Plagues and Politics: Exodus 1

The mistake of Egypt's new king (Exod. 1:8), common enough to be a cliche, is to think that the powers of life and death, of creation and annihilation, actually do rest in his hands.  OT scholars have often noted the echo between the "swarming" of Israel in Egypt (וַֽיִּשְׁרְצ֛וּ—Exod. 1:7) and the original imperatives of the creation (Gen. 1:20, 7:21, 8:17, 9:7).  In their fruitfulness in Egypt, Israel demonstrates the blessing of God, the rich, fertile, good word of the creator.  They "swarm" Egypt (cf. שִׁרְצ֥וּ—Gen. 9:7) as a witness against of provision in the face of famine and the threat of annihilation.

Pharaoh forgets, as powers so often do, that he is a created being.  His attempt to stifle the swarm of Israelites is a reach for the creator's power.  But God is not mocked.  In a contrapasso of which Dante would have been proud, Pharaoh stifles the swarm only to have repeated swarms overwhelm his parody of sovereignty.  He takes the powers of creation in his hand, but God quickly disabuses him of the notion that his sovereignty stretches that far.  A swarm of frogs, a swarm of locusts, a swarm of hail:  creation doing its thing, doing it well, and doing a lot of it.  

The enslavement of Israel is Pharaoh's rebellion against his containment in a world that he has not made for himself.  It is a rage against the thorns and thistles, a bid to overcome the struggle between humans and the earth by placing other human beings in between them.  Humans were built to mediate the divine will into the creation and to gather up the creation in praise to their creator.  And in attempting to do with other humans that which only God can do with them, Pharaoh reveals the tight and tacit connection between bourgeois culture and idolatry of oneself.  The plagues, then, are an act of mercy, in which God's wild creation gathers and shows its allegiance to God and god alone.  And as an act of worship, the plagues are a mercy for Pharaoh, a forced anamnesis to restore him to his place in the earth, his place as the earth.  Creation declares the glory of God, and this declaration is irreducibly political, since there is no more beautiful political act than to remind each other that we are dust.  The Hebrews swarm as those who receive and bear the blessing of a good creator.  But the Egyptians have swarmed as well, and the plague that God rallies creation to heal is Pharaoh's blindness to this stark fact.