Secrets of The Eighth Plague of Egypt

0:10Here's another thing that people have been discussing, and I hear this a lot lately. First, Hashem tells Moshe, "I'm going to mock the Egyptians," and then you see Moshe and Aaron come to Pharaoh, and they don't just tell him what Hashem said. They tell him a lot of other things. So said Hashem, the God of the Hebrews: So said Hashem, the God of the Hebrews, until when will you refuse to be humbled before Me? Send out My people so they may serve Me. For if you refuse to send out My people, behold, tomorrow I shall bring a locust swarm into your borders. It will cover the surface of the earth so that one will not be able to see the earth, meaning that the locusts... will cover everything. You're not going to be able to see anything. And it will consume the remaining residue that was left to you by the hail, because the hail, with the fire, pretty much destroyed almost everything. So he said, whatever is left, the locusts are going to eat. You're going to have no food. There's going to be complete starvation, famine, in all of Egypt. There's not going to be anything, nothing. All the trees will be eaten. If you've ever seen, if you want to see this, you can find it on YouTube.

1:35There's places around the world where they have these locust attacks. Locusts fly in huge numbers, millions and millions. And when they arrive at a farm or a town, they eat everything. They leave nothing. Today, it's possible to see videos of this. Everyone is a cameraman because of smartphones, so you can actually see some of these things. And you see 30 million locusts arrive. A day, two days, three days, they leave. Everything is destroyed. The entire farm is destroyed. It's mamash unbelievable. This is much worse, the Oibershter tells you. How do we know it's much worse? After the hail that destroyed everything, whatever was left, they're going to even eat this. And it says specifically... And it will consume all the trees that grow for you from the field. They will fill your houses, the houses of your servants, and the houses of all of Egypt, such as your fathers and your grandfathers have never seen from the day they came onto the earth until this day. And later on, this parashah says that when they came, it never happened before and it never will happen again. That type of attack from locusts.

2:56But one thing I was trying to mention here is that you see Hashem gives Moshe Rabbeinu one sentence. He tells him, I'm going to mock Egypt. Moshe gives a whole megillah of things. What, he created it? This is a very, very simple thing, but for some reason, people have a problem believing it today. This is a very clear proof of the Midrash. The Midrash is part of the Oral Torah. There's two Torahs. There's the Written Torah, which is this, the book that we read in the Beit Knesset, or the Chumash that we have in front of us, the Tanakh. That's the Written Torah. And then there's the Oral Torah. The Oral Torah was transmitted from mouth to mouth from Moshe all the way until today. At the beginning of Pirkei Avot, you can see a list of all the people through whom the Torah traveled in every single generation. Literally, it has names of all the generations, from who was the Gadol HaDor, where it traveled from father to son, from the Nevi'im, and so on. beginning of Pirkei Avot. So now, the Oral Torah has many parts. You have the Gemara, which is also called Talmud. You have the Mishnah, which is part of the Gemara, technically. It precedes, it comes before the Gemara. You have the Zohar, part of which is Kabbalah. You have the Midrashim. Midrashim are the stories behind the stories.

4:23But for some reason, you tell somebody, "Listen, it says this in the Torah." Where does it say that the locusts ate the eyes of the Egyptians after they finished the food? After the locusts finished the food, they started it. They were looking for more. It was already ruined. They didn't have that much food. So what did they do? They started eating the eyes of the Egyptians. So you tell this to people, "Where does it say? I don't see it in the verse." That's the Midrash. That's the whole Torah. That's what Rashi is. That's what Rabbi Akiva is. That's what all these, Abarbanel, where you have Onkelos, Ramban, Rambam. They put Midrashim. They explained to us the story behind the story. The easiest way to prove it is you see. Obviously, Hashem told Moshe a lot more than one thing. Because Moshe here is saying several things. And Moshe is the most important prophet of all time. Nobody's going to be like Moshe. Moshe spoke to Hashem face to face. He spoke to Him like you and I are speaking to each other. He's a big tzaddik. It's one of the 13 principles of faith. Moshe Rabbeinu has several parts of the 13 principles of faith. You have to believe in Moshe. It's not you or me. It's Moshe Rabbeinu. So, of course, Moshe knows you're not allowed to add to Hashem's words.

