Pharaoh’s big mistake was that he assumed that the Jews would return to Egypt after their holiday. It never occurred to him that the Jews did not like being slaves. This is the set up for the events at the Sea of Reeds.
Hello! Happy Passover and chag sameach during these Chol HaMoed days.
Pharaoh’s shock is explicit in the verses. After the Exodus (Exodus 14:5):
“It was told to the king of Egypt that the people had fled; and the heart of Pharaoh and his servants was turned against the people, and they said: ‘What is this we have done, that we have let Israel go from serving us?’”
The key Hebrew word there is “ברח” (barach) — “fled.” Not “left for a three-day festival and will return,” but escaped. Pharaoh and his advisors suddenly realize the slaves aren’t coming back. The illusion shatters.
Moses never promised a round trip. From the very first demand at the burning bush (Exodus 3:18, 5:1, 5:3, 8:23–27), the request was always framed as:
“Let us go… that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God in the wilderness.”
Pharaoh even offers compromises: “Worship here in the land,” or “Go, but not very far,” or “Only the men,” etc. Each time Moses insists on leaving entirely for a festival in the desert. He never says “and then we’ll come back to your nice slavery.”
So where does Pharaoh get the idea they’ll return? Exactly from the psychology of the slave-owner’s blind spot.
A master who believes his system is benevolent (or at least inevitable and natural) cannot imagine that the people he “provides for” would reject the arrangement. In Pharaoh’s worldview, Egypt was the pinnacle of civilization — abundant Nile, granaries, order, divine kingship. Why would anyone choose the uncertainty of the desert over that “security”? Slaves eat (even if poorly), they have tasks, they belong. Freedom looks like chaos to someone who has never experienced the hunger for it.
This mindset isn’t ancient history. History is full of examples where rulers or systems genuinely believed their subjects were content (or at least better off) under control:
- The Soviet Union and its satellites constantly portrayed themselves as the liberators of the working class, while many citizens risked death to escape.
- Various empires throughout time were shocked when “their” peoples rose up or fled en masse.
- Even in more personal terms, some abusive relationships or cults persist because the controller truly believes “they need me” or “they’d be lost without me.”
Pharaoh’s shock reveals something profound: tyrants project their own values onto the oppressed. They assume everyone wants what they want — power, control, the familiar hierarchy — because they can’t conceive of a different moral order. The idea that a people would prefer serving God in freedom over serving Pharaoh in “security” was literally unthinkable to him.
And that’s precisely why the Exodus isn’t just a story of physical liberation (“Let my people go”), but of ideological and spiritual revolution. The Jews didn’t leave Egypt merely to wander; they left to receive the Torah at Sinai — a system built on justice, law, human dignity, moral responsibility, and rejection of idolatry and arbitrary power. A system that would eventually influence much of Western civilization’s concepts of freedom, rights, and equality before the law.
The seventh day of Passover commemorates the splitting of the Sea — the final, irreversible break from Egypt. No going back. The Egyptians drown in the very waters they thought would trap the slaves. It’s the moment the old worldview is literally swallowed up.
People assume “everyone does it my way”. Criminals, corrupt officials, ideological extremists — they often normalize their own behavior so thoroughly that they project it onto everyone else. “Everyone cheats.” “Everyone wants a strongman.” “Slavery isn’t that bad if you’re fed.” Pharaoh was the original version of that self-deception.
So yes — Passover isn’t only “we were slaves and now we’re free.” It’s “we rejected a entire way of being human — one based on might, gods of the state, and human bondage — and chose instead a covenant of law, ethics, and service to something higher.”
That’s worth celebrating not just for the Jewish people, but because that moral revolution has been a blessing for humanity at large.
Something to think about,
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