The Ways of Holiness

Chapter 4
The Nine Plagues

My Secret

In the previous chapters I have given you an overview of a reading based on the structure of the Book of Leviticus. In this chapter I am going to begin describing the method I use to create the reading. My "secret" is that I read according to the context. Of course just what I mean by "context" is the real secret to be revealed.

Generally, when reading the Bible, or any other book, context means the surrounding text, that which comes immediately before and after. This is based on the assumption that the text is essentially linear. However, we have already noted that the Torah is organized, like the camp, with concentric blocks of text. This creates a non-linear flow, e.g. the historical narrative of the first part of Exodus is picked up in the middle of Numbers. Since it is quite evident that the Torah is non-linear, we have every reason to expect that each of the five Books is also non-linear.

How do we determine "context" in a non-linear document? This is a question that we will have to answer before we can fully understand Leviticus, which combines two different non-linear structures, the ring and the table. Mary Douglas has described the ring in her book on Numbers. It is like the "focal point symmetry" that we have already noted. As far as I know, the extensive use of tabular arrangement in the Torah has not yet been reported. In order to explain how the Biblical tables are organized, we must make a digression, and have a look at the organization of "the Nine Plagues".

Three Cycles

The first nine of the ten plagues in Exodus comprise the clearest example of tabular text in the Torah. Examining this tabular layout will make it easier for us to understand the meaning of "context" in the structure of Leviticus. Before I present the nine-plague table, I will list the plagues consecutively with some of the characteristics of each plague. The list will enable us to see just how the table is developed.

Nine-Plague List

In the above list I have divided the nine plagues into three cycles. Each cycle repeats a set of three different instructions to Moses. In the first plague of each cycle God tells Moses to present himself (nitzav, hityatzev) to Pharaoh in the morning. In the second plague of each cycle, God tells Moses to come (bo) to Pharaoh. The third plague in each cycle has no introduction; God simply tells Moses how to bring about the plague. In respect of these three different instructions, each of the three cycles is identical to the others. The three instructions appear in the same order in each cycle. There is, however, another element that distinguishes one cycle from the other, the agent who brings about the plague. All three plagues in the first cycle all brought about by Aaron. Similarly, all three plagues in the third cycle are brought about by Moses. The middle cycle has a combination of agents; two plagues are brought about by God Himself, and one by Aaron and Moses together. We now have two different means of classifying the plagues. We can divide them into three groups according to the three different instructions, and we can divide them by agents. The advantage of the tabular arrangement is that it demonstrates the two different methods of grouping simultaneously.

Table 1

All of the information that I presented in the previous paragraphs is directly accessible from the above table. The classification by opening instructions appears in the columns. The classification by agents appears in the rows. The table makes it clear that two "lines of thought" were employed in organizing the plagues, one that is expressed in the columns and one that is expressed in the rows. Each individual plague is defined by the intersection of its "agent" line and its "introduction" line. The planning lines give new meaning to "context." The context of a plague is determined by its position in the table, not just by its place in the linear flow of the text. I will expand this point shortly.

As interesting as this tabular arrangement may be, in and of itself it adds little to our understanding of the plagues. The full significance of the tabular arrangement comes to light when we use it as a tool for understanding the nature of the plagues. I have indicated the plagues by name in the tables. This is essentially shorthand for the whole section of text that concerns each plague. In order to study the plagues properly, the nine blocks of text should be organized as I have indicated in the shorthand table. Since we are concerned primarily with Leviticus, I will simply summarize some of the insights that come from studying the nine-plague table. Later we will apply these insights to our reading of Leviticus.

Each row and each column of the table should be examined as a three-plague set, six sets in all. The three horizontal sets can then be compared with each other. So too, the three vertical sets can be compared. The first horizontal set, plagues 1-3, is performed by Aaron by pointing at the ground. All three of these plagues have their source in the ground. In the last row, 7-9, Moses points to the sky to initiate each plague. These plagues come out of the sky. The plagues in the middle row come neither from the ground nor from the sky, but from between them. So there is a clear spatial theme in the organization of the plagues, which is expressed by the relative positioning of the rows. Once we see that the top row points down and the bottom row points up, we can see that they both point to the middle row, where God makes an unmediated appearance. God is revealed in the meeting of heaven and earth. This is similar to the theme of Mt. Sinai. Moreover, revelation is God’s stated purpose in causing the plagues. Now let us look at the columns.

The columns draw our attention to the introductions, and consequently, the "actors" in each scene. In the first column God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh. In the second column God invites Moses to come with Him to Pharaoh. Here I must clarify a point. The Hebrew verb that appears in the introductions to the three plagues in the middle column is bo, "come", even though it is often mistakenly translated in this context as "go". The importance of properly understanding this verb is that it positions the speaker, God. Moses is told to "come" to Pharaoh, thereby implying that either God is with Pharaoh, or that He will go with Moses to Pharaoh. Thus there is a contrast with the first column, where Moses is apparently sent to Pharaoh without God. In the third column Moses does not go to Pharaoh at all; he is with God. This gives us the following arrangement: first column, Moses and Pharaoh; second column, God, Moses, and Pharaoh; third column, Moses and God. Since Moses is common to all three, he can be ignored. That leaves the following arrangement: first column, Pharaoh; second column, God and Pharaoh; third column, God. The middle column is a combination of the two adjacent columns. This is similar to the phenomenon that we noted in the rows, where the middle row falls conceptually between the extremes.

