Tonight, at sunset, Jews across the world will celebrate Passover, something they’ve been doing annually for around 3,500 years. The holiday commemorates the miracle (and gift) of God leading the Jews out of slavery in Egypt. This was the world’s first slave revolt and led to God’s handing down the moral laws that are the backbone of the Judeo-Christian faiths. But the Passover story also tells us something important about the nature of tyranny, and the world’s governments, from Biden on down, would do well to heed that lesson.
The story of Passover appears in Exodus, the second book of the Old Testament. It explains that 400 years after Egypt took in the Israelites (i.e., today’s Jews) who were escaping a famine in Canaan (modern Israel), a new Pharaonic line had taken the Egyptian throne and enslaved the Israelites.
The Pharaoh on the throne at the time the narrative begins was so hostile to the Israelites that he ordered the slaughter of all newborn Israelite boys. The mother of one of those newborn boys successfully hid him in a basket on the Nile, where one of Pharaoh’s daughters found him, named him Moses, and raised him as a Prince of Egypt.
Because his older sister had stayed near the basket and become his nurse, Moses knew he was an Israelite, not an Egyptian. When the adult Moses saw an overseer cruelly treating a slave, Moses killed the overseer and fled to Midian. There, he became a shepherd and married a priest’s daughter.
Detail of the Death of the Pharaoh’s Firstborn Son by Lourens Alma Tadema, 1872. The Rijksmuseum.
Then came that fateful day when Moses, while tending his flocks, encountered a burning bush from which came the voice of God. God set Moses a task for which Moses felt painfully unqualified: Return to Egypt, free the Israelites from their bondage, and lead them to Canaan, the land promised to them in Genesis.
Despite his fears, Moses took up the task and went back to the court in which he’d been raised. He told Pharaoh to release the Israelites from slavery. Pharaoh, naturally, refused.
This refusal began the cycle of the famous ten plagues that Jews have recited at every seder since the Exodus itself:
1.Blood
2.Frogs
3.Lice
4.Flies
5.Pestilence
6.Boils
7.Hail
8.Locusts
9.Darkness
10. The death of the firstborn. (That Pharaoh didn’t die, incidentally, means that he was not his father’s firstborn.)
Because the Angel of Death passed over the homes of those Israelites who painted their door lintels with the blood of s specially prepared lamb, we get the holiday’s name.
With this last plague, Pharaoh finally yielded to Moses’s demands…and even then, at the last minute, he tried to renege, sending his troops to stop the departing Israelites. It was only because Moses parted the Red Sea, leaving it to close on Pharaoh’s troops, that the Israelites finally made their way to freedom, the Mosaic code, and permanent and continuous residency in the land they still occupy today.
Some people who are hostile to the Bible or to Jews have suggested that the story of the Exodus that Jews have faithfully remembered for thousands of years (and that was the setting for Jesus’s last supper) isn’t something to be celebrated. Instead, it shows God’s cruelty…to the Egyptian people and should be viewed as an embarrassment. This is completely wrong.
Aside from ignoring the fact that Exodus marks the first recognition in human history that slaves are people and deserve liberty, this viewpoint completely misses the profound message attached to the myriad plagues that Pharaoh willingly visited on his people: All tyrants have an almost endless capacity for tolerating others’ suffering, as long as their power remains in place.
What Pharaoh discovered with the first nine plagues is that life can go on, at least for the ruler, no matter the burdens he places on his people. Pharaoh had wine to drink when the Nile turned to blood; physicians when the plagues and boils arrived; baths, unguents, and incense when the irritating bugs settled in; stores of food when the cattle sickened and starved; and a secure palace when the skies poured down hail and fire. As long as Pharaoh’s hold on power was undiminished, he could always reconcile himself to his people’s pain.
Sheltered in his stronghold, Pharaoh might have had a theoretical concern that a starving and frightened populace could turn on him. However, with his army for protection, he nevertheless felt sufficiently inviolate to take that risk. It was only when the price became too high—when the plague struck Pharaoh in his own palace, killing his firstborn—that he was convinced, even temporarily, to alter his evil ways.
One of the reasons the Bible has lasted is its deep understanding of human nature—and when it comes to tyranny, human nature hasn’t changed since Pharaoh’s time. We’ve seen that over and over in the ensuing 3,500-plus years, as tyrants without number have immured themselves in secure luxury while visiting immense suffering on the people they rule.
Just in the last 90 years, Hitler destroyed Germany, Mao and Stalin killed tens of millions of their people, and Pol Pot slaughtered one-third of the Cambodian population. When those tyrants were stopped, as often as not, it was because an outside force took on the burden of the battle to destroy them. These were brutal battles, and the tyrants’ died for their misbegotten cause. However, the battles also ended the tyrant’s grip, bringing freedom to those cruel lands.
For 45 years, Iran’s mullahs have been amongst the world’s worst tyrants. They control them through fear backed by cruel reprisals, even as they fund Islamic terrorism around the globe. Israel has long been their first target, but they’ve never been shy about the fact that America and the entire West are their primary targets. For the Mullahs, power is everything; their people mean nothing.
The Mullah’s latest strike on Israel, an out-and-out, undisguised act of war, should have been the opportunity for the world to back Israel as she struck back and ended their cruel, destructive reign. This was the time to target Pharaoh in his palace. Instead, the world, including Biden, was afraid to bring that last plague to the Mullah’s doors. It was afraid to stop tyranny, preferring the cowardice of slavery.
Even Israel was tentative in her attack, choosing to remind Iran that Israel could bring the death of the firstborn to the Mullahs if she wanted. I understand. It’s hard to have the whole world screaming, “Stop,” even when you know that stopping is an immoral act and acting is the moral path.
One day, though, Israel is going to have to bring that tenth plague to the Iranian Pharaohs. Otherwise, Israel will be destroyed, the world will be enslaved, and the chance to overthrow tyranny will be lost for generations to come.
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