5:47So how come it has five sentences versus two or one? Because Hashem is not going to repeat the same thing and waste time and add more letters for no reason. Every letter, every sentence, every word, every paragraph in the Torah, every letter has a reason. Nothing is duplicated for no reason. So, of course, Hashem made sure that everything is written with precision and purpose. He told Moshe all the details. But there's no purpose to write him saying it and then Moshe saying it. He's just going to write it once. So this shows that obviously the conversation between Moshe and Hashem is much more than what's written here. And that's the Midrash. So when someone says, no, no, no, that's the Midrash. Midrash is Torah. It's not, oh, Midrash. It's not like Sipurei Savta, you know, the stories of our grandparents to make us go to sleep when we're three years old. Midrash is part of the Torah. And for some reason, lately, I've been hearing this in a few places. People say, no, no, it's a Midrash, like it doesn't matter. Midrash is part of the Torah. So now, Pharaoh, his servants are breaking. They're pretty much saying, oh, Pharaoh, how long will it be

7:09send out these men so that they may serve Hashem, their God. Do you not know yet that Egypt is lost? I mean, Egypt has been destroyed. We went from the top. We lost pretty much all of our, almost all of our money. We have problems. We have barely any food. So Pharaoh says, he calls back Moshe. And he says to them, you know, How do you know who's going to serve Hashem? Who's going to the desert? Moshe says, you know, everybody's going to the desert. So Pharaoh is reading his face, like he's looking at Moshe's face, and he accuses him of lying. He goes, no, no, see, you're not going to come back. You guys are wicked. And he kicks them out. He says to them, look, the evil intent is opposite your faces. So here we can learn something about somebody sometimes in the business world or just in the general world. Sometimes you meet people that are always accusing everybody of doing something.

8:37They're always accusing this guy of stealing, this guy of cheating. They're accusing everybody of doing it. Usually, that's a bad sign about them because usually, the guilty think everyone else is out to get them. The people that are usually wicked usually accuse everybody else of being wicked. What is accusing? Accusing is like... accusing everyone. He thinks, he says, no, this is a thief, this is a thief, this is a thief. So it really means that he himself is a thief. It's lashon hara (evil speech). Except for lashon hara. But the thing here is that with a person who is always hiding from everyone, Different, different, different. A person who has a mentality that naturally suspects everyone of being out to get them. I used to know this guy. He used to work for me, actually.

9:42...that always thought that we were out to get him somehow. The funny thing is, I did more for this guy than I probably did for any of my employees. I did things, you know, to help him out with issues that weren't even related to work. But for some reason, he always thought that I had this master plan to fool him or do something against him, or whatever it was. I don't know why, but again, later on, I found out that, you know, he wasn't exactly a tzaddik. But that's, again, the nature of people that are... Actually, now that I think about it, I had more than one guy working for me like that. So people who usually suspect everyone are usually guilty themselves, and that's what's happening with Paroh over here. He's suspecting Moshe and Aharon of doing something wrong. In reality, it's his own inner instinct that's acting up, and it's because he is guilty himself. So after the locusts come, they eat everything. Pharaoh hurries to call Moshe and Aharon, and he says to them, "I have sinned to Hashem, your God, and to you. And now, please forgive my sin, just this time." As if it's the only sin he ever made. Just this time. And entreat Hashem, your God.

11:08And remove from me only this death. This mamash, these locusts are so difficult at destroying everything that it feels like everyone's dying. People are getting their eyes eaten, all the food is being eaten. They're going to get to a point of having complete hunger here. Here, Paro acts as if he is doing teshuva. And he's not only apologizing to Hashem. But he's also apologizing for disrespecting Moshe. He says, I have sinned to Hashem, your God, and to you. In the past, when he pretended like he was sorry, he would say, I have sinned; Hashem is righteous, and me and my people are wicked. He only apologized to God, never respected Moshe. Here, finally, he's showing Moshe some respect. He's saying, I sinned against you. Just this time. Forgive my sin just this time. Look, it's the only sin he ever made. So already you see that this is nonsense. See, it's destroying my country. They're eating everything. Remove this death from me because this is going to bring death. Now, there were so many locusts. The Midrash says there were so many locusts that even the Egyptians, who were killing them, said, okay, they ate all the food, so what are we going to do? We're going to start eating locusts.

12:35Which, by the way, is not allowed in Judaism, except for one type. This type was allowed. The Yemenites, and I think some Moroccans, actually to this day eat them. There aren't that many, you have to know. Only if you have an old tradition. You and I can't go to the store and eat locusts because we don't have that in our tradition. But they have it in their tradition... To know exactly which locust they're allowed to eat. It's not every locust. There's a certain type you're allowed to eat, which is many, many generations old, and to this day, they eat it. Especially the Yemenites. What's a locust? Locust, uh... Locust, uh... What was it? Chagav. Chagav, chagav, chagav. So now, he's asking to, oh, so they lost all the food. So the Egyptians start, they see so many, they start eating the, what's it called? The chagavim.

13:51And it's, oh, you know what? We could build our country with this. We have so many of them. We could sell them. So as soon as Pharaoh comes to Moshe, Moshe goes to Hashem, prays to Hashem to remove it, and Hashem brings a wind, a powerful wind from the west, and pushes the locusts towards the Sea of Reeds. Every single one of them. It says specifically that not a single locust remained within the entire border of Egypt. So what about the dead ones? Not a single one. No. The Midrash says that they started filling up buckets and buckets of dead locusts to sell. And they made the deal. And as soon as the... Hashem made this wind, the live ones flew away, and the dead ones came back to life and flew away. So the locusts came back to life, a resurrection of the dead, to make sure that the Egyptians don't benefit from even selling them—not eating them, not selling them, not anything. So, but after this...

15:18Pharaoh doesn't do teshuvah even though he said he will. The interesting thing about this, as I wrote here in a note, is that you see that even throughout this time that Hashem is performing all of these miracles, He's still using nature to make it look somewhat realistic. Meaning that when He brought the locusts, when He brought all these bugs from a different place to Egypt, He brought them using wind. It specifically says He brought a strong wind. And to get them away, He's using a strong wind to get them away. Now, in reality, Hashem just makes them appear and disappear. One day they're here, the next second they're not here. Why is he specifically saying that he's using the wind? Because this is still giving people the ability to have free choice. If they see that the locusts appear, like magic, one day they're here, the next second they're not here, then it's obvious that it's an act of God. But if it came through the wind, then you can say, no, maybe it's nature. Maybe it's nature that did it, not God. Even though God is nature. You know, Elohim and HaTeva have the same gematria, the same numerical value. HaTeva is nature and Elohim is Hashem. Which means that HaTeva, you know, nature, is Hashem in disguise. It's being disguised.

16:48So, Hashem, even throughout these miraculous times, is still using nature to give us free choice. This is the problem with today: people have reached a point where they still have this free choice, but unfortunately, they keep choosing the wrong thing. So you have... unnatural events like what's happening in Israel where the terrorists shot four or five thousand missiles at Eretz Yisrael into areas where there are many people, and Baruch Hashem nobody died. Everybody's like, "No, see, it's because of the Iron Dome, it's because of the special weapons we have and the special army we have, and the special protection we have from the IDF and the government." all this shtuyot. They really believe that if you shoot one missile anywhere, hundreds of people die or get injured. 4,000 missiles, nothing. They still think it's the Iron Dome or the Red Dome or all this nonsense that they have. They really think their weapons are what's helping them. That's the problem. So Hashem is making it look natural.

18:14He's making it look natural because he wants to give you free choice. So even then, even during the times of Mitzrayim (Egypt), He still made it look natural by using the wind.