Contrary to the popular notion, the Ten Plagues, discussed in this week’s parsha, were not only punishments for the Egyptians for their merciless treatment of the Hebrews. The Ten Plagues actually served at least two additional functions.
First, it was an educational device intended to teach the Egyptians as well as the Jewish people that there is a G-d, that G-d could exercise control over nature and that G-d had a special relationship with the Jewish people.
Second, while the Ten plagues were wreaking havoc on the Egyptian people and institutions, there was a simultaneous spiritual process that was directed against the evil energies that dominated the Egyptian empire.
With this introduction, we can better understand the discussion in the Midrash concerning the Ten Plagues.
R. Eliezer stated that each of the Ten Plagues actually comprised four specific plagues. R. Akiva disagrees and maintains that each of the Ten Plagues consisted of five particular plagues.
One can only wonder, what is the significance as to whether the plagues consisted of four parts or of five? And what precisely are these sages arguing about? And, more importantly, what moral lesson can we derive from this knowledge?
In light of the foregoing insight — that the plagues were designed to counter the forces of evil that existed in Egypt — we can appreciate why each plague had to be seen as possessing four or five components. For, as we shall see, evil can be described as having its deleterious effects on the world either in terms of the number four or the number five. We will understand this point, by way of the following introduction.
According to the Midrash, all of physical matter consists, figuratively speaking, of the four elements of: fire, wind, water and earth. This should not be taken literally, as some have suggested, that there is actual fire in every object. Rather, everything in the physical realm possesses a metaphoric form of fire, wind, water and earth.
In addition to the four elements that make up the character of every object, there is also a fifth level, the quintessence, which is identified with the very essence of the object. One can destroy an object by crumbling it, for example, but the object still exists, albeit in a modified form. If we would burn the object instead, we would have destroyed its very essence as well.
So when we learn that the Ten Plagues were directed against the evil forces within Egypt, the question arises: How far did the evil permeate Egypt, its people and institutions? Did the evil just reach the periphery of Egyptian life? If that were the case, the plagues would not have to have penetrated and destroyed all the four specific elements of Egypt. Indeed, both R. Eliezer and R. Akiva agreed as to the extent evil permeated Egyptian life. Each plague had to have been made up of at least four parts, because the evil did not just affect Egypt in a general and peripheral manner; it penetrated and affected each one of its four components individually.
And here is where R. Eliezer and R. Akiva differ. R. Eliezer, who maintains that each plague consisted of four parts, is of the opinion that the impurity and evil of Egypt extended to each and every facet of Egyptian life, However, the evil did not extend to the essence of Egyptian existence. By destroying the four elements of evil that constitute the complete form and character of Egyptian life in all of its multifarious forms, evil, for all intents and purposes, would have been eradicated.
Rabbi Akiva, who maintains that each plague comprised five parts, is of the opinion that evil did indeed penetrate to the very core of Egyptian society. To rid Egypt of its evil, the plagues had to reach all five levels of Egyptian existence, to its very quintessential core.
This analysis can be translated into the method by which we liberate ourselves from our own spiritual paralysis, which parallels the Exodus from Egypt.
R. Eliezer’s “four level” approach to getting rid of evil means that we must work on all conscious levels of our soul, making sure they are not paralyzed. This means that we must get our actions, attitudes, intellect and will-power, to not be contaminated with negative influences and to not stagnate. Doing that will suffice to destroy the stifling forces of Egypt and will usher in the final Redemption. Accordingly, we need not concern ourselves with our essence; we can be secure that it is intact and unhampered by the numbing effects of the world around us.
R. Akiva, however, added that even when we feel that we are free, because we are in control of our conscious faculties, we are still not “out of the woods.” Our soul’s essence, might still be in exile. To really get out of exile, spiritually and physically, R. Akiva maintains, one must search deeply into his/her soul and make sure that the essence is able to “breath” freely. Then the Exodus is complete and no part of us will remain in exile.