot 12:42]. It is watched by HaShem and therefore watched-for by Israel, generation after generation — and Rashi hears in shimurim both meanings at once: HaShem “watching and looking” to fulfill the promise, and the night being “guarded… from the harmful spirits” [Rashi to Shemot 12:42], shomer u’metzapeh — “watching and anticipating” [Rashi to Shemot 12:42]. The Bavli, too, links this guarding-quality to the recurring power of the night itself, speaking of leil shimurim as a night with a special protection that threads through the generations [Pesachim 109b], and elsewhere ties the “guardedness” of this night to the very fabric of time from the beginning, as though redemption is not only an event inside history but a pattern embedded into creation and revealed at the right fissure [Rosh Hashanah 11b]. Because a gate was carved into time itself: the pattern by which concealment can be split, the paradigm by which a people learns that HaShem can be found not only after the constriction, but within it, guiding them through the labyrinth until the innermost throne of falsehood is finally made to tremble, and the first breath of dawn begins to form inside the lungs of a once-enslaved nation, still tasting matzah and blood and the sharp air of a freedom that must now be held, shaped, and lived.