The plagues of the first column, the Nile changing to blood, the invasion of mixed things, and the hail, all pointedly take place by the light of day in the morning, in a public setting. These three plagues bring about changes in the three levels of the created world: the lower waters, the upper waters, and the biosphere between them. This is the mundane world over which Pharaoh claims mastery; hence, he alone appears in this column.

Next we are going to look at the third column. There is an important methodological point that explains why we skip from the first column to the third column. We have noted that the central column, as well as the central row, combines elements of the extremities, i.e. Pharaoh on one extreme, God on the other, and both of them in the middle. Therefore, we should first study the extremes and then see how they combine in the middle.

The most obvious difference between the plagues of the first column and lice, boils, and darkness, the third column, is visibility. Lice are virtually invisible, boils have no visible cause, and darkness is the negation of visibility. The invisible plagues were brought about without any visible warning from the invisible God. These three plagues directly affect individuals, as opposed to the cataclysmic changes of the first three plagues. Even darkness, which might appear to be an objective change, is reported in terms of individual blindness: "people did not see one another". It is possible to make a case for calling the ninth plague “depression” rather than “darkness.” The verb used to bring it about, veyamosh, literally means “was made palpable”. The palpable darkness prevented individuals from interacting, “people did not see one other”. It was so bad that “for three days they could not get up from under themselves.” This sounds to me like a description of mass clinical depression. We can sharpen the comparison between the first column and the third by examining the order within each column.

We have already noted that the first column reproduces a picture drawn by the first days of the creation in which the primal world consists of three levels, the upper and lower waters and the firmament between them. This is the objective world clearly seen by the light of day. The third column deals with personal experience, the itch of a mite, the discomfort of a skin eruption, and debilitating depression, “darkness”. These three plagues are ordered experientially. They begin with an itch caused by the smallest of visible creatures, followed by a skin eruption that could have either an external or psychosomatic cause. Finally, there is a darkness of the spirit. The order is “internalization”, from the outside inward. It points to a Job-like experience that forces an unmediated confrontation between the individual and God. The extreme columns have defined the separate realms of “public events” and “private experience”, or perhaps, “objective” and “subjective” realities.

The substantial, public, Pharaonic world of the first column, meets the third column’s private world of the spirit, in the central column. The common metaphor for the combination of the body-public and the private spirit is animal life, or simply life; the Hebrew for “animals”, chayot, can also be read as “life”, chayut. The central column is made up of frogs, livestock, and locust. It seethes and swarms with life- and death. From the lower world of the first row, rise up hordes of frogs. From the upper world of the third row, come down swarms of locust. In the middle are masses of domesticated flocks and herds. Clearly, the middle column contains living creatures, which join the objective physicality of the first column with the hidden spirit of the third column. Pharaoh, the hero of the first column, is presented as the ostensible master of matter. The invisible God who appears by Himself in the third column is the Master of the spirit. God and Pharaoh, spirit and flesh, meet in the middle column.

We have begun to see that there is meaning embedded in the tabular structure of the nine plagues. The three-by-three table appears to represent a philosophic system in which reality has three spatial dimensions, represented by the rows, and three qualitative dimensions, represented by the columns. The “context” of each plague is determined by the unique intersection of a spatial dimension and a qualitative dimension, much like a Cartesian co-ordinate system. Changing the metaphor, we can see that the text of the nine plagues is like a weave. It can be studied “warp and weft”. This is the basic characteristic of tabular texts such as the nine plagues. They must be grasped as interwoven. Finally, I want to introduce the marking system I will use for woven texts.

Labeling Tables

Table 10 The Marking System

I have reproduced the nine-plague table with the addition of row and column labels. The rows are marked by numbers and the columns by letters. The columns are marked according to their positions: L(eft), M(iddle), and R(ight). There are two different types of markers in the table, simple and compound. The simple markers are outside the framework and the compound markers are inside it. The framework represents the limits of the text. Within it are the nine plagues. Outside the framework are the six “rules” abstracted from the text. The three rules of the rows are marked by numbers, and three rules of the columns are marked by letters. Each separate pericope –plague- is indicated by a combination of the number of its row and the letter of its column. This is the system I will use throughout this book. Each pericope reflects the intersection of two lines of thought, its column and its row, and is marked by its column letter and row number. (In the context of tabular units, I use “pericope” as referring to a single block of text in a table.) The linear text flows across the columns, row by row. In the example above the linear order is: 1L, 1M, 1R, 2L, 2M, etc. The space “outside the framework” is very useful for characterizing the “threads” of the weave, the rules of the columns and rows.

Warp and Weft

Each of the plagues can be classified by two characteristics: one connected to the plague itself, and one connected to the introduction to the plague. The substantial similarities, such as the first three being in the earth and produced by Aaron, appeared in the rows. The formal similarities appeared in the columns, such as the first of each triad taking place in the morning. This is exactly the distinction between the vertical warp, and the horizontal weft, in a loom. The warp has a formal function. It holds the weave together. The weft is the “substantial” part of the weave that creates the picture or pattern. The fact that the warp of textual weaves serves a formal function, does not prevent it from conveying meaning. We saw that the extreme columns of the plague weave could be read as reflecting dyads such as Pharaoh-God, large-small, visible-invisible, public-private. We will continue observing the distinction between the warp and the weft of woven text while analyzing the weaves of Leviticus.

What I have presented is by no means a full study of the plagues, but rather guide-lines for such a study. It is enough for us at this point that we have begun to understand the meaning of “non-linear context” as well as certain specific points that are significant for our reading of Leviticus. We will see that the Inner and Outer Ways are each a three-by-three weave, with striking similarities to the nine-plague weave. 

Chapter Five