[Avodah] Kama Maalot Tovot Lamakom Aleinu?

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

R' Liron Kopinsky asked an amazing question:

> In the Hagaddah, we go through the math of how many makkot there
> were in mitzrayim and at the yam suf. We say that since each
> maka in mitzrayim was an "etzba" and at the yam suf it was a
> "yad" that there were 5X as many plagues at the yam than in Egypt.
>
> This is fine except for the fact that we say "B'yad chazaka: zo
> hadever" (With a strong hand: this refers to the dever.) Why don't
> we say that dever counts as 5 times more than the other plagues?

Let's look at the pesukim. At first, I thought that RLK had used the same pasuk for different purposes, but no, we have two distinct pesukim here.

In Shemos 14:31, the Torah tells us that when we were at the Yam Suf, we saw the "yad hagdolah - the great hand" which He put on the Egyptians. Because just one of Hashem's fingers was responsible for all of the Ten Plagues, the commonly accepted calculation shows that when we were at the Sea, *each* of His five fingers must have made ten plagues, with a total of 50 plagues from His entire hand.

However, one can ask: Is the equation "one divine finger for each plague in Egypt" valid? RLK has shown us that it is not. We see in Shemos 9:3 -- which is quoted in the Hagadah itself only a few paragraphs earlier!!! -- that Moshe told Par'oh, "Behold, the hand of Hashem is on your cattle!" It seems clear that for this plague, Hashem's entire hand was on the cattle, not just one finger.

At first, we thought that one of G-d's fingers was responsible for all ten plagues. But we now see that this could be true for, at most, nine of the ten plagues. The cattle plague was not done by a single finger, but by all five fingers together. If so, then what happened at the sea? One possibility is that the "great hand" which He used at the sea produced just one plague, and it was as terrifying as the cattle plague. Another possibility is that the entire hand produced 45 smaller plagues.

I'm not comfortable with either calculation. Instead, I am going to ask a question, similar to that of RLK:

In Shemos 8:15, Par'oh's chartumim said that the plague of lice was caused by "the finger of G-d". The Hagada presumes that this "one plague to one finger" ratio stays constant for all ten plagues. But the truth seems to be that we know the ratio for lice and for cattle, but we know nothing about the other eight.

I eagerly look forward to seeing other responses to this question.

Akiva Miller